THE MIDLIFE MUCK
Any other midlife women feeling like this?! Or, is it just me? Check all that apply:
You’re coming apart AT THE SEAMS.
You want to SCREAM.
You’ve become MEAN.
You’re definitely no longer LEAN.
Forget about fitting into your JEANS.
Just utterly OUT OF STEAM.
It feels like a SCHEME.
You’ve reached that age when you’re no longer even SEEN.
What happened to YOUR DREAM?
And, just like that….
You’ve become… a MIDLIFE MEME.
I don’t know about you, but I really do turn down the radio while I’m driving, so that I can see better.
When I get on the ground, I really do have to have a plan on how I’m going to get back up.
And, I can remember lyrics to a 40 year old song from the 80s, but - for the life of me - can’t remember what I had for breakfast.
IF THIS SOUNDS LIKE YOU:
WELCOME TO THE MIDLIFE MUCK.
Memes are funny. But, midlife is no joke.
I put on a happy face, but the weight of that mask is almost more than I can bear anymore.
I walk around New York City on a daily basis, and there’s so much LIFE moving around me. So much purpose. In the way they walk, the way they talk.
And, I feel so STUCK.
Paralyzed.
On the subway platform— trying to figure out what train I want to get on. What direction I want to go in.
UNFINISHED.
Like something is just not quite right. And, the clock is ticking. Time is running out.
I’m beyond grateful to get to this point in my life. But, if I’m going to be honest, I am also unhappy, uneasy and uncomfortable in my own body.
In May, tests showed I had pre-cancerous cells in my uterus, due to an overproduction of estrogen. By the end of May, I had my uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and ovaries removed.
Goodbye, UTERUS.
Hello, SURGICAL MENOPAUSE.
What most women gradually go through over YEARS, I went through overnight.
Hot flashes are REAL. It’s a misnomer, too. It’s not a “flash.” It is a TSUNAMI.
Imagine one of hottest, most humid places on earth (Mine is the free sauna in NYC that is a subway platform on a 90+ degree day) And you’re wearing layers and the heat is coming from the INSIDE of you. I have never sweated this much in my entire life. Or drank this much water. So, at least there’s that. At least the skin is glowing. I, quite literally, said before all this happened: I don’t know why we have to DEFINE midlife by hot flashes. I get it now.
But, midlife and menopause is so much more than hot flashes, although that is A LOT. There is also:
Anxiety
Depression
Weight Gain
Joint Pain
Brain Fog
Insomnia
Which, of course, leads to…
TEARS. I want to cry. A lot.
I get irritated. EASILY.
And, I spend a lot of time looking for my glasses, the remote and going into the kitchen and forgetting why I went in there in the first place.
I can’t focus or finish anything… (if I finish this blog, please insert applause)
But, if I’m going to be honest: All this started way before the surgery.
At the age of 45, after spending more than two decades in television news, I quit. It shocked everyone I knew because I didn’t just produce TV news. I WAS a television producer. I lived it. I breathed it. I ate it. If you’re one of the few people who saw Rachel McAdams in “Morning Glory,” that was me— with a child. I even interviewed Rachel about her character, where she said to me actors work on a project for maybe 3 months, but news people do it every day— day in and day out— the “NEWS NEVER STOPS,” she said to me.
Until one day, I was forced to stop when I got a call that I needed to travel 1,000 miles to sign those next of kin papers and pull the plug on a man I hardly knew: My biological father.
And, something cracked in me. I thought to myself:
THIS CANNOT BE IT.
A time to re-evaluate how I’m living my life.
I would rather chew off my arm than book another TV segment. I want to spend more time with my son before he leaves for college.
My entire adult life, I was a TV news producer. I was booking 75 segments a week for a live, 6-hour morning show, five days a week.
Keeping it moving was my armor. Because you can’t hit a moving target.
As a therapist friend said to me one day: “You are putting everything on a shelf. And, one day, my friend, that shelf is going to fall down and smack you in the head.” And boy, was she right. Because not long after that, my son went away to college. And, even though I will always be “mom.” We are always mom. The reality of it is this: We have been seriously DEMOTED. Some have described it as the longest break up you’ll ever know. No one prepares you for the pain that goes along with it.
You spend 18 years of your life devoted to this human— and suddenly, they’re gone. Everyone has all kinds of unasked-for advice to give to women when they are having a baby. In fact, they celebrate you. But, when you hit that empty nest and menopause phase, they go RADIO SILENT.
No one writes the book on “What To Expect When You’re NOT Expecting.”
I’m 53 years old and I don’t know who or what I want to be when I grow up.
But even grape vines in the dead of winter are never really dormant. They are hard at work underneath the ground preparing for the next season, storing energy, growing roots and building better defenses against the cold— to name of few.
Instead of BECOMING, maybe this is our season of UNBECOMING.
“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other peoples opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning. An excavation, remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” Emily McDowell
What I am feeling, what you may be feeling is NORMAL.
You feeling sad, angry and depressed? Yup. Me, too.
You feeling like you’re going crazy? Yup. Me, too.
You feeling completely and utterly lost? Yup. Me, too.
Normalize saying it out loud. Normalize verbalizing it.
Because what your body is going through is NOT NORMAL. I once it heard described like this: Your body is going into protection mode.
Your body is having to readjust, recalculate, reformulate… If we reframe it that way, it’s much easier to be kinder to her.
Instead of constantly complaining about how she looks, how she feels— isn’t it high time we showed her some RESPECT? And, started showing ourselves some, as well.
We are not in a crisis, even though it sure as hell feels like it on some days. You are on your way to becoming a butterfly.
We are in what Chip Conley has described as a chrysalis— that transformative state before a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. “Within this protective chrysalis, the transformational magic of metamorphosis occurs. While it’s a bit dark, gooey, and solitary, it’s a transition. Not a crisis. And, of course, on the other side is a beautiful winged butterfly.”
As David Bowie once famously said, “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.”