What I Didn't Expect to Find Here

When I started writing here a few months ago, I thought we'd mostly be talking about menopause.

The hot flushes.

The sleepless nights.

The brain fog.

The strange experience of standing in a room wondering why you'd walked into it.

And we have.

But that's not what has stayed with me.

What has stayed with me are the stories.

Stories of grief.

Of loneliness.

Of marriages ending and marriages quietly changing.

Of redundancy and trying to find work again, only to discover that decades of experience don't always open the doors they should.

Stories of caring for parents while still worrying about children.

Of starting over.

Of feeling invisible.

Of wondering, sometimes in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, who you've become.

I hadn't realised that midlife wasn't one experience.

It's hundreds of them.

All happening at once.

And yet, beneath every message, every comment and every conversation, there's something else.

Recognition.

The relief of discovering that someone else has thought the same thing, felt the same fear or carried the same sadness.

For years, so many of us have been convinced we were the only one.

The only one who wasn't coping.

The only one who felt lost.

The only one wondering what came next.

It turns out we were never alone.

We just weren't talking.

Perhaps that's why this little corner of the internet has become something different from what I imagined.

It's not really about menopause.

It's about women telling the truth about this chapter of life.

The messy bits.

The funny bits.

The heartbreaking bits.

The hopeful bits.

Because despite everything I've read over these past few months, one thing has become impossible to ignore.

Women don't stop becoming interesting in midlife.

If anything, this is where they become most themselves.

Thank you for trusting me with your stories.

You've changed me far more than I ever expected.

Love,

Marj