Finding work that confronts this difficult stage of life with honesty and wisdom is not easy – but these writers show it can be done
When I started working on The Middlepause, I was desperate to read books I could learn from and argue with – books that would mother my own, so that I could duly rebel against them. I’d been pitched directly into menopause, the result of undergoing a hysterectomy, and as I clawed my way back to health, I hungered for fresh options, new pathways, the promise of hope.
What I found, mostly, was self-help. Books with frivolous upbeat titles, like Fifty and Fabulous, or Fifty Is the New Fifty, which traded in stock answers and easy certainties, when what I wanted was intelligent questioning. They assured me that middle age could be the best time of my life, if only I was smart enough to recognise it. I knew better. I knew that middle age was dowdy and maudlin and complaining, that our hormones ride rollercoasters; that we thrill to adulterous affairs; that in midlife we lose parents and sometimes friends and feel as if our identities are dissolving – it’s why we cry over empty nests, fret over our truncated futures, suffer breakdowns and breakups and mourn our disappearing youth.
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