Additional Coverage:
- I went to an adult sleepaway camp in my 40s. Surrounded by women in their 60s and 70s, I found role models for aging. (businessinsider.com)
Midlife Mom Finds Unexpected Clarity (and Soft Serve) at Adult Sleepaway Camp
ADIRONDACKS, NY – Forget yoga and journaling, one local mom found herself rethinking the entire narrative of aging, all thanks to a weekend at adult sleepaway camp. Inspired by her tween daughter’s Adirondack adventures, Julie Chang Murphy, in her 40s, decided to trade her usual summer routine for bug juice and bonfires, a first for someone whose childhood “campfires” involved the blue glow of a Xerox machine.
Murphy, who admitted her parents weren’t keen on “paying money to rough it in the woods,” spent her early summers at Chinese school and tinkering in her parents’ restaurant. Fast forward three decades, and the allure of an adult-focused summer camp, held after the kids had gone home, proved irresistible. She imagined a serene escape, a chance to meditate on the perplexing crossroads of midlife, where peers are either “crushing it” or “phoning it in.”
“Should I be striving harder, or surrendering more?” Murphy pondered, a question that led her to seek the unique clarity only strangers and nature can provide.
Age is Just a Number When You’re Stealing a Pontoon
Upon arrival, Murphy initially felt a pang of discomfort, surrounded by women mostly in their 60s and 70s. “Like maybe I was too old for friendship bracelets but too young to join the wisdom circle,” she mused. However, this age gap quickly dissolved as she witnessed her fellow campers embrace the wilderness with youthful abandon.
These seasoned women, who had weathered “a whole bingo card of heartbreaks, diagnoses, and funerals,” were the first to claim the lake in kayaks at dawn and hike trails with unwavering enthusiasm, identifying birds not by sight, but by song.
One evening, a mischievous camper elbowed Murphy, inviting her on a covert mission for soft serve. Murphy found herself joining a “gaggle of women” roaring with laughter, about to “commandeer a pontoon boat with the energy of teenagers on a joyride.” It became clear: these women hadn’t received the memo about “shrinking off into the sunset.”
Present Moments Over Midlife Noise
At camp, the usual societal pressures faded. “You’re just a camper, straining to identify constellations in the night sky,” Murphy observed. Whether whittling a wood block into a spoon (a demoralizing task at any age) or simply being present, the timeless moments quieted the “noise of midlife.”
Murphy realized that perhaps the answer to her midlife dilemma wasn’t about constantly optimizing or retreating, but simply “paying attention and focusing on the present moment.”
Returning home, under-showered and with classic camp tales to share with her daughter, Murphy carried something more profound. She glimpsed a version of herself unconfined by societal narratives about aging.
On that Adirondack island, the women around her served as living proof that “women are never just one age. We’re every age we’ve ever been, all at once.”
Under the ancient trees, Murphy found herself to be “the girl learning a new song, a mom crafting something just for herself, and an elder sneaking dessert.” She concluded, “I thought I was late to camp, but maybe I arrived right on time.”