Gen X - Where Are We Now
We've had the last thirty years to carve out a story for ourselves. Yet we have remained relatively silent. Why? Because the world is moving, tumbling forward with so much momentum, it's all we can do to keep up. But the moment calls for our voices, our wisdom, our struggles, our stories. Our generation has faced unique challenges, from economic recessions to rapid technological advancements, and it's time we shared our experiences.
Recently, my world has become unrecognizable: divorced, living solo, co-parenting, leaving the classroom for administration. How did I get here?
Born a Chicago midwestern girl, in 2016, I relocated to the deep south, a place rife with complicated cultural, racial, and spiritual conflict. With Atlanta as the backdrop, the fractures and fissures in my own life began to surface. I was battling depression, and my husband, someone I once felt deeply connected to, grew distant, no longer a person I knew or understood.
My cure for this challenging season was a dogmatic adherence to Christ and faith. I was convinced I did not have the power to change my circumstances, so I looked to God to work miracles for me. I read scripture daily, prayed without ceasing, joined bible studies, attended Saturday and Sunday services, and taught at a private Christian school—all to find relief from the isolation, self-criticism, and emotional pain I was experiencing. I look back at that time with sadness for a woman who gave away her agency because she did not, could not, trust herself.
After years of prayer and patient faith, I began to feel weary, restless, and hungry. I realized I needed to nurture the girl within me, whose spirit had been tamped down without mercy. A quiet, insular voice emerged, demanding attention, and I began to listen. My heart yearned for love, my mind craved fresh and diverse ways of thinking, and my body longed for unbridled freedom. I could no longer be contained.
Abruptly, in what at the time felt like self-sabotage, I began to honor the trapped voice inside of me. I spoke the truth to people in my world who I felt needed to hear it: my employers, my friends, my parents, my children, and my husband. I left my 23-year marriage, left jobs that were no longer a good fit, shared the hurts of childhood with my parents, and demanded acceptance, honesty, and love from my children and friends.
Sometimes, I honored my inner voice boldly and with admirable courage; other times, I did it guiltily and with self-doubt; often, I did it unwisely and with an unjust sword. I've learned so much about myself, about where I come from and the people who have shaped me, about the things I am no longer willing to bear, about the ways I can trust myself, about the goodness of God and the universe, about the necessity of both love and loss, about how to fight like hell to find my way back to myself.
I believe my story is the story of Generation X. It's the story of a diverse band of men and women who grapple with life, who hold their stories of pleasure and pain with sacredness, who know and love their roots and where they come from, and who navigate life as best as they can with a modicum of humor, honesty, self-awareness, and grit. We are a generation of people with a reverence for life and all of its pain and beauty.
Where are you now, Gen X? What lessons have you learned? What wisdom do you have to offer this broken world? Please share it. We've been silent way too long. Let's break this silence together and learn from each other's experiences.