40-Something: The Deaths We Don't Talk About

There was a show in the late ’80s called thirtysomething.

It followed a group of white adults in Philadelphia

trying to make sense of love, work, marriage, and identity,

the kind of adulthood that still felt like something you had time to grow into.

Back when the people you leaned on… were still here.

I remember watching that show as a young child with an old soul.

And to be honest… even then, their struggle didn’t quite reach me.

It was soft to the touch.

Their version of struggle… felt distant from mine.

Because I was a young Black girl, raised in the redlined communities of West Baltimore, coming off the heels of Reaganomics, watching policies play out in real life.

Watching crack intentionally flood into Black communities.

Watching families shift.

Watching stability disappear.

Watching what addiction does when it enters a home uninvited.

I had an aunt

destined for greatness.

But cocaine and addiction slithered onto her gilded path.

Not by choice, but by proximity.

Introduced to it by someone she trusted.

It changed the entire trajectory of my family.

I was 13 when she was murdered.

She was in her early 30s.

But let me be clear.

I knew my aunt.

She was intelligent.

Reflective. Vivacious.

Hilarious. Tall. Dark. And, gorgeous.

She was my mother’s big sister, and my mother adored her.

Which meant… she adored me.

I was the firstborn.

And in our family, that meant something.

So I didn’t just lose an idea of her.

I lost a real person.

A presence.

A voice.

A future that I had already started to experience.

And for years after, people would look at me and say, “You remind me of her.”

So I carried her.

Not as a memory I imagined, but as a love I actually knew

.

So even as I watched thirtysomething,

with its beautifully written struggles and introspective tone,

I knew, even then,

that there was a kind of pain I understood…that wasn’t being shown on ABC.

Still, thirtysomething felt far away.

Because adulthood, at that time, felt like something I had time to grow into.

But what we’re living now?

This isn’t thirtysomething.

This is 40-something.

And 40-something doesn’t come with curiosity.

It comes with clarity.

And here’s the thing about clarity.

When you first learn the word,

you think it comes with rainbows.

Fireworks.

A big arrow pointing to where X marks the spot.

You think clarity is a celebration.

But I’ve learned, by 40-something, clarity ain’t no joke.

Clarity is a weight.

A curtain you can’t pull back.

A truth you can’t unsee.

It’s a secret that won’t go back in the bottle.

And sometimes…

Clarity doesn’t feel like freedom.

It feels like loss.

Because 40-something introduces you to a different kind of death.

Not always physical, though there is plenty of that here.

But a quieter death.

A more disorienting one.

The death of:

• who you thought people were

• what you believed love would look like

• the stability you assumed adulthood promised

• the version of yourself that survived by holding everything together

One moment, you’re at brunch enjoying mimosas with girlfriends on a Saturday.

And the next week,

that same girlfriend’s face fills your timeline,

surrounded by RIP and “gone too soon.”

Your father.

Your mother.

Your grandparents.

People you grew up with.

People you thought you had more time with.

Gone.

And at the very same time,

while life is taking and shifting everything around you,

your children are growing fast…and your marriage may be unraveling.

Not always loudly.

Because betrayal doesn’t always explode…it erodes.

It shows up in silence.

In distance.

In the quiet realization that the person you built a life with may not have been standing in truth the way you were.

And sometimes…the betrayal isn’t just what they did.

It’s what you allowed yourself to survive.

The overgiving.

The lack of reciprocity.

The way you kept choosing them

while slowly abandoning yourself.

And the hardest truth?

Pain doesn’t excuse harm.

And love should never require self-betrayal.

Not ever.

And here’s the part we don’t say out loud:

In your 40s…you’re in a fight on every front, at the same time.

Grief.

Parenting.

Partnership.

Identity.

Healing.

No pause.

No intermission.

Just life…coming at you in combinations,

gut punches, jabs, rib checks,

back to back.

Swollen eyes.

A bloody nose.

And still…you’re packing school lunches,

managing Zoom calls,

and making doctors’ appointments.

If I’m being honest…

I don’t know how anyone weathers this season without faith in God.

Because the questions don’t get smaller.

They get heavier.

The “why” stretches beyond logic.

Beyond fairness.

And the answers… don’t come on command.

What I am learning, in real time, is this:

God does not always remove the weight.

But He meets you inside of it.

He steadies you in the grief.

He sits with you in the questions.

He reminds you, when everything around you is shifting,

that you are not.

God is still God, and God is still good.

And maybe that’s what 40-something really is:

Not the destruction of your life…

But the exposure of what was never solid to begin with.

So yes… 40-something is ghetto.

But it is also sacred.

Because it forces truth to the surface.

And truth, no matter how painful, is the only foundation strong enough to rebuild a life that actually fits who you’ve become.

I am not writing this from the other side.

I am writing this from inside of it.

From grief.

From lineage.

From inherited memory.

From the quiet understanding that

God made a promise

to stay close to the weary

and the brokenhearted.

And if you’re here too,

feeling the weight of it all,

just know this:

You are not alone in the breaking.

And you are not alone in the becoming.