The Middle Hurts, But the Middle Holds: A Letter Of Encouragement To The Kenyan Aged 35–45

There’s a storm that doesn’t announce its arrival. It doesn’t come with thunder or flash floods. It creeps in quietly, somewhere between your 30th birthday and your 45th. It settles in your bones. It coils around your dreams and tightens like a noose around your confidence. No one warned us about this storm. We were too busy memorizing the multiplication table and reciting the parts of a grasshopper.

You were told that if you studied hard, obeyed your parents, avoided drugs, and said your prayers, you’d be rewarded. But now, at 35—or maybe 42—you find yourself staring at a broken mirror of expectations. And the person you see looking back? He’s exhausted. She’s hurting. They are not failures, just caught in the middle.

In the middle, nothing is quite where it should be. Your friends are buying land in Kitengela, building homes in Ruiru, and posting beach selfies from Diani. Your classmate from Moi University is now the director of something vague but powerful. Your cousin is investing in short-term rentals and posting TikToks about generational wealth.

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And you?

You’re just trying to keep the lights on.

School fees are due.

Your landlord called again.

Your payslip comes mutilated by loans, deductions, mobile money debts, and something called SHIF that you didn’t even ask for.

Your salary is a tourist—it comes, takes a photo, and leaves.

You remember the dream. The one where you’d own a home by 30, drive a Toyota Harrier by 32, and fly to Cape Town with your spouse by 35. You’d raise happy kids in a happy marriage, have a fulfilling job, and a steady investment portfolio. But here you are—35 to 45—stuck between the rock of survival and the hard place of society’s expectations.

You’re not lazy. You’re not weak. You’re just living in a country that charges you Ksh 20,000 for an MRI and gives you paracetamol for a dislocated knee. A country where “economic empowerment” means another tax. Where jobs are advertised for entry-level candidates with 10 years’ experience, and a master’s degree from abroad.

This middle is not glamorous. It is not sponsored. It is not curated for Instagram. This is the season of smiling through pain. Of wearing a suit with holes in the pockets. Of attending weddings with a borrowed tie and giving Ksh 1,000 that you didn’t really have.

It is waking up at 5:30 a.m. to fight traffic and still being late.

It is explaining to your child why they can’t go on that class trip.

It is dodging calls from the sacco.

It is laughing at memes when your heart is breaking.

And perhaps worst of all, it is silence. A loud, deafening silence.

Because we do not talk about this storm.

We’re too afraid of looking like we’ve failed.

Men are told to “man up.” Crying is for weaklings. Vulnerability is a luxury. So they bottle it up until ulcers become their emotional language.

Women are expected to be strong. To mother, to hustle, to nurture, to lead—and still smile sweetly while bleeding internally. They juggle careers, homes, in-laws, and their own disappearing dreams. They carry everyone else’s load while theirs goes untouched.

You’re not young enough to be forgiven. You’re not old enough to be respected. You’re just expected to keep it together.

Even when you’re unraveling.

But here’s the truth: You. Are. Not. Alone.

This phase, this aching middle, is crowded.

We are many, silently battling fears, anxieties, regrets, and pressures that nobody prepared us for.

You wake up, you show up, you push forward. And that, my dear reader, is a quiet form of heroism.

We have built families, not always perfect, but real. We’ve created businesses with scraps. We’ve lost loved ones and still stood tall at the funeral. We’ve seen our dreams pushed to the back of the shelf so we could make room for our children’s futures.

And still, we wake up.

Even on the days when our hearts are breaking.

Even when the car broke down.

Even when the marriage is falling apart.

Even when our parents are aging and our children are growing, and we are stuck in between, forgotten.

There are no awards for this.

There is no applause for paying rent on time.

No trophy for showing up at work with a broken heart.

No standing ovation for raising decent kids in an indecent economy.

But we do it anyway.

Because that is what the middle demands.

So let us speak honestly:

Life doesn’t always reward effort with progress.

But that doesn’t make you a failure.

It makes you human.

Let us normalize this struggle. Let us stop pretending. Let us look each other in the eye and say, “I see you.”

I see you, the father who didn’t eat so your daughter could buy a calculator.

I see you, the mother wh