I found out recently that supermodel Cindy Crawford has hired a coach to help her negotiate midlife. In a cover story for the wonderfully named Haute Living magazine (how haute is your life, hmm?), Crawford is pictured at 56, goddess that she is, wearing a lacy bralette so tiny and delicate it looks like it was woven by the guild of fairy spiders in 15th-century Flanders. It would disintegrate if it even saw a washing machine. Do you wear it once then throw it away? Sorry, I’m getting distracted by Dior lingerie: the main point was the midlife coach.
Crawford says she had an epiphany at Burning Man festival (or hell as I’d call it, given that it’s a happening with sand, 40C heat, camping and “radical self-expression”, four of my least favourite things). The unprecedented freedom apparently prompted a realisation that, in her normal life, her time was not sufficiently her own. “It’s me questioning, at this point in my life, do I still want to be all of those things that I unconsciously signed up for?” she said.
I thought the only thing I had in common with Crawford was moles. But no, she too is grappling with the traditional midlife question: what the hell is all this for? It’s reassuring to realise you can be legendarily beautiful, worth approximately a quarter Sunak (the new high-net-worth individual unit of measurement) and still look around and say to yourself: “I’ll be dead soon; why am I still…” (fill in as appropriate – I presume Crawford’s response is, “doing this stupid interview”).
Her idea of hiring someone to help answer that question filled me with an envy I normally reserve for people with pet owls and private chefs. Who wouldn’t want a coach for every stage of their life, after all? From cradle to grave, it’s confusing and often terrible. No one wants to listen to their parents, our friends are often as clueless as we are, and therapy is slow, hard (and yes, hugely important) work. Part shaman, part doula, part Dr Capybara (the ferocious rodent alter ego my best friend invented to kick me up the arse when required), the ideal life coach – at least the way I imagine it – would provide answers, an action plan and accountability.
I once had a single session with a coach – a man of cast-iron confidence, superpowered positivity and a wholly flawed belief I could project the same – then ignored every scrap of his advice, but that was before I entered the dark forest of my 40s. There are many conflicting narratives around midlife (existential questioning, leather trousers, throwing plates), but the one about having more certainty and self-assurance resonates the least. I have never felt more baffled and I would take every coach on offer: life, intimacy, career, financial, a sensitivity reader to vet my every utterance and someone to tell me what to do about my proliferating skin tags.
The list of questions I need a life coach to help me answer is endless, actually. Can I silence the ceaseless internal narrative negatively comparing myself with others? What is the deal with middle-aged feet? Am I frittering away my retirement trying to find a decent vegan cake? Is there any point in striving for anything but loving and being loved, when everything feels unprecedentedly catastrophic? And perhaps most importantly, can I reach 60 without succumbing to wild swimming?
That’s why I want what Crawford is having. It’s not that I aspire to be her, cycling across the baking desert in a “shimmering gold jumpsuit” to have a sculpture made of burnt-out Teslas and Barbie heads mansplained to me by a naked leprechaun. My midlife mood board hero is Isabella Rossellini, living her best, uncompromising, creative life on her farm surrounded by rare breed animals and her loving family, occasionally dressing up in a chimpanzee suit to distribute Halloween candy from her hairy hands, according to her Instagram. The right midlife coach feels like it might be the way to make that happen. But then, of course, I would need to tackle yet another question: how do you find the right one? I’d need a coach to answer that, too.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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