Midlife (for) Women: Awesome or Awful?
I’ll start with a bit of a story…..
By EMMA JAYNES
When I was in my teens and twenties, I was pretty heavily involved in the feminist movement, which I studied up to Masters Level.
When I became a mother in my mid-twenties, I wove that experience into my work, often talking about the invisibility, and inconvenience, of the mother with young children, in our society, plus the expectations of us to be all things to all people.
I noted experiences such as being huffed at or ignored when trying to heave three babies under three, the pushchair, and all their stuff, up the stairs into the bank, and even being spat at in disgust by a man as I walked past a pub with 2 toddlers and a new baby.
As I got older, and went through considerable transformations in my early 30s, my priorities shifted. In light of the experiences that led to those transformations, I retrained in psychology, counselling, peer support, coaching, and complementary medicine and pursued a career in mental health services.
In my mid 30s, my husband and I separated and eventually divorced (though we remain friends and have co-parented our 3 sons throughout). By 40, my life really had begun again.
I had started running my own businesses buy this time, having narrowly escaped two of the most toxic people I would never wish to encounter again, and met a man who became one of my greatest teachers (a long story for another time).
Around this time I lost my mother (in tragic circumstances). I also started experiencing what I later discovered were called ‘perimenopausal’ symptoms, unfortunately compounded by what was labelled ‘fibromyalgia’ (blog coming).
It was a strangely paradoxical time, where life was both awesome and awful at the same time – mind-blowing.
Of course, me being me, I wasn’t content to wither, so I decided to ‘do the work’, find out what was really going on and chose to believe that something positive would come of it all – yep, another initiation, followed by another transformation.
So what did I find out?
Well, I discovered that there are plenty of places to go where women can moan, bitch, and whinge about how awful everything is, buying into the notion that midlife is indeed awful, as are midlife women, and we might as well just give up, with our dried up vaginas, great fat bellies, and aged ugliness, now that we are surplus to requirements in all other respects too. Or maybe, we could, perhaps just sit back and take the Valium and Prozac prescribed by the doctors and sit and wait for imminent death.
Joyous!?
I must say, it was all a bit of a disappointment.
I, on the other hand, had this sense that, as I was in my early 40s, my 3 sons were virtually independent and starting to fly the nest, plus I still had all these dreams and aspirations, there must be another way to roll with midlife. Also, my research and work in my own field, had already shown me that the official line, couldn’t be more wrong.
So, I embarked upon more research – both within myself, and further afield, trawling books and articles and websites, for a touch of something more promising.
Most shockingly, I discovered overwhelmingly that the experiences of midlife women are almost exclusively medicalised and pathologised. That is, women go to the GP when they feel out of sorts or experience symptoms and often leave with a label and a packet of pills (see blog). And, it seems, that almost no one questions this phenomenon, which is, in turn, parroted and propagated in the media, and passed on from woman to woman.
IMHO this is misinformation of the highest order.
My 'this is not right' alarm bells started ringing...
There are many things that I could refer to at this juncture, but I am just going to keep it simple.
It occurred to me that, as in all areas of life, we no longer live in close knit communities, or family groups, where each generation would support the next into each phase of life. Typically, the men would initiate the boys into manhood and the women would do the same with the girls. Women would share their knowledge of how to live and share their innate wisdom with their daughters and granddaughters.
We lived closer to the earth and had greater understanding of our rhythms and cycles. (Interestingly, it was a male healer who helped me begin to connect to the cycles of my own body, in my late 30s!)
The passage from one stage of life to another wouldn’t have been pathologised. Since when is a natural bodily function and life transition, a medical condition? Well, it seems, since periods have been and giving birth have been too!
Just stop and consider that for a moment.
Why on earth would we go to a doctor about perimenopause or menopause? It is most likely because these changes are now terrifying to women who have never been taught anything about what our bodies are supposed to do, and how they go about it, not least to understand and learn to read the messages our bodies have for us.
Midlife, is not a medical condition, and no one should ever interfere with the natural course of our development.
‘But Emma’ I hear you cry ‘I feel absolutely awful and my life is going to shit!’
Ok, I get it. Firstly, be calm.
Your life is not over – do not listen to the people who try to tell you that a menopausal woman in the tribe would have served her purpose. That is not true. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that grandmothers/ post-menopausal women, could have served a very important purpose in the tribe now they no longer had the burden of childbirth.
And so can you. And I will come back to that!
One thing I have discovered is that the degree of suffering seems to be directly proportionate to the level of transformation required or possible.
That is, you need to sort out your shit, discover your purpose in life, and do it!
Have you got any past traumas lurking in there? Have you married someone you don’t love? Have you lost your self-worth during all those years of putting others first? Are you a million miles away from where you saw yourself at this age, when you were younger?
See? (You may need to find someone (good) who you can talk to and sort all this out.)
However, quite often, we are afraid. We are afraid that, if we scratch the surface of what is really going on inside, we might have to do something to change it, and that is scary. So, we go into denial mode. ‘If I just trog on, and take some pills, it’ll go away’.
But here’s the thing. It won’t go away. It will keep shouting at you and it will make you sick (see fibro blog) and miserable and anxious and have painful periods and you will feel angry and enraged at yourself, the world, and everyone in it.
You may well need some encouragement to even get to the stage where you are ready to reach out for support at all.
However, I can promise you that facing up to it, is far better in the long run, that remaining in the space where you are currently. Though things may appear to get temporarily worse – that is common with anything that is worth doing!
So, there is reason to be optimistic.
If you had children, they may be starting to move on in their lives. That is what they are supported to do – as it was for you. You are now optimally placed to start thinking about what you want in life. If you have a partner, let them know what you have in mind. It might be that they want to come along with you on this journey, or maybe they will support you to do the things you want to, but they don’t want to be involved, or maybe it is time to part ways all together. The thing is it has to be addressed to enable you to have the life you always dreamed.
Two of the core values of You Know You are sovereignty and harmony (see core values page). Your personal sovereignty means you are empowered, and you are able to empower others, whether that is your grown-up children or family, other women, or the wider community.
Harmony means that you can retain your personal sovereignty and so can everyone else around you. You can connect with others and support each other to express their own sovereignty. It is a very good idea to find other women who are positive and tenacious, like you, and can provide a strong container for each other when things get tricky or emotional. You don’t want a group that completely disintegrates when someone kicks off, or that encourages woe contests.
You are at the time in your life when YOU get to do YOU. Imagine what that could look like. Do you fancy a change in career or to start a new business using all those awesome life skills? Do you want to disappear into the countryside and live at one with the earth? Do you want to have great sex or none at all? Do you want to follow a passion or a cause that you’ve never had the chance to do before?
It’s all ahead of you – all of it!
So, how do you want to view the next half of your life?
What do YOU want to do?
Do you want to be, feel, do, awesome or awful?
If you want to feel awesome then you will definitely find the free Springboard to Success very beneficial ! To download press the button below – and don’t forget to follow on social media 🙂
