KYRA DAVIS: Reinventing Yourself After 35

These days a lot of people have to reinvent themselves between the ages of 35 and 45, occasionally even older. Sometimes they have to reinvent themselves professionally because of an unforeseen layoff or career setback. Sometimes it's on a personal level due to the end of a marriage that lasted well over a decade. Thanks to Sephora and the talented colorist in your local hair salon it's pretty easy to trade in the mom jeans for a pair of Rock & Republics and hit the hip lounges without seeming out of place. As for the professional changes, well, no one is able to retire before 70 these days anyway so if you start a new career at 40 you still have at least thirty working years ahead of you. The problem is not that reinvention is too challenging, the problem is that it feels too challenging.

People in their 20s often feel like the world is full of possibilities. They can do anything they set their minds to. They will find the right man or woman and they will not settle. They will "establish" themselves within their profession of choice before having their 2.5 completely healthy, adorable and obedient children. The children will make their marriage stronger and will be raised in the way this perfect couple wants to raise them (and both spouses will be on the same page in regards to child rearing, always). There will be no plastic toys, no TV before the age of five, these kids will attend the school the parents like best and excel, share all of their parents interests and they will willingly eat their organic vegetables.

In your 20s all of these expectations seem incredibly reasonable. Every college graduate has to reinvent themselves when they step into the career world and trade in their friends-with-benifts for life partners but those reinventions aren't hard to undergo because the people doing the reinventing are sure that if they simply do all the right things everything is going to work out the way they want it to.

While in your 20s you can jump into a new endeavor with both feet and with only an ounce of fear. In your 20s you know that relocating for this or that job is obviously a good decision because even if the company isn't perfect you can MAKE it perfect. You have the power to change the world!

By 35 you know that's a load of BS. You can relocate and it might be the right decision but then again it might not be and recovering from a WRONG decision could take years and possibly bankrupt you or even cost you a relationship. You know that you can give a project your all and still have it fail. You know you can bend over backward trying to be the best employee ever and that can still not be enough to save your job or get you a much needed promotion. You know that there really are forces beyond your control. Even success may not look the way you anticipated it would. And now that you know how quickly the price of health insurance goes up and you're paying your own rent/mortgage, taking a low paying job in a new field in the hopes of making an impression on an employer and getting ahead is a very high risk and scary proposition.

If you have children you've come to realize that children are a bit like plants in that they come in lots of different varieties and even if you have always thought you would be tending to a flowering cactus garden you, my friend, have been given a fern. If you want your beautiful fern to flourish and respond to you you're going to need to give it more water and less sunshine than you previously thought was appropriate. The cactus was given to the person who expected an apple tree. And you know that if your kid's an orchid it doesn't matter how established you are in your career, the time you're going to have to spend taking care of this child is going to amount to a career setback. A 35+-parent knows that children, particularly during the first few years and PARTICULARLY if the kid's an orchid, tend to add tension to a marriage rather than marital affection.

And you know that there is no such thing as the "perfect soulmate." You know that relationships take an enormous amount of work and sometimes end even though you were sure they were going to last forever.

So in this changing economy where industries that we all thought were recession proof are biting the dust and new career approaches (and sometimes entirely new careers) are needed in order to survive, the 35-45 set frequently find themselves in the exact same position they were in when they were in their 20s except this time they're scared. Really scared, not just nervous. And when you have to start dating again during these years it's daunting because you know how much work is involved and you know that when it comes to love, or anything else for that matter, there are no guarantees. You know that frequently your job must accommodate your family obligations, not the other way around.

Taking that big leap is a lot more intimidating when you already know what it feels like to fall.

But we have to take the leap anyway. We have to be stonger than we were in our 20s. We have to use our knowledge as strength rather than a burden. We have to use our failures to make us more successful than ever. JK Rowling, Bill Gates and Walt Disney all had an intimate knowledge of failure on both a professional and personal level. To say they bounced back is sort of the understatement of the century. We can't all be Bill Gates or JK Rowling but we can learn from their refusal to give up on their ambitions and dreams. JK Rowling personified the clinical depression she experienced after her divorce by creating Dementors. Bill Gates used the experience he gained developing software for his first business Traf-O-Data (which failed) to launch Mircosoft.

No one enjoys failure and it's silly to say one shouldn't fear failure, particularly if you've experienced it before, because failure is inherently scary. But you can't be brave if you don't have any fears to face. That's the advantage that you have when you reinvent yourself later in life. Now when you take major risks you're not being naive, you're being brave. You've made mistakes which means you've learned lessons that the fresh-out-of-college graduates haven't. That's doubly true when it comes to romantic relationships. You can use your understanding of failure to accomplish amazing things.

So yes, reinventions are more frightening after 35, but they are potentially more apt for success.

And that is something to cling to when you feel on the verge of a panic attack.

Kyra Davis