My New Broom

A couple of years ago, I realized that some plain facts were staring me in the face: I am a woman. I am in my forties. And I am losing the precious commodity of youth, which can aid and abet a woman's path in the world. As I started staring down the long tunnel to 50 and beyond, I began to feel a little worried about the emptiness stretching before me. I don't have children to focus on.  I'm not a shopper or a clothes-horse. I don't have an all-encompassing hobby or passion like some of my friends. I'm not an executive. I'm not driven by material things, like a beautiful home. Yes, I have a husband, and a good job, and a modest but pleasant home. Yes, I have friends and family. But if I have all that, what more is there?

Life before 40 is all about possibility. Who will I marry? What career will I have and will it be successful? Where will I live? Will I have children? Looking back, I see now how quickly the years pass after university and before middle age. You're so busy finding the partner, building the career, nesting the home, that you don't see the most critical and fruitful period of your life going by. And then, suddenly, 20 years have gone by and you're ALMOST FORTY!!

The realization hit me quite suddenly and pretty hard, although I should have seen the warning signs. The slow diminishment of glances, whistles, and come-ons that seemed to just be a part of everyday life since I'd been a teenager. It came as a shock to finally realize that I hadn't been the recipient of those primarily because of my looks, but more likely just because of my age and gender. 

There were other signs. I gained weight more easily. I stopped listening to new music. I didn't know the names of the newest crop of Hollywood stars, and I didn't care. Most major-league sports stars were younger than I was.

And then, one day, while walking the dog, it hit me - my life is basically half over. HALF OVER! I haven't written a novel. I haven't made it to the top of the corporate ladder. I will never be in the Olympics. I am not famous. I am not rich. I am just ... me. Suddenly, the sky was falling on me, and I felt myself, literally, duck for cover. My own mortality had just swooped down and buzzed me.

What was going to spur me on to a new stage in my life? Were there new possibilities? What would be different? What would be better? What would be worse? What was the point?

Things got pretty bleak for a while. I'm not prone to depression - just the opposite - but I was alarmed at how fast the first half had gone by. I had to do something to mark the halfway point and launch me into the second, albeit less exciting, half.

So, I did the equivalent of the middle aged guy buying the sports car. I dropped 15 pounds, grew my hair and highlighted it, and got a new wardrobe. Along the way, I also did a couple of triathlons, just to prove that I could still do them at 40 (actually faster than I did them at 32). For a while, I felt better, younger, thinner. Things went along swimmingly, in fact.

And then, menopause started. Early. At 42. Talk about a blow to your femininity. Just when you think you have 8 to 10 more years of being, if not literally, then at least figuratively, fertile and therefore desirable, you hit "the crone years" (thank you, Germaine Greer, for making us all feel so good about being older women by describing us with the medieval term for witches).

The thing about menopause is, it's not about the end of menstruation. (Although, if there is one REALLY good thing about menopause, it is the end of menstruation.) No, the thing about menopause is that it really is the beginning of something new. Women are lucky in the sense that we have bodily evidence of the changes in our lives. We get our periods. We give birth. We breast feed. We get hot flashes. Our bodies tell us what stage of life we are in. But, as all women know, these can be painful and difficult points of entry into new stages of our lives. Our bodies go before us, signaling to us the changes that are to come. And we are dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming, with them.

I wasn't so much dragged into menopause, as I was dropped, precipitously, into the cauldron of hot flashes, with barely a warning.

And so, my midlife crisis hit me all over again, and this time, it was even scarier, since I was ten years ahead of where I should have been. My life was accelerating in some kind of crueler twist of the Benjamin Button phenomenon - I was getting older, but at an accelerated pace!

So over the past year or so, I have begun to pull together and explore the world as a new and different woman. I am sweeping clean many of my old perceptions and trying to see things in a different light. I have used the "new broom" analogy for my blog because "a new broom sweeps clean" and because the broom has many interesting symbolic connections for women.

If you are a woman in your forties, or you know one, or you're just interested in what one might have to say, please read on.