2. Winding Down with Christina Donovan
“I feel like we’re both facing super big challenges right now from different places, but they’re both equally big. I think figuring out the next five to ten years is one of the most important things for he and I right now.”
This podcast episode delves into the concept of Middlescence, a transitional period between the ages of 40 and 60 characterized by the need for change and a sense of running out of time.
Tara interviews her sister Tina to learn more about her story and experiences. Tina reflects on her idyllic childhood, challenging adolescence, fun college years, and hardworking twenties and thirties. She shares how moving to a new school in her junior year of high school had a significant impact on her, and how college provided a fresh start and the opportunity to form deep friendships. Tina discusses her brief stint in a PhD program, career choices, and her decision to become a full-time homemaker.
She emphasizes the importance of family, physical activity, and community connections. Tina also expresses her desire for future work that extends beyond her immediate family and the need to embrace new experiences to avoid regrets.
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[00:21] Christina Donovan: Are you between the ages of 40 and 60? Are do you feel the need for change in your life, but are not sure why or when or how? Do you feel a pressure of running out of time? Do you spend most of your time doing things that are not important to you anymore? These are all symptoms or characteristics of middleescence. And this is our podcast, messy Middleescence.
[00:48] Tara Bansal: Hello, this is Tara and I'm here with my sister Tina. And for these first couple episodes, we wanted to give you some background on each of us. So today I am interviewing Tina and you'll get to learn more about her. So Tina, what would you like people to know about you? What's your story?
[01:15] Christina Donovan: So Tari loves the question, what is your story? And no disrespect to Brene Brown, who I also admire and enjoy listening to, I hate that question. I think it is so hard to condense life and it's a really difficult, complicated question. And it sounds so easy. What's your story? But when you really think about it, I find it very difficult. And so it is because my story is still being written, but it's very similar to Tari's, at least in the beginning. I had a happy childhood, very happy childhood. I had what I consider difficult adolescence. I had fun college years. I had a hardworking twenty s and early thirty s. And then I had family and marriage in my mid thirty s through my forty s. And that's it in a clamshell, I guess. And my early years in childhood, very similar to Tari's. I mean, just very idyllic. We had a super happy childhood. And I think a lot of the things that we share now come from those early years. Just happiness with our family and doing things that we loved with each other. And a lot of the things that we did then, Terry and I both still do. She talked about loving learning and loving books and even how we both were active in athletics. I think to this day we're both still super active. I know that for me, when our family moved to Pittsburgh, outside of Pittsburgh, it was midway through my high school. I was a junior when we moved. And those years were super difficult for me. Looking back, I would say that those two to three years were probably some of the most miserable and difficult of my life. I definitely struggled socially. And college for me, I would say, was not so much a next step as it was sort of an escape. I mean, it was a chance to kind of start over in a new place. And when I look back on my college years, I went to Lafayette Lake, Terry what I remember for them as being so important to me was not necessarily the academic, it was the social side and the idea of connecting with people and relying on people and learning how to be a good friend. Those are things that I have carried throughout my life that I think lasted way more than necessarily the classes I took, which may sound unfortunate, especially my parents, who paid a steep tuition bill through those years. But for me, that's what I think back on as being so important in my college years and kind of giving me the confidence that you can do anything. Nothing is that hard that if you put your mind to it and you work hard, you'll be able to achieve it. But I also left college during an awful recession. It was very hard to find a job. And I had a liberal arts degree. I had a history degree, which doesn't have a specific career path. And I ended up entering a PhD program for history at NYU because I thought it was a path I should try. And I knew almost immediately it wasn't going to be something I wanted to do, that I wasn't cut out for academia. And that was an important lesson. I think I had to go down that road to cross it off my list. But I ended up leaving NYU with just a master's. I didn't complete my phd. And then as the job market was picking up, I was able to get a job and I went into it, which seems ridiculous now that someone with a liberal arts degree could do it. But actually, both my husband and I did that. We were both liberal arts majors and we both went into the technology sector. I mean, they needed people that could write and that could learn quickly. And I had a great decade where I did it support, then I did it consulting. I worked for a small company, then I worked for IBM. And then I finally landed a position at Prudential. And that's where I was when I got married. And when I