She demystifies or reframes many common difficult experiences of midlife in this context. Packed with anecdotes and references to other authors, she goes broad rather than deep, covers a lot of ground and opens many directions for further exploration. Her extremely complete Notes referencing hundreds of footnotes often list not only her source, but many related books on the same topic.
Gestation (excerpt)
In my opinion, nothing in the world is better to eat than a fresh vine-ripened tomato sandwich with lots of salt and pepper. Every year I plant a variety of species in little square-foot gardens in my backyard. Supersonics, Best Boys, Early Girls, beefsteak, are all given their spots in the sun. I rig up some tomato cages, hoping that the seedlings grow big enough to need some support to hold the weight of the blossoming plants and their bountiful—if I'm lucky—cash crop. I have some control over the growth of these plants: I can water, weed, mulch, protect them from cutworms and an unexpected frost, and trim back the suckers when they appear. But no matter how I might crave the sweet juicy harvest, I will have to wait until July, assuming everything goes well, for these little plants to bear fruit.
Our society is not well prepared for the slow maturation that is the nature of gestational changes. Instead we want things to happen now. If we want some material possession we whip out our credit card to pay for it. Our world has become so busy and rushed that there is barely time to prepare and eat a meal. Instead we drive through fast-food restaurants and gulp our lunch on the run. We exercise our body in twenty-minute segments of accelerated aerobics or in wrestling with some exercise machine. Only a few follow the advice that Ficino gave more than five hundred years ago when he suggested, "You should walk as often as possible among plants that have a wonderful aroma, spending a considerable amount of time every day among such things. p 25
Our telephones, pagers, cellular devices, faxes, and modems span the world with words and ideas digitized for instant communication to almost anyone, almost anywhere. We can step on a jet in any city and within hours land in any place in the world. While all this technology in the service of rapid communication and speed has its place, in fact offers many wonderful possibilities for bridging distance between people, it is not the only pace at which the world or human beings can or should operate. One thing is for certain: it is not the way in which the Self becomes known in the inner space of the chrysalis.
The movement toward transformation at midlife is neither rapid nor linear. Just as the seasons change gradually, gently one into the next, just as daytime merges through dusk into night, the world of the chrysalis operates in a growing, maturational way. Like the distillation of gold from base matter, the prima materia or massa confusa, in the laboratory of the alchemist, the changes that occur within the chrysalis adhere to an internally determined time frame.
Howell Raines correctly observed the gestational nature of the midlife transition when he wrote, "If you contemplate such a trip, I guess it is time to let you in on a tasty little secret. To the degree that the term `midlife crisis' implies brevity, it is a trick. Gail Sheehy was much closer to the truth when she wrote about a `passage.' It cranks up somewhere between the ages of thirty-eight and forty-five, and in a really intense midlife crisis, which is the only kind worth having, you should count on five years of steadily intensifying anxiety or depression or some satanic combination of emotional torment." (p. 26)
I'm not certain that the midlife transition always takes place specifically in a five-year period, as Howell Raines asserts, though I do agree that the process of the chrysalis is best measured in years and not in days or months. The full development of the Self; however, will take a lifetime, and the goal of individuation is a possibility up until our last breath.
At midlife, though, many people don't believe that they can bear the uncertainty and anguish of this liminal place, and instead, look for ways to hurry things up. We wouldn't even think to scream "Bloom!" at the plants that we hope will grow. We would never look at a friend laid up in a full body cast and shout "Heal!" Though we may have to hold back the urge, we don't look at the silliness of our teenager and bellow "Grow up."
We understand that blooming, healing, and emerging from adolescence are maturational processes that take time, operate under their own laws, and cannot be rushed. Certainly, we can take steps to help things along, but for the most part we must simply "let it be." At midlife, however, the urge to re-claim the lost parts of the Self and end the agonizing uncertainty of this birthing process often expresses itself as an addiction, an avoidance of the real issues, or, quite often, an impulse to action. Although the integration of unconscious aspects of the Self may ultimately require real, and often dramatic, changes of circumstances, concrete change is not the goal of the midlife passage. It is instead a time for introspection, reflection, integration, and imagination.
Pp. 130-131
Meaning & Purpose 
A Guide to Reviving Your Spirit, Recreating Your Life, 