What season is it?
This book, Fruitivity, presents the idea of looking at professional and personal life stages as occurring in a predictable, natural, cyclical pattern-the rhythm of the seasons. It may change both the language and the thinking about the meaning of common life events like the parenting years, being "between positions", the "empty nesting" stage and "doing nothing for a living" (sometimes known as retirement).
After any disruption by traumatic events or when "normal" has become relative, the whirling earth can teach us some primal, elemental ways of regaining a sense of balance.