started my family, I married my husband Matt, the love of my life. We knew each other at Lafayette and we reconnected after college, and we got married in our early thirty s. And I had my first child in 2001 when I was about 33 or 34. And I chose to stop working when she was born. She's Maggie. She's now soon to be 22. I had two more children shortly after that. Jack was born in 2007. He's my youngest. And Jimmy was born in 2003. He's our middle child. And I always expected that I would return to work at some point. But as Matt kind of climbed the corporate ladder, I took more and more responsibilities for our home and family. And I know it astonishes some people that I still don't work, but I'm busy, I'm not bored. I love taking care of the people I love. And being with my children full time was a choice that Matt and I made, and it was the right choice for us. That's how to say it. My daughter is graduating college this year. Jimmy is a sophomore in college, and Jack has two more years of high school left. So there are big changes going on, I guess, in our family. And I'm in a very different place from Tara. I haven't worked for pay outside the home in over 20 years. My kids are mostly grown. They don't really need me except for phone calls here and there. And I still do some driving for Jack, but he's very independent. And I am seeing changes on all fronts right now in my life. And who I am, I feel like hasn't changed that much. I still love learning. I still love to read. Physical activity is a must for me. I run, I hike, I walk, I bike. I like to play tennis. I need to be outside every day just for my mental health. That is super important to me. And I love plants and gardening. And I guess the one thing I didn't mention was my husband and I relocated. He didn't change jobs, but we relocated to College Hill, which is actually where we went to college. It's where Lafayette College is located. College Hill in eastern Pennsylvania. Right when my kids were young. And for all the bad decisions I've made in life, I feel like that was one of the fortunate ones. We live in a super tight community. We have a terrific circle of friends and neighbors. We've really put down roots here and we love it. So that's something that is important to both of us, to staying in this community.
[09:59] Tara Bansal: Yeah. And something I just want to point out is you are still close with your college friends, and you do. I mean, you have a great group of friends on College Hill that are important to both you and Matt. And I think of both of you as being social and how important those friendships are. You have a beautiful. I mean, I want to point out that it's been a sacrifice because Matt has a really long commute.
[10:35] Christina Donovan: Yes.
[10:39] Tara Bansal: But being home in Easton and it is really beautiful and provides. Both of us are in college towns. I'm in Princeton.
[10:48] Christina Donovan: Yes, yours is a bigger town, but. Yeah, it's the same idea.
[10:55] Tara Bansal: Yeah. You're well established and well loved there.
[10:58] Christina Donovan: Yeah, we love it here.
[11:03] Tara Bansal: Do question like when you went to NYU. So you thought you would be a professor? That's what you were originally thinking?
[11:18] Christina Donovan: Yeah, I thought I'd do some type of teaching.
[11:20] Tara Bansal: Okay. And what was it about it that you didn't enjoy and I didn't know you knew it kind of as quickly as you did.
[11:34] Christina Donovan: I guess I had thought it would be more different from college, that it would be a lot more independent in terms of the studying and the research, and I didn't particularly like the atmosphere. I don't know. Again, maybe if I had gone to a different PhD program, it might have been different, but I had a hard time connecting with my peers, and in terms of how we worked or what we thought was important, I don't know. That was definitely a part of it, but I didn't want to be part of the academic culture.
[12:19] Tara Bansal: Environment.
[12:19] Christina Donovan: Culture, yeah.
[12:21] Tara Bansal: I do think it's very different based on people I've talked to going back to high school. I think anyone. No one would want to move in the junior year to a new school. What do you feel like? Were some of the lessons from that time? With hindsight?
[12:46] Christina Donovan: Yeah. It's funny, I keep reading and different things. They talk about painful periods of your life and how once you're through it, you look back on it differently. But I don't look back on that period. I just look back on it as painful, I suppose you could say. Just dealing with something in terms of adversity or being able to work through a difficult time made me more emotionally resilient or maybe more adaptable in terms of. It was a difficult situation and I got through it. But, yeah, I feel like I still bear scars from that. That affected me in a lot of different ways. That took me a long time to kind of recuperate from or to recover from. It's not one of those situations where I look back and blame people or blame, but it was just. It was a bad time, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and in a crucial time of my development.
[13:55] Tara Bansal: And to me, I think of at Lafayette, how quickly and easily you made friends and had such a great group. That's where we're like, I don't have a close group of friends from college. Mine are more from high school. Yeah. And how different that is. I just wondered, do you think it's because everyone was new, or it was just, like, the right people at the right time?
