Those of you who follow me regularly will know I’m quite happy to talk about being “nearly fifty” and how my children pointing it out led to me embarking on the 365-day journey that was The Toni Daily podcast. A year that saw me exploring deep themes of birth and death, love and estrangement, and friendship and therapy – interspersed with the daily goings on of village life and people losing their minds in sentences that began with “WOULD THE PERSON WHO….”.
Above learning some things about myself, I was touched by the people who told me they could relate to my stories, were thankful I was sharing and even – thank you Gemma! – bought me some merch! But there’s something I’ve skirted around a bit so why don’t I just come out and say it?
Mid-life really is the hard yards for women
To fully experience life is to participate in all it has to offer – joy, suffering, endurance, boredom, ecstasy, pain. But mid-life seems to be an especially challenging time to get on board with all of life’s “rich tapestry”. And while some of these experiences are absolutely universal, I’m basing this post on my experiences as a woman. So here we go:
Death and dying ramps up a notch
My experiences of death started early – I was 11 when my Grandad died suddenly, 14 when my dad died four months after a terminal diagnosis and it absolutely coloured my life and the person I am today. That said, I faced it with only my own mortality to worry about – using the despair and rage to power a desire to expand, get away, live my life and enjoy new (and often risky) experiences. Fast forward to today and, whilst I am in the somewhat uncommon position of having no living parents, most of my peers have either lost a parent or are supporting a parent who is experiencing seriously ill-health.
Then there is the shocking awfulness of a friend that dies. Someone who is the same age as you. With children the same age as yours. Losing a friend or witnessing a friend being widowed or robbed of their life partner is terrible whenever it occurs but when it happens to someone your age it will make you sick to your stomach. We face our own mortality and flinch.
Menopause starts marching
I love that this is more of an open conversation. When I raised this topic with a WI group I performed for they told blithely told me, “We just got on with it” and I wonder whether it is similar to childbirth in that you wipe your memory of what it was like once you’ve been through it.
For me it’s “so far, so occasional period”. For some of my friends it’s brain fog, pain, fatigue, hot flashes and patches. Lots of patches that leave sticky marks on your thighs and bum (unless gel is more of your thing ;)). What I do know is it’s absolutely not conducive to feelings of calm when having to deal with all the other things that are going on at this time. So what else is going on?
The illnesses start to appear
Whether it’s a persistent ache in your joints or the first signs of heart disease, I have been shocked by how many of my friends and peers have been seriously ill. Hysterectomies, surgeries requiring stomas, cancer diagnoses and auto-immune diseases. I used to laugh at the saying “as long as you’ve got your health” (and can’t resist including my favourite Viz image of all time) but by god is it true.
Teenage children really need you
Even if they don’t think they do. A good friend once said to me that, “You have to get them ready for the teenage years when they’re small” and I’m thankful I heard that brilliant piece of advice when my children were tiny. I like to think I put a lot of effort into some of the honesty that I believe is required to help a young person navigate the world. I hope I have been available enough. I know I have made some amazingly big mistakes where I’ve second-guessed what they’re up to based on my own teenage exploits and got it oh-so-wrong.
But know this. If, like a lot of my friends, you had your kids in your late 20s / early 30s, as you enter mid-life your children are going to want to start spreading their wings. And they need you to be there for all the messiness of being a teenager: first relationships, failed friendships, exams, bullying, drink and drugs, managing money, entering the workplace, eating disorders, realising the world is a bloody scary place, fearing the future and being – hilariously, gloriously – wildly inappropriate in the safety of their own home. Bite your tongue and open your ears.
Speak to friends you 100% trust and respect their boundaries when they place their trust in you. Teenagers absolutely do NOT want whatever is discussed between parents being causally mentioned to them by a peer or – even worse – by a family friend who thinks they’re “being funny”. Choose your confidantes wisely.
If I can offer one piece of advice based on something that has (so far) created a glimmer of understanding from my teenagers – it’s to use this phrase: “I’ve not done this before, I’m trying my best and I will sometimes make mistakes.” And don’t forget what your own experience of becoming an adult was like. As the driving schools love to tell us “Remember, you were a learner too”.
