I'm having a midlife crisis. I don't want my parents to die, and I don't want my teenage daughter to leave me.

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Key Points

At 51, I found myself emotionally raw.My feelings resembled those I felt as a vulnerable teen.I feel that, like teenage years, middle age is a time of deep growth...

In July, my husband and I packed the car with a cooler and a stand-up paddleboard for an afternoon at Flathead Lake in northwest Montana...

The day was otherwise fault-free: I chatted with my mother while spreading out food on a picnic table, swam with my younger sister, and conversed with my older sister on a swinging bench as our father slept beneath the shade of a tree with his hat tipped over his face...

My husband was having a nightcap with a neighbor, our college-age daughter was upstairs, and I was back in time, emotionally, to my younger years of late-night sob fests..

Insecurity left me feeling more like an ostracized teenager, wanting to hang out with the cool girls, while facing the inevitable truth of aging parents...

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