[14:29] Christina Donovan: Yeah. This sounds silly, but I kind of look back on it as kind of karma, saying, okay, you suffered for these years. We're going to make this easy for you now? Well, yeah, I think the people that I was with and the idea that I think college is a time of reinvention for most people. I don't think that's unusual for me or for the people that I was with my friends from that time, I think we're doing similar things in terms of reinventing themselves. And there's an openness, I think, to that first year in college for a lot of people that help. Unique and. Yeah, definitely specific to its place in time.
[15:20] Tara Bansal: On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your happiness right now?
[15:27] Christina Donovan: Yeah, that's a hard one, especially because listening to you and yours was so high. I think mine right now is, like five or six. And some of it, it's not just me. It's life as a whole in terms of my husband right now is super unhappy, which we'll probably talk about in later episodes, but that definitely colors everything in our life. And I have been so privileged to be at home and make my own schedule, and my days have a lot of drudgery and a lot of things that probably a lot of people wouldn't like doing. But, yeah, I have a lot of freedom to do things when I want and how I want. And I do feel like up until the last few years, my life has been very happy. It's been very predictable and in a good way. And I am with the people I love all the time. And that has changed now that my kids have left. I think both my husband and I are definitely in. I don't want to call it a bad place, but we're not in a happy place.
[16:50] Tara Bansal: I don't know. To me, it's important that we be real and that recognize. I don't know, thinking back, part of me, like, some days I'm like, how in the world did I ever say I was a seven or an eight?
[17:06] Christina Donovan: Some of that is a day to day thing. I'm definitely not.
[17:12] Tara Bansal: So I think it does. But you're going through a lot of big changes.
[17:19] Christina Donovan: Yeah, the last two years, I don't know for other people, but I would have gone through all these changes no matter what, just because of the time of life that I'm in and the time of life that my kids are in. But with COVID it really, I think, don't know if it accelerated some of these changes or made them more difficult to deal with. But I do think there's a Covid aspect that has a play in this as.
[17:53] Tara Bansal: Yeah, I mean, I just think, mean, Jim was a senior during COVID Right. Like all the special positive things, nothing went as expected. And even Maggie, our first year in college, she came home. I think it made it harder just because of didn't go as we expected. I read this thing that a lot of our as humans that we struggle with is when things don't go as expected. Right. Like kind of the story in our head and grieving even the death of someone you love, it's. That story has changed. And I think for you, especially, even what you had expected was going to be hard and then to see your family not be able to do the things that they had wanted and expected and in the way they wanted.
[19:06] Christina Donovan: Yeah, no, I think that's true. Yeah.
[19:12] Tara Bansal: So going back to when would you say were some of the happiest times of your life? I mean, it sounds like high school was definitely one of the lows.
[19:23] Christina Donovan: Well, I mean, I think I look back on my 20s as. I mean, I remember just, I worked a lot, but I did, I was, I loved what I was doing. I loved, I made great friends in my companies. I worked for. I didn't have children yet. And it took us a while, both Matt and I, I think, to become more financially secure. But yeah, I think of my late twenty s and early 30s as a very happy time. And then of course, I feel like I have just loved being home with like once I had children. I have loved being home with my kids that decade, I guess maybe from when Jim was know until when they were in high, just that to me was a very happy time.
[20:26] Tara Bansal: Yeah.
[20:27] Christina Donovan: And things kind of just, I suppose boring isn't the right word, but yeah, it was very stable and consistent and consistent. And all the changes that were happening were good. We're fun.
[20:47] Tara Bansal: And that's where I am now. I have soon to be ten and twelve year old. And like I said, I think that's kind of the honeymoon period of it is kids.
[20:59] Christina Donovan: The work of kind of day to day with young children is done and you're actually with your kids as people. Yeah, I think that's a tremendous time. I guess the other thing I would want to add is even now, when I say, like, our happiness is five or six, I never lose sight of how privileged we are in where we are and what we're able to do. My husband and I, we are very fortunate and we are very grateful for the tremendous blessings that we've had. I never ever think that I deserve any of this or I am so grateful for everything we've been given. And some of it we've worked for, but even when you work hard, there's a lot of luck and fortitude that goes along with it. Yeah, I agree.
[22:07] Tara Bansal: So what's important to you right now? You have this.
