Tag: women in their forties

YOU’VE CHANGED

I was browsing through Instagram the other day, just scrolling through, half-involved, when my friend Nolan’s story made me pause.  It was a meme, of course, with a caterpillar telling a butterfly “You’ve changed”.  The butterfly swiftly responds, “We’re suppose to”.  It hit me right in the gut.

How many times have you been in an argument with a partner and they accuse you of having changed?  Your automatic reaction is to respond defensively, as though they’ve insulted you.  But the reality is that you are doing exactly what you are supposed to do: you are evolving.  And perhaps you are out-growing your surroundings.

A few years ago I went through a series of what I like to call “unfortunate events”.  I remember hating myself, and thinking I just wanted to go back to being the NORMAL me.  I wished away the anxiety I was starting to feel; I’d lay in bed staring at the ceiling wondering how I came to be someone I couldn’t understand or relate to anymore.  I just wanted to go back to who I was before. Unfortunately, that girl didn’t exist anymore.  I was lost.

But it doesn’t only happen to ourselves.  How often have we been in a relationship and suddenly realized we don’t recognize our partner anymore?  How many times have we met up with an old friend, only to discover that we have grown apart?

That is life.  We are products of our experiences.  We are meant to grow apart, so that we can find the person we can grow WITH.  We are meant to experience hardship, so it can shape us into a stronger version of ourselves.  We are meant to experience joy, so that we can share it with others.  And every time we experience something, we are meant to CHANGE.  You are never going to be the person you were yesterday,  and that is a good thing.  It means you are learning.  You are absorbing the lessons, and letting them mold you. 

Sometimes you have to become worse, before you can become better; that’s the hard part.  We get temporarily lost, before we finally feel found.  But we are products of our own experiences – works in progress – and everything that happens to us, every decision we make, helps morph us into our final product.  So when you finally break out of that cocoon of broken promises, broken hearts, and broken dreams, you get to fully spread your wings and conquer NEW dreams, find new loves, and mend broken hearts. 

“You’ve changed.”

“Thank you.”

FACING THE F-WORD

Remember when we were teens and 30 seemed old? Then we were 30, and it wasn’t so bad, cos at least we weren’t 40…but then we were 40 and apparently it’s MID-LIFE?!!! It’s true.  Forty is mid-life and I’m shook.  I tried to fight, but I’ve entered my 40s and there’s nothing I can do about it.  But seriously, when did it become midlife??

 I have never cared about aging as much as I have leading up to this milestone.  My skin changing, my body changing, everything becoming unknown to me.  Aging terrifies me.  Sorry, let me re-phrase: looking older terrifies me.  From the time we are little, girls are “taught” that appearance is important, and we grow up placing so much of our self-worth on how we look. A multi-billion dollar beauty industry, fashion magazines and both men AND women have focused so much on what a woman looks like, no wonder we are so hard on ourselves.

Turning 40 changes many things for a woman.  You can’t help that.  Our faces will show our happiest moments in the form of laugh lines, and our saddest grief in the form of frown lines.  Our eyes will show our experience when we hear our children speak of their failures and fears.  Our bodies will show the years of carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders.  Yup, it’s scary for a woman to face physical change.  Feels like a cruel joke.

What is scarier, though, is the deeper examination of your life.  Realizing you don’t have any more answers at 40 than you did at 30.  Personally I have MORE QUESTIONS!  Am I truly happy professionally? Should I take a chance on a new venture?  Can I afford to fail at this point in my life, having a family that depends on me??  At 30, I wasn’t scared.  I had youth, confidence, and no dependents.  If I failed (which I never believed would happen), I could just do something else. 

So why does this number send us into such a “crisis”?  Perhaps because we are many things, to many people, and the struggle of getting through each day is EXHAUSTING.  We, as women, mothers, professionals, significant others, and let me stress again, MOTHERS, are finding less and less time in the day to do what makes us happy as INDIVIDUALS.  Having 2 kids myself, I am basically a chauffeur and spectator to extra-curricular activities 6 days a week.  SIX.  Now add their homework, my business, gym, chores, errands, baths, bedtimes, a few stolen moments of silence dedicated to feeling guilt or failure at any or all roles I must play (perhaps a little cry in there as well), and what does it really leave you with?  Just enough time to realize that there isn’t enough time, or to feel inadequate. 

Our perception of ourselves is terrible.  We are never enough!  We are never good enough mothers, can never keep up with the housework, stress about work decisions, feel like we aren’t making our partners happy…and in turn we make ourselves unhappy.

To make matters worse, we live in the most judgemental world, where even we, as women, tear each other down, criticize each other, hate on each other, and feed off one another’s misery.  I refuse to be that woman.  We need to do better.

Yes turning 40 is scary, especially through our own eyes.  But have you tried seeing yourself through your children’s eyes?  To my daughters, I am not just an aging face; I am the most loving mom, the person they run to for kisses on their bobos, who loves them more than anything or anyone in this world.  To them, I’m not just an aging body; I am SUPER strong (“like Wonder Woman Mommy!!”) and SUPER SMART (“Mommy how do you know EVERYTHING?!”).  And no matter what I look like in the mirror, they see me as the most beautiful person in the world.  They’ve never judged me, like I judge myself, and they definitely don’t care if I’m a size 2 (even though I still do).

If only we could give ourselves a break, and see what they see, how much happier we would be.

Forty is only mid-life (and doesn’t have to be a crisis!!).  There is still a whole other half of life to experience.  None of us are perfect; we are all just a work in progress.  If we could just focus on what we have, instead of what we are losing, maybe we could appreciate how aging is a luxury, and comparison (to a younger you, or others) will only rob you of any joy that your first 40 years have brought you.