Recently, while reading various reactions to Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest (super controversial) book, All the Way to the River, I came across a post that subtly disregarded her readership as “fed up middle-aged women.” It was a throwaway comment and one that I hear regularly. Middle-aged women are, apparently, quite unhappy.
I am forty-seven now, and though I can’t speak for all of us in this age bracket, I can say that this has not been my experience.
Has it ever been the middle-aged experience? Not for men, seemingly: a “middle-aged man” is often thought of as stable and successful, while a “middle-aged woman” is, well, past her prime.
Someday, I will be past my prime, and I’m okay with that. But that day has not yet come.
We are the new middle-aged women. We go to therapy. We inform ourselves about politics. We eat free-range chicken and recently, we’ve learned how to compost. Some of us read self-help books, and some of these books are corny. But we don’t read them because we’re sad, desperate and lonely—we read them because we are, more and more, becoming the emotionally regulated, fiscally responsible, work-life-balancing person we’ve always wanted to be.
Which of the women you know are financially and relationally thriving? I’d be willing to bet they’re past thirty-five, and likely well past it. But if this is true, why do we often dismiss them?
Middle-aged women are—cliché alert—the glue of society. We’re the thread that holds the pieces of the quilt together. We consistently (often daily) reach back to the younger generation and forward to the older, ensuring that all the pieces stay together. We’re the supervisors, the employers, the caregivers, the best friends, the supportive partners, the bus drivers, the volunteers, the full-time parents, the teachers and the bosses—and many of us are several of these things at once.
We handle the bulk of the day-to-day tasks that are most necessary for the survival of the human race.
We have boundaries. We have good friends. We have long walks in the woods and spaces in which we can be ourselves. We are as busy as women have always been, but we remind each other to pace ourselves. We have gathered enough life experiences to fuel a fulfilling life, and we’re better at making hard choices.
There’s something in literature called the “sagging middle,” and it doesn’t require much explanation. Writers, understandably, work for months or years on their openings, and give their endings a lot of elbow grease, too, but let their middle sections remain unpolished. The solution is to make sure the drama/action/conflict/challenges increase with every scene, without relenting, until the climax.
And somewhere along the line, we middle-aged women have figured out how to do this.
When I was in my twenties, I wondered when my growth would slow down—when I would start getting complacent. When I was in my thirties, some external life circumstances stabilized … but my internal growth actually gathered steam.
This surprised me.
When I was thirty-nine, I unexpectedly changed careers, going back to grad school to become a mental health counselor. When I was forty-one, I came out as a lesbian and ended my marriage of ten years. Neither of these were goals that I consciously pursued. Instead, they were the natural result of personal growth. And things like this just keep happening.
I’m forty-seven and since I plan to live till at least ninety (one can hope), I’m currently smack dab in my sagging middle. But … it’s not sagging. And my friends aren’t sagging, either. They’re building healthy relationships and maintaining enjoyable hobbies and learning new things. They’re going to therapy, focusing on self-care and improving their mental health. Some of them read corny self-help books and some of them do not. The ones that don’t, don’t need to.
They already know.
It’s true that middle age tempts many of us—men and women alike—into complacency. But some complacency is healthy, right? It’s stability. It’s accepting yourself, and understanding your limits, and realizing you will never have it all and that no, you can’t save the world, actually.
The new middle-aged woman isn’t trying to save the world. She’s picking her battles and doing the good she can do. She is responsible, reliable, conscientious and accountable for her actions. She’s being the change she wants to see in the world … to the best of her current ability and considering her current life circumstances.
We are the new middle-aged women. We read self-help books like All the Way to the River and Untamed by Glennon Doyle and, well, everything Oprah recommends. But we do this not because we’re miserable and on the verge of giving up.
We do it because we’re stronger than ever.
And though we can at times feel fed up, the phrase is no longer an accurate description of us, if it ever was.
