Lessons From a Lizard: On Regeneration at Midlife and Beyond

You don’t “reinvent” after loss or upheaval. You regenerate—slowly, awkwardly, imperfectly—into someone who can live with what changed you.

I watched the lizard sashay into my bathroom as if it owned the place—a reminder that chaos arrives regardless of how tightly your door is shut.

When the tiny intruder made a beeline for the closet, I came unglued, recalling how a year earlier, I woke in the middle of the night to find a four-inch lizard staring right at me, three inches from my face. It was lounging atop my phone’s charging cable, enjoying the electrical warmth—a sort of new-age spa day for lizards.

After letting out a combination of an ew and a screech, I tried to catch it, all while not waking my husband, who (unlike me) is nonplussed by things that go bump in the night.

Neither attempt succeeded. Defeated, I fell asleep with the covers over my head. The illusion that my world was neatly contained was beginning to wane. Ha, ha, I mused. Could a reptile be my midlife spirit guide?

The Things That Return

This was my third encounter with a lizard. A decade before, while living in Texas, I walked out of my bedroom, fumbling in the dark for the light switch, and promptly stepped on a tiny lizard. The high-pitched sound I made woke my normally hard-to-wake 9-year-old son, Nick.

He flew downstairs, only to discover the reptile had split in half under my right foot.

As I contemplated whether it was a good idea to spray my feet with Lysol, Nick got to work saving the lizard. He airlifted the injured creature to the patio, explaining that they’re capable of regeneration, and he was going to put the two halves together.

By morning it hadn’t survived. Nick, hard as he tried, and me, hard as I wished, couldn’t make it whole again.

I thought the chapter had closed with lessons learned about lizards, my son, and myself. But it seems the lizard gods had more to teach. I didn’t know then that regeneration would become the lesson I’d keep relearning.

Losing Control

Fast-forward to the present-ish. Just when I’m sure it’s left the premises, I flip on the light in my closet and the lizard shows up, streaking across the wall. I pull out a few clothes, climb on chairs, curse, call out for my husband. He hands me a paper towel and suggests I use it to gently catch and then transport the lizard outdoors.

“You catch it!” I say.

I can’t sleep. I’m undone. Unsettled. Un-me.

Why is something so small unravelling me so completely?

Because it’s not really about the lizard—it’s about what keeps crawling back.

Sorrow. My father’s passing. My cancer. The losses that quietly change you, until one day, you barely recognize the woman you’ve become.

Unlike me, the lizard walks through change and loss without hesitation.

How do I learn to do the same, to make change a prelude to growth?

But What Does It Mean?

I asked Google about lizards as a metaphor. I was half joking. Google was not. It turns out  lizards symbolize regeneration and adaptability. It found me in my closet, the one space I still controlled. My tiny sanctuary, now breached.

The lizard isn’t supposed to be in the picture.

Yet it is.

Once I considered this—lizard as a metaphor—it was hard not to see it in every flick of its tail.

Women at midlife are often told to reinvent—to plan, polish, and power through. But maybe at some point, it becomes less about reinvention and more about regeneration. When change comes for you, and it surely will as we age, it arrives without warning and is not always pretty. In fact, it’s usually painful and inconvenient. You either adapt or you lose out.

The Undoing

On day six, I spy with my little eye (and the help of my progressive lenses) the curve of the lizard’s tail behind my pile of jeans. Now, I’m just straight up pissed. Everything is taken out of the closet. My husband reluctantly joins me. Clothes are on couches, in laundry baskets, hanging from doorknobs. Dressers move.

Maybe regeneration begins right here—in the undoing.

We find the lizard holding on for dear life beneath a dresser drawer. My husband catches it with the paper towel he’d given me days before.

As he carries the lizard outside to set it free, I think about Nick. About the concept of regeneration and the hard stare of the lizard by my bedside a year before.

I realize I’ve spent six days trying to control a creature designed to escape.

After the Shedding

That lizard was part sly fox.

It taunted me. Dared me. Took me out of my comfort zone and got me thinking. Turns out I haven’t been adapting; I’ve been controlling, containing, avoiding.

I return to the closet and shed clothes until the space feels lighter. Until I feel lighter.

Regeneration isn’t neat or pretty or pleasant. And it isn’t just for reptiles. It’s how humans adjust to change and loss. How we not only live through the mess, but move forward.

Maybe chaos isn’t an intruder, it’s an invitation.

I exit the closet and leave the door open.