Aching Gracefully

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3 minute read

I had tea and a catch-up with a friend recently, and we discussed going for a walk in the wilds of Connemara when inter-county travel restrictions lift.

We talked about flinging our respective children into the mix, donning wet gear, and schlepping through the stunning scenery of our childhood with a picnic in tow. How dreamy, I thought.

'It'll be dreamy alright, as long as our bodies allow it', my friend said, with a laugh.

I laughed too, but in a pained way because obviously, we never envisioned making wisecracks about our failing bodies at this stage of our lives. Like, hello. As the young folk say.

Isn't it amazing that these are the things we think about now when it comes to activities?

We agree to an outdoor excursion or sporting activity, delighted at the opportunity to spend time with the people we love, and then wonder whether our respective backs will be particularly bad on that day, or maybe it will be our hips giving us grief on this occasion.

'What happened to us?' I asked aloud as I made a third pot of tea. Because this is another thing we do now that we're older; record-breaking amounts of tea consumption during a one-hour get-together. 'We used to be cool', I muttered. 'We used to talk about going out and holidays, and what we were buying and wearing. Now the main topics of conversation are how well we're sleeping, our general energy levels, and whether anti-inflammatories are actually really bad for us in the long run.'

'And don't forget meditation and breathwork, she said. 'We're big into that now, too'.

I consulted a GP friend of mine to find out whether we are, in fact, slowly dying from here on out. 'Essentially, everything slows down from 25 onwards', she said. 'In our thirties, our metabolism begins to slow, and muscle and bone density start to decrease – as a result, slight aches and pains become more normal. Our ability to recognise faces also peaks during this time, which explains the brain fog that many women start to experience.' So far, so horrendous. Right?

And it gets worse. According to Google, we also start to lose our ability to metabolise alcohol at this stage, which explains why hangovers are now life-altering, never-ending, days-of-regret, never-again, type events. 'So no more wine?!' I asked my GP friend. 'Moderation is fine', she said, rather annoyingly. 'Alcohol consumption for healthy adult women in their forties is up to one drink a day.'

So with aching backs and hips, killer hangovers, and daily occurrences of 'I've forgotten her name', again, is it all entirely downhill from here? According to research, it's a resounding no (thank god!).

Apparently, in our forties, we are more in tune with ourselves and the emotions of others than at any other time in our life. Because finally, it seems we know who we are. And not only that - we start to quite like ourselves thank you very much.

We're less stressed, calmer, and we're able to let go of the need to please others. We're also a dab hand at finding more meaning in our everyday lives and in our relationships.

And speaking of relationships, this is the period of our lives where we hold that close group of friends even closer than before. In particular, our female friendships start to become watertight, as the facades we attempted to maintain in our twenties and thirties have long collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

We enter the long-haul warts and all period of our friendships, where we know everything about each other, and although we might not see each other as much as we'd like, we savour every moment when we do. Even if that moment looks like schlepping across the wilds of Connemara with whinging children in tow (and a medium grade backache).

Getting older isn't all bad, it seems.

'Absolutely not', my friend said. 'You couldn't pay me to go back to my teenage years. Or twenties, even.'

'But we could do so much more then!' I protest. 'We were much more agile.'

'You could never have drunk five cups of tea in one sitting, though', she responded.

'Actually, that's a fair point, I said, as I put a bottle of rosé in the fridge, ready to consume one whole glass later that evening.