The Things We Let Go Of

While researching her new book, The Shift, Sam Baker, former editor of Cosmopolitan and Red magazine, surveyed a panel of 50 women and discovered that, “Sailing under the radar of the male gaze seems to be a problem for precisely no one.” There’s a persistent cultural narrative, which tells women that as they age, men will lose interest in them and redirect their attention and affections to more youthful versions. This well-worn script ends with women in midlife feeling anxious, vengeful and aggrieved; just like in the 1996 Hollywood movie The First Wives Club. But as The Beauty Myth author Naomi Wolf wrote in an essay for The Sunday Times Style magazine back in 2012, “that seems more like a convenient fiction designed...to make women feel less powerful; in this case, just when their power, magnetism and sexuality are at their height.”

The beauty of midlife is that it allows us to let go – of hang-ups and hobbyhorses, infatuations and fixations. I look back on the desire, sometimes desperation, for a man’s attention I felt in my twenties with a mix of amusement and bemusement. How could I have cared that much? Of course, the answer to this question is obvious now that I’m in my forties; I cared so much about others’ opinions because I didn’t have a high enough opinion of myself. I needed some sort of male validation to make me feel that I was good enough, attractive enough, desirable enough. We’re all so terrifyingly unsure of ourselves in our twenties and the way we disguise this is with “trophies” – the boyfriend, the body, the blonde hair, the clothes, the promotion. Sometimes I think of my twenties with a shudder of relief and self-congratulation that I survived them relatively unscathed. Now that I’m in my forties, I’ve let go of acquiring trophies; these days I’d rather gather up memorable moments.

Letting go of the male gaze has inevitably also led to a release from the rivalry many of us used to feel with other women. Although a 2015 opinion piece in The New York Times proposed that we were never actually competing with other women at all, only with ourselves. “For many of us, we look at other women and see, instead, a version of ourselves that is better, prettier, smarter, something more. We don’t see the other woman at all.” I had such a blinkered view of myself in my twenties. It’s as if I existed only for the purposes of comparison, which sometimes made me feel better, but more often than not would lead to me to think that I was less than I should be. In midlife, I have no need or desire to either “lower the stock” of other women or of myself. I’ve let go of comparisons because the older we become the more pointless they seem, a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow’s naked Instagram post in my mind.

Self-reproach is another instinct that’s been added to my midlife emotional skip. Rubbishing myself and the decisions I’ve made is futile and I only know this because I’ve spent so many years doing it. I’ve sold and bought property at the worst times and left myself financially exposed, I’ve spent too much time in the past with men I was unsuited to for shallow reasons and because of a weak will, I’ve allowed myself to be belittled at work by those who had neither the skills nor commitment that I had and on I could go.... But you know what, I like to believe (need to believe) that our mistakes are what make us rather than define us. It’s true that our problems and pain can give us a sense of identity, and I think for a while when I was in my thirties, I didn’t quite know how to carve out another, or how that would look.

I learned, though, that letting go of recriminations is the first step and it requires intention and purpose – you don’t just wake up one morning to discover the meaning behind your mistakes. We do this by accepting them, absolving ourselves of them and moving on.

As Brené Brown said, “When we deny the story it defines us. When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending.” If, as Brené also says, “The most powerful teaching moments are the ones where you screw up” then I’m a PhD graduate several times over.

I wish I could say that I’ve let go of the anxiety I’ve always been dogged by, but that would require more than a transition into middle-age, it would necessitate a personality transplant. Having said that, midlife has put manners on my worries. Perspective has taken the sharp edges off panic. I used to feel alarmed at anything from letters in brown envelopes with windows (that has subsided significantly) and office “away days” (I’ll always slightly dread them but I can deal if I have to) to driving anywhere I haven’t been before that’s not on the N11 (I’m a work in progress on this one). Having spent most of my adult life fearing the worst possible outcome, the one-in-a-million chance occurrence, I’m beginning to accept that the doomsday scenario is probably not going to hit, and anything else I can probably deal with.

I remember reading an article in The Observer several years ago in which the writer recalled her father, who had back trouble, stopping mid-car journey outside a 7-11 where there was a flat walkway, so that he could lie down on the ground and stretch out his back. As a child, the writer was mortified, but as an adult, she used this memory as a benchmark for her own behaviour, preferring to do what was best for her rather than worrying about what other people thought. Of course, it took her until midlife, after she’d made many bad choices and unnecessary compromises, to be able to embrace this philosophy and let go of the fear of other people’s opinions and judgement.

In my twenties, I had a very black and white view of life. There was right and wrong, good and bad. With that came a lot of judgements which I now marvel at the naiveté of. Being judgemental simply reflects a lack of life experience, and it’s one character trait I’m blessed to say I’ve let go of. The words “Walk a mile in my shoes...see what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel...Then maybe you’ll understand why I do what I do...till then don’t judge me” have a resonance in midlife that’s wonderfully grounding.

With the emotional clear out of midlife comes a few tangible ones too. The most important one for me has been moving my skinny jeans to the back of the wardrobe. How I look in a pair no longer defines my level of self-esteem – how did this become the benchmark of my self-regard anyway? In the same way that I’ve stopped collecting “trophies”, I’ve stopped using skinny jeans as a barometer of my “success” as a woman. This has subsequently allowed more room in my life for cake. Unlike Gwyneth’s naked birthday post, mine last month was of a great big coconut cream birthday cake. Now that I’m in midlife I understand that I don’t need to feel shamed by the movie star’s fabulous body, because I have my own; plus I have cake.

Marie Kelly, October 2020.

What are your thoughts dear reader? The comments are open for you below…