Thoughts on Midlife - Women’s Edition
It seems that everywhere I look lately, women are talking about midlife and I have a few thoughts…
Life has many phases…we are born and grow from babies into small children. As small children, we have no words and it must be very frustrating to want to say something and not be able to, so we go through what we all know as “the terrible two’s”. This seems like a hard phase to me.
We begin to grow and our lives are shaped by the people around us who give us their views on things and expect us to behave in a certain way and if we don’t, we are disciplined…sometimes in a constructive way, sometimes not, depending on our caregivers. That’s not easy and we’re also getting teeth and learning and discovering the world around us. Developmentally, our impulses are stronger than our ability to reason, but no one tells parents that when they have children.
As life progresses, we enter puberty and absolutely everything changes. I remember this as one of the hardest times in my life. No one is able to prepare us for what we are about to go through as we become women. In our culture, there is no right of passage or celebration of womanhood and the preparation in schools is often terrifying because it focuses more on what could happen to us instead of the changes happening in our bodies and with our emotions.
As we continue to grow, navigating relationships in our still somewhat backward society is difficult. It is still very much a mans world, even considering the work our fore mothers did to prepare the way (I feel as if we’re going backwards sometimes in spite of that). We also have mixed messages because of social media (even as midlifers) and growing up is often very confusing. Either we navigate it well because we have people around us to help, or we become insecure and lack confidence (I’m sure there is middle ground, but this is just my broad explanation). These years are so formative, and if we were taught by our mothers who grew up in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, it’s very likely we were taught to be ladylike, to not speak up, and also in many cases that we were responsible for our homes and our children. In short, we’re responsible for most everything because most women have jobs outside the home or are entrepreneurs.
We then enter adulthood, get married, or enter into relationships and, the confusion continues. Being in a long term committed relationship is one of the hardest things ever and throw a couple of children into the mix and life can get very interesting, very quickly. It’s fulfilling, it’s wonderful and it’s so very hard to be a mother and wife and still carve out a place to just be a person. This phase is also very very hard and…we all navigated it based on what we learned from our mothers who grew up in another era when things were much different. The subconscious things we learned are hard to unlearn.
The years when our marriages are young and our children are also young and growing into young adults are busy and it’s hard at times to keep a relationship going when life is so busy…so, often, marriages (relationships) don’t make it because we don’t know how to take care of ourselves, much less each other and our children. Marriage is hard with or without children. Most of us weren’t taught communication skills, or any kind of life skills at all…we learned what we were modeled and I will say that for many, that was really frightening!
Fast forward…our children are young adults, going off to college, getting their first jobs and getting married. For many of us, our children were (are) our whole lives, and now…what will we do? Maybe our marriages made it through, and maybe they didn’t. Either way, there can be a feeling of emptiness and on top of all of this…our bodies are changing…again.
I’m making the entirety of life seem very bleak and I’m aware that there is so much in between the stages that I’ve described, but my point is…life comes with it’s challenges at every stage.
What many of us have in midlife that we didn’t necessarily have before, is the opportunity to grow and learn. We have time to build careers (even if we’ve worked all along), we have more life skills, wisdom and experience. Yes, our bodies are making us crazy with weight gain, hot flashes, wrinkles and other things and we are sometimes moody (but no more moody than what comes with PMS).
My point to all of this is and this may be an unpopular opinion, but midlife is a phase in life that every woman goes through and it probably isn’t really any worse for most than the other stages in life. For me, midlife has become one of the best times in my life because I didn’t give up or give in. When things got really hard for me…when life knocked me down, I got up and I got busy.
The difference I do see in the midlife phase is that time is ticking. I know that I probably have less time left to live than what I’ve already lived and that creates a sense of urgency for me. I want to live the best life possible in this time called midlife. Technically, midlife is between 40 and 60, so at 61, I have graduated into another stage and I’m a little afraid to hear what it’s called?!!
All kidding aside, the more we talk about how hard midlife is, the harder it will be…because that’s just how things work.
Let’s redefine midlife and teach the next generation a thing or two about how to live our lives to the fullest. Let’s mentor younger women and be the best grandparents possible. We still have time to savor life and to celebrate each day. We still have time to start businesses, create opportunities for ourselves, and learn new skills. Each stage of life comes with it’s difficulties and with it’s beauty. In midlife, more than any other time in life, we have the opportunity to make it as good as we want it to be!
***Disclaimer…I know that there are exceptions to every situation and that some have health issues and circumstances beyond their control.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject…leave a comment below and join the conversation!
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