I should not be so nonchalant about telling people my age–57.
Yet living through “the change of life” is central to what I want to say.
Dissatisfied I was reading the first few pages of No One Tells You This–the memoir of a 40-year old woman with no kids and no husband.
I’m writing a second memoir that I would like to publish within two years.
It’s about having my cake and celebrating each new birthday with glee not gloom.
No one talks about being a Generation X Girl living in menopause.
I will do this. Born in the first year of the Generation X cohort I don’t want to be rendered invisible.
Not everyone is a member of “the sandwich generation.” For those of us who are single our lives are often an “open-faced sandwich” acting as the caregiver without children of our own for a mother or father.
This time of life isn’t so terrible even though the pain can be real for a lot of us.
We have only this one lifetime. Use your regret as the catalyst for changing your life for the better. Today is the day to Just Do It.
It can seem like on one ordinary day you pivot on a dime. Most likely this urge was percolating in the coffee pot of your brain for a while. Until it reached the boiling point.
One day you choose to do something totally not like you. Unlike everything you’ve done before.
At 57 I’ve become electrified to Make It Happen–whatever I fancy I want to do before 60 kicks in.
Cherish 50 while it lasts. Grab the bull of life by the horns and ride wild. These can be the best years of our life. At 60 I imagine the bull will get tired of stampeding. Want to laze and graze in the grass.
Our fifties really are the Dangerous Decade. A lot of us are no longer satisfied with the way things are. We risk bending, breaking, and rewriting the rules.
Coming up: How at 57 I’ve become a quick-change artist.
Left of the Dial 