A year of great change

Some great, some not so.

Today is my birthday. This year I turn 51.

As a present to me, refer us to a friend? :)

One of my sister-in-law’s beloved monarchs. photo: Marney Roemmelt

Even though last year, 50, was pretty momentous, with the launch of the book and this substack, for some reason I feel like, on this birthday, I am on the cusp of some great change.

“Great,“ in this context, may or may not always mean wonderful or easy. On the one hand, the substack continues to grow and change. The weekly live show is pretty exciting, and I’ve already got a list of interested guests into 2026 whom I greatly admire and am excited to talk to. I also have plans to roll out a series of posts featuring some of the stacks and stacks of our family letters, written by my paternal grandfather, my father, and even such unexpected folks as a former president (!).

Our little one gets bigger and stronger every day and finds new and exciting ways to overcome her challenges. Her great change is entering the world of middle school, a big noisy, crazy middle school with kids from six different communities and countless opportunities for new friendships, classes, and joy.

The regular infusions of joy that serve to buoy me…seem to be in short supply.

But the “great” pendulum swings both ways, and personally, I feel it may be a time of great change in my level of joy, and how I define joy. On the surface, there are some fairly obvious reasons for this. One of my oldest childhood friends passed away from cancer not even two weeks ago. We just passed the third anniversary of my father’s passing, and will soon be coming up on the first anniversary of my wife’s mom’s passing. Add to this a beloved cousin struggling to get the medical care she needs for a chronic illness and it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that joy is becoming harder to locate and keep around.

The regular infusions of joy that serve to buoy me through my dual roles as full-time caregiver and writer, seem to be in short supply. And I’m having to recalibrate my center of what “being happy” is right now.

Perhaps this is all predictable midlife crisis thinking. But I’ve started wondering whether what we know as a midlife crisis is in fact when some of us need to acknowledge that the tree sap of joy that used to fill our buckets may no longer serve us. And perhaps it’s time to look for new forests to tap.

What this all means as a practical matter in my everyday life, I can’t say. But I do need to address it soon, particularly if I want my wife to stick around. As the taps of joy have slowed to a trickle, my mood around the house, and on recent trips, has lived somewhere between disconnected and intolerable.

So, if I had a birthday wish today, it would be to begin to see a path through the trees to where the next great sap of joy runs fierce and free.