Other people’s words about … growing older as a woman

The things they don’t tell you about menopause are multiple and ever-changing, newly horrifying with every fresh wave.

I know there are positives. Apparently you no longer care what people think about you. Apparently you have come into your power, you are a wise elder, you don’t give a shit about what anyone else might say.

Only you do. The thing no-one tells you about menopause is that you look like you don’t care because your face is set that way, because you get used to trying not to care until you imagine it is true. But you do care. It is ravaging and you do care, you really do.

from ‘Fat Girl Dancing‘
by Kris Kneen

I can’t think of a time when I didn’t care about what other people think about me. I have always been someone who cares too much about this, who compares myself with others and finds myself wanting in every way I can think of to be found wanting.

This hasn’t changed as I’ve got older. Like Kneen, I’ve heard the truisms around ageing; I’ve listened to and read the interviews in which famous older women tell their interviewer that at fifty/sixty/seventy they feel wiser/calmer/happier/more beautiful than at any previous stage in their life — and I’ve believed them. (Let it be said, I am somewhat suggestible when it comes to what other people say. It comes with the territory.)

Sunset, Taperoo Beach, June 2023.

I was thinking, when I first read Kneen’s words, about writing a post here about how we as women are objectified; about how that’s why, when we reach menopause, we feel the way Kneen describes; about how, though objectification feels odious, being silently discarded feels even worse. But this morning as I sat down to write this post, I found that what I wanted to say was something else.

What I really want to say is that one of the things I have come to realise as I grow older is that the pieces of received wisdom I’ve absorbed over the years rarely work for me when I try to apply them to myself. Over and over again over the years, I’ve had to discard those generalisations — about living, about being a woman, about growing older, about finding some level of happiness or contentment or peace — and find my own truth.

At fifty-two, I certainly don’t feel that I am coming into my power, and I could not feel further from being a wise elder. But I do know that in the years that lie ahead of me, if I am lucky enough to live them, I will continue to need to find my own path through life. I will continue to need to turn away from those truisms and pieces of received wisdom about how my life should appear to me. And I will continue to need to be less suggestible. Because I do care; I really do. I always will.

Black and white, Taperoo Beach, June 2023.

Lately I’ve been reading …

• • No one can tell us what we must surrender. They can try, but, if we have options, we can form callouses over our eardrums: Amy Benson on giving up air travel to save the planet.
  
  
  • When I tried to get out of bed today I simply collapsed: Ross Benjamin quoting Franz Kafka on the torments of juggling a creative life with the necessity of a day job.
  
  
  • There’s only ever the same, finite amount of water churning around in our water cycle. Every drop of water on Earth has been here since the beginning of time, constantly recycled: Tim Smedley on the scarcity of water as climate change escalates and why it will cause the next pandemic.