Life lessons from the new female friends I found after the age of 45
Why making midlife friends is good for you
When my 30 year career in magazines ended 2 years ago I started to lose my sense of identity. Optimistic new horizons opened up for me so I wasn’t bereft or desperately sad I just felt like bits of me were floating away.
My identity was tangled around the tent pole of my job. I’d done it since the age of 16 so this was understandable. But without my career walking into the room before me how would I explain who I was? It was a conundrum. And then an unexpected thing happened, I discovered a guide rope to hold on to: new female friends. These women helped me curate a new identity. It was nourishing.
Obviously I love my old friends, I couldn’t live without those magnificent women on my whatsApp group where we chronicle our midlife unravellings, unfoldings, rebirths and resets. But new ones bring a giddy new perspective to your life, they don’t know your back story. You can shed bits of you as you move through the transformation of a new stage of life. You don’t have to tell your new friends anything you don’t want them to know. It can feel refreshing and liberating to start form the point of who you are now rather than wade back through the past.
And you know so little of them too. The five or so new women who have come into my life after the age of 45 are mysteries to me, I’m pottering through their back stories with an excitable, inquisitive curiosity (nosiness!) that I haven’t felt for a long time.
And we do different things: not drinks or dinner like I did when I first met my old friends. We walk together, or wander, to be more accurate, because the destination of the walk - rather like the destination of our friendship is not significant, it’s the walking that counts. Or swimming, some of them swim with me. I have learnt much about life from my ‘walking women” as my husband calls them. But these things below are the most useful I think.
The difference between solitude and loneliness. I got confused before because I had so rarely been on my own. I managed big teams at work, I had four children (and all their teenage mates crowding in), being alone was rare and I had to have an excuse to do it, exercise, book research, swimming outside. One of my new friends explained how nourishing solitude for solitude’s sake is, how good for the mind and body it was not to talk, literally say nothing for longer periods of time than normal. I was uncomfortable with this at first and filled my new WFH days with people. This was subconscious on my part until my new writer friend asked why I was seeing so many people during the day, why wasn’t I having alone time, was I perhaps frightened of ‘alonement’ as she called it.Now I don’t do that so much. It’s healthier. I have taken my self off to ‘think about what I have done” as it were, I often look forward an occasional day where I speak to hardly one one, unheard of in my previous life. Or I make a point of having some silence some where in my day. And it’s a helpful way to unpick the past and sort out a path to a future of good things.
That doing nothing is not doing nothing. When one of my walking friends told me I could take Fridays (or parts of it) off it was a revelation. I am my own boss so I am privileged to be able to do that and it not affect my income too drastically. I realise that of course, but I had not even thought I may have a few hours off in the week aged 53. I put ‘off’ in my diary now and the manic busyness I was addicted to has receded, not gone you understand that’ll take more time but receded. I don’t fill my ‘off’ time, I wait for it and see what happens.
“No one cares” - my teenagers say this to me all the time when ever I go into some back story of my life or other. It’s a typical teen dismissal of ‘moron mum” (read my parenting teens book to find out more) book but actually when you walk out of a high status job and meet new people who have no idea what you did then they really don’t care about your past responsibilities. Why should they? They are dealing with you in the moment. It’s liberating. My jokes seem to be still funny. I am still an interesting person for other people I am getting to know.
Find your escape hatch: something that you can do when it is all a little overwhelming. One of my new friends asked me about my ‘escape hatch”. And I realised this is a good way to view the need for some time away from everyone. Cold water swimming is mine. But acknowledging you need one is a start. Put it on the to do list. It’s important, it can be just 10 minutes first thing but an escape hatch to look forward to lifts the lid off the overwhelm and no matter how much you may believe it won”t work, I assure you it does.
You don’t have to reply. I have spent a lifetime replying to emails, messages, texts. Tying up the loose end. Phoning people back that day, texting, whatsApping quickly. A new friend told me to stop bothering. It’s not rude she said, just means you have another priority right now. I mean obviously do reply if you’re a cardiac surgeon or a mum staring at a forgotten pair of football boots on the table at school run time but no need to reply to everything all day long, unless it is imperative to answer. Or another way of seeing it is don’t be available all the time. often with the teens I give them a few moments to sort the issue they are messaging about and with work mails I just don’t reply to them all anymore, and am getting into the habit of ignoring them after 6pm or at weekends.
Also you don’t have to be happy all the time, or even cheerful. You don't need to be content, it isn’t always the goal. Life transitions are uncomfortable, change is not easy, it can be painful and upsetting but recognising you are going to feel that way makes it a little easier I think (well, the walking women who have been through great change tell me this). It’s acceptance and that helps. But you do have to feel gratitude, this seems to be a significant game changer as women age. Those who feel grateful for what they have and do, big or small, tell me it has helped ease the way through all this change.
I wholeheartedly agree with this list. Fabulous! For those women who have spent their days predominantly raising kids rather than in busy careers, I would add 'keep connected with the world', whatever that means; meeting new people, developing new interests, learning new skills, getting involved in a new community. Re-invention is rocket-fuel in mid-life and staves off the (peri)menopausal feelings of insignificance & invisibility.
Thank you for this. It is just what I needed to read right now.