You still have to work
The benefit of speaking to WI groups where the women are in their late 60s and older is that many of them can tell you what it was like when most women stayed at home after having children. Alongside frustration, resentment and the out and out discrimination of the marriage bar which meant that in some professions you had to leave your job once you got married (UP UNTIL THE 1970s!!), there is the fact that many households could function on a single income (or one full-time and one part-time in the case of my parents).
Today, of all the friends I regularly see (whether they have children, step-children or no children) every single one of them works and has NO PLANS to retire early and NO OPTION to not work. For the most part we have careers we enjoy and have worked hard to grow and maintain, but at the same time………..guess what?
The emotional burden is overwhelmingly yours
I shouldn’t have to point this out but – if you want proof – spend some time on the World Economic Forum website where it states that not only do women overwhelmingly carry the emotional and administrative load at home but they’re asked to undertake non-business tasks in the workplace too… If you are ever asked in the workplace, “Make the tea will you love?”, feel free to ask those assembled if they’d like one lump of anthrax, or two.
And while Covid-19 didn’t just keep people in their homes – it knocked the progress of women in the workplace back by several years too – especially women with children, women in senior management positions and women of colour. ALL the major consulting firms had something to say on this but McKinsey had the best graphs so here you go: Read it and weep.
Relationships break down
Because I’m SOOOOO vanilla (heterosexual, married, two kids – boring, no?) I’m going to share a stat based on same-sex marriages: The average age for divorce is 47 for a man and 44 for a woman (here’s where that stat is from). In many cases this is a Good Thing. We should not stay tied to someone who is making us miserable and – thankfully – women are even allowed their own jobs and property nowadays! But I’ve yet to meet a friend who had an amicable split. Which I guess is understandable when the person you married turns out to be bloody unreasonable. Or unhinged.
Where’s the upside?
The upside – from my position at least – is three-fold:
- Friendships that have lasted this long are pretty much unbreakable – the friends I made in my 20s are still my friends today and I would trust them with my life. Likewise the women I met when my children first started school who have formed an amazing tag-team where we are ready to tap one another in at a moment’s notice.
- Someone will have been through what you’re experiencing – ask for help and advice. We’ve all been around long enough to know some of the messiness that comes along with life. And if we haven’t been through it ourselves we 100% will know someone that has. You absolutely don’t have to suffer in silence.
- You don’t have to put up with shit about what you ‘should’ look like. If you’ve got this far, you just don’t – you could be around for another 40 years so stuff anything that’s stopping you from accepting yourself. I always find it motivating to listen to IDLES’ track ‘Television’ which explains quite forcefully why you should “Love Yourself” (read the lyrics here).
What can I do?
To continue with the upside of friendships and experience, there’s a huge amount of support and resources available. Here’s a quick list of organisations that I know can help:
Bereavement support for adults: Cruse were a big help to me when I felt overwhelmed with grief: https://www.cruse.org.uk/
Bereavement support for children: These tend to be regionally-based. I’ve found the following directory for the UK which I hope will help: https://directory.childbereavementuk.org/
Menopause support: There’s so much to choose from now! I’ve chosen this independent (ie: not sponsored by a drug company or celebrity who wants you to buy stuff) website but feel free to comment with your recommendations: https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/
Financial advice when separating or divorcing: This UK Gov Money Helper website breaks down money, housing and pension in an easy-to-navigate format. https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/family-and-care/divorce-and-separation
Self acceptance: For me it was about daily practice: yoga, podcasting, writing – I tried a lot of things! Here’s one resource that springboards into many activities and websites you can explore at your own pace: https://positivepsychology.com/self-acceptance If you’d like to check out the yoga channels that worked for me, I can highly recommend doing a 30-day journey via either Yoga with Adriene and Yoga with Kassandra.
Share your experiences
I’d love for this to be a valuable resource – if you have websites you’ve used or experiences you wish to share, please comment!
** Update ** Thanks to Taisha for sharing these additional resources via my post on LinkedIn:
“Here is another resource – National Bereavement Service – https://thenbs.org/emotional-support/the-experience-of-grief
For those going through divorce, there are now many divorce coaches – often easily found in women’s networking groups. Men of course can also access a divorce coach and I see more of that now too.”
