What Story Am I Going to Write for the Next Chapter of My Life?

A birthday reflection on middle age and womanhood

I am 44 now. For some reason, it feels like 44 is officially “middle age.” So I guess that means I’m a middle aged woman now.

That seems really weird to say. If by some miracle, a twenty-something clicked on this and is still reading after seeing my age, I’ll tell you a secret that no one tells you when you are young: Aging only happens on the outside.

I know that I have grown, changed, and matured in many ways, but really, I still feel like a nine-year-old girl on the inside. And a sixteen-year-old. Some kind of amalgamation of both ages. Energetic and optimistic and carefree. Uncertain, insecure, and forever drooling over attractive people who catch my eye.

If that’s what defined me as a nine- and sixteen-year-old, what does 44 mean? Our society taught me the story that a woman over 40 is…well, actually there wasn’t a story about women over 40.

I never imagined myself at this age. It was always “young wife and mother” or “grandma” (which I’ll likely never be, throwing another wrench into this unwritten script).

I’ll admit that I’m somewhat dismayed by our culture’s lack of imagination when it comes to women. (I’ll be generous with that characterization, even though we all know what it really is: misogyny and sexism.) I lived my life according to the accepted storyline for women: get married and have kids. I was entirely oriented toward those goals, though admittedly, my writing and creative expression was right up there at the top of my priority list, as well.

The thing is, as every writer knows, you cannot force a plot.

Then one day, she got married. Soon after, she became a mother.

Those words were never written in my story. Sorry, I seem to have failed that plotline. The one in which I’d be carting my teenagers around by this time in my life, having bedroom doors slammed in my face, hearing angry shouts of “I wish someone else was my mother because you don’t understand me, at all!”

It’s really quite freeing, actually, to know what I’m supposedly missing. Not that there aren’t a thousand aspects of motherhood that I wouldn’t genuinely enjoy. But I don’t mind being in middle age and getting a pass on the teenage years. God knows, I had my share of teenage drama during my ten years as a teacher and mentor.

But dammit, I really would have loved to have known that there were all kinds of things a woman in her forties could do or aspire to do — instead of being a side character (“mom of teens”) or completely invisible (“single, childless 40-something”).

At each birthday, I wonder about this — my story. Where I’m going. Where I want to go. Birthdays tend to pull us into contemplative states, reviewing our past year and the one that lies ahead.

I had to start rewriting my story at 38, when my partner of seven years left. For a woman, that’s a terrifying time to have to start over again. You are keenly aware of the fact that there is no time left.

I held on to the hope that maybe I’d meet someone within two years and still be able to squeeze out a kid just before the shop started its closing procedures. There was a part of me that was quite certain that by 44, I’d have my family.

But alas. As I said before, you cannot force a plot.

And so, like my contemporaries, I, in my forties, am trying to write new stories — more expansive and more inclusive. I’m not interested in the spinster plotline. And I’m definitely not going to let myself become invisible.

For much of my young life, I couldn’t wait to be 30. I believed, for a long time, that that was going to be an incredible time in my life. I imagined I would understand the world so well, I’d have exorcised my demons, and I’d finally overcome my insecurities. In other words, I’d be perfect — beautiful, thin, happily married, well fucked, financially stable, and maternally realized.

As it turned out, 30 was a shitshow as was pretty much the entire decade that followed. Because life is a shitshow. Which is totally okay and normal and not really that big a deal if we learn that early on and stop trying to make something else out of it. Shitshows can be pretty amazing if we learn to adapt, flex, relax, sidestep, and you know…duck.

My forties, as it turns out, have been pretty great. Not because anything was better than it was before. (Again: shitshow.) But because I stopped expecting things to be like a Hallmark movie. I stopped believing that if I could just “figure things out,” I’d be a lot happier.

Nope, I just started accepting that I was going to have to find ways to be happy in the midst of the struggles and hardships and accidents and earthquakes.

My story became less about what I’m supposed to do and aspire to as a woman in her forties and more about what I want. I know what you’re thinking: Is that even allowed? For women to write their story according to what they want? I’m going to be bold and say, “Fuck yes, that’s allowed. And it always was. And always should have been.”

Of course, there will be lots of people who will disagree with you if you take this stance. Our culture does not like women who are their own masters. We prefer them to sacrifice their wants and needs in order to take care of their children, their spouses, their pets, their aging parents, and their communities. If a woman finds herself in a different kind of plotline (either by circumstance or choice), it tends to stir up a lot of discomfort in others.

Honestly, I don’t like this part of writing this unknown story of a single, childless woman in her forties. I don’t like the criticisms, I don’t like the judgments, and I especially don’t like the fact that so many people think that I ought to strive for their approval. Though I have seen some finger-wagging at men who don’t “settle down with a nice woman,” in general, we don’t feel entitled to voice our opinions or criticisms about the way men live their lives. We certainly shouldn’t be subjecting women to this nonsense.

But I think the best way to push back against this sexism is to just keep pen to paper and continue on with our stories, ignoring the detractors, commentators, and critics. They’re comfortable with the accepted plotline for women and would like you to just toe that line, please.

It is hard for them to imagine that a woman over 40 can be anything she wants to be.

When I think of young Yael, though she had no idea she could be a doctor or CEO or president, she did think she could be Wonder Woman, the queen of the Amazons, or a mermaid. Our culture didn’t have much imagination for the different stories a woman could write for herself, but I did — in my own way.

And now, here in middle age (that still sounds so weird), I’m ready to write the next chapter of my strange little story that doesn’t fit very well into the cultural narrative.

I want to really, genuinely “make it” with my work — my writing, my photography, my art. And you want ambition? I’ve always wanted to win a Newbery Medal (like my favorite young adult author, E.L. Konigsberg), a Pulitzer (like the brilliant E. Annie Proulx), and a Nobel (like the greatest writer who ever lived, Toni Morrison).

I want to see the lands of my ancestors and maybe even walk the West Highland Way.

I want to buy a slightly bigger house so I can invite my whole family over for the holidays like I used to do. And better yet, I want land, land, land, so I can protect the owls, coyotes, hawks, and badgers who choose to live there.

I want start a band and be the drummer. I want to gain back my mastery of the piano that I once had. And I want to learn how to play the guitar and be brave enough to sing in public.

And who knows…maybe I’ll be like Abraham’s wife, Sarah, and finally have my family when I’m 90. Okay, I’d actually prefer not to be 90, but maybe 50, like Diane Keaton or Hoda Kotb, who adopted late in life.

Anything could happen. Remember? There’s no actual script, even though our culture likes to pretend that there is.

As I celebrate this birthday, that is the one thing I wish for myself and all the other women my age and older: that we continue to be daring enough to write our own stories and not only that, but to share them. Loudly. Because we were not meant to be side characters in our own lives. And we were definitely not meant to be invisible and discarded.

Some of our best experiences were meant to come from this time when our bodies and minds no longer revolve around childbearing and –rearing. This is a time for our nuanced, deeply layered genius to emerge and shine. This is a time for us to birth all the things we discovered we really wanted when we learned to stop listening to the way the world tried to define that for us.

So welcome, middle age. And happy birthday to me.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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