Adult Learning and Development

¶ … Adult Life Change: Sarah Brown

At present, the Sarah Brown of the case study is a woman facing a midlife crisis. Suddenly bereft of her husband and her customary occupation, she finds herself immediately responsible for the support of an adult daughter whom she felt she had long settled in the workforce. Sarah is not so old that she is merely interested in taking stock of her past life, merely longing to share her personal and professional experiences with her children. Sarah wishes to develop a new sense of self. She should be able to enjoy the security and independence of autonomous adulthood without the need to care for children or a husband.

As noted towards the end of the case study, Sarah still desires male companionship, and thus wishes to build a future as well as a past, even though she is no longer in the first stage of life construction. For the past years of her life, Sarah has been merely attending to the needs of others within the family niche. (Hudson 109) Now she must spread her wings and make use of the life skills, first cocooning, the first activity of a life transition, or turning inward to take stock of her character strengths and needs, and find her way over the next stage of her life. The next stage will be for her to enter into a life transition that makes better use of Sarah's newly developed sense of self and offers her fulfillment beyond the roles she played in her previous life phase. (Hudson 72)

At the end of the case study, Sarah has learned to articulate her own needs better to her children and to herself -- now she can speak rather than physically somaticize her crisis as anxiety. But the next step in any life transition is to find a new place where such a redefined sense of self is required. (Hudson 72) Fortunately, her children seem more willing to support her in this than previously. Now they acknowledge their mother's needs. In reference to M. Scott Peck's call for responsibility and delaying immediate gratification, however, which Sarah has practiced for most of her adult maternal life, Peck's discussion perhaps best reflects the transition made by Sarah's daughter, whose immature regression to the family home spawned the mother's crisis, and who now seems more willing to stand on her own two feet in the world, delaying the immediate gratifications of living at home for the eventual independence of working and college. (Peck 32-62)