[22:13] Christina Donovan: Yeah. The things that are most important to me right now are still my family, still my kids are older, they're independent, but they're still in that precarious position of young adulthood. And I guess starting to think about our next phase. Both my husband and I sometimes I think would be easier if one was slightly ahead or behind the other. But I feel like we're both facing super big challenges right now from different places, but they're both equally big. I think figuring out the next five to ten years is one of the most important things for he and I right now.
[23:01] Tara Bansal: And to me, that's part the reason we're doing this podcast. So what do you want? Can you just describe that? Like, if you got 510 years down the road and it lived up to or exceeded your expectations?
[23:28] Christina Donovan: For me, I want to be doing some type of work, and it does not need to be paid work. It could be volunteer, something that brings more meaning outside my immediate family. I do find the work I do, the support I give to my family very fulfilling, but I also feel like there's a point where it is winding down. I don't mean to say it's going to wind down like it is winding down. I'm seeing the end of that, and I think that whether it's the community I live in or something larger, this sense of giving back for some years and doing work, that I can see an impact beyond just my immediate family and, yeah, I guess that's what you're looking for. What I'm looking for, yeah.
[24:26] Tara Bansal: What can you describe any more? Like, how many hours a week would you like to work and what activities would it incorporate?
[24:38] Christina Donovan: Yeah, I don't know.
[24:40] Tara Bansal: That's okay. I just wondered.
[24:44] Christina Donovan: And this is where I think it is complicated for me because a lot of this is going to depend on my husband and if his work or job changes.
[25:00] Tara Bansal: Will impact you.
[25:02] Christina Donovan: Yeah. Like how the balance is right now. Yeah, that makes sense.
[25:08] Tara Bansal: So, trying to describe what stage of change would you say you're in?
[25:17] Christina Donovan: I'm still in the something ending.
[25:19] Tara Bansal: Yeah, I agree. But I wondered how your perspective was.
[25:24] Christina Donovan: And I guess that's the thing. I'm definitely in the ending, but I think I'm starting. I can see the messy middle. I can see some of that starting to evolve from an ending into something else. So, yeah, I'm sort of. Definitely in something ending and approaching the messy middle.
[25:49] Tara Bansal: And I want to point out that I don't feel like these are distinct, separate.
[25:57] Christina Donovan: You end one phase and start the other.
[26:01] Tara Bansal: They will overlap and each have different parts for them. With that in mind, if you project out ten years, what do you think you would regret not doing during that time? Does anything come up for you?
[26:27] Christina Donovan: I think for me, it's not trying new things, just staying on the same path. And I think that, like I said, my life is very. I'm very fortunate, and I think I could do this for the next ten years. But I do think I would have a regret that I didn't try other things or give myself the opportunity to do some different things.
[26:53] Tara Bansal: That's great.
[26:54] Christina Donovan: I think that's important to keep in mind. Yeah. Hope it's not too loosey goosey.
[27:01] Tara Bansal: No, not at.
[27:03] Christina Donovan: Right.
[27:03] Tara Bansal: I'm going to. We're going to sign off now. Even though Tina is my sister, or maybe because she's my sister, I loved hearing her story and learning more about her. We got to hear about our similarities and also our differences. This episode shows me that you can always learn more about someone, even someone that you think you know well. I love being able to ask these questions, which is part of the reason I'm doing this podcast. I liked learning more about the most painful time of her life, what she views as some of the best times of her life so far, and what she's struggling with right now in adolescence, and what she doesn't want to regret. For show notes and other information about our podcast, please go to our website, messymidelescence.com. If you enjoyed listening, please share with others and come back for more.
Today's quote: “The goal is for your midlife crisis to turn into a midlife discovery.” - Joan Anderson.
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Christina (Tina) Conti Donovan is that rarest of breeds: a stay-at-home wife and mother. She spends her time caring for her mostly all grown-up family, an old house, and a tremendous number of house plants ( not necessarily in that order). Before leaving the workforce in 2001, Tina worked in technology support and consulting roles for several Fortune 500 companies. Her undergraduate degree is from Lafayette College in Easton, PA and she also has a Master’s Degree in European History from NYU. She is married to fellow Lafayette alum Matt Donovan and they are the parents of 3 children: Maggie (22), Jimmy (21) and Jack (16). In addition to her care taking, Tina volunteers in various community and school groups. In her free time, she enjoys running, hiking, biking, gardening and reading.
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