Lately I’ve been lost in podcast land. And not lost deep inside the depths of some riveting, highly engaging and world affirming comfort – but more of a deep dive with a why the fuck can’t I find myself here?
I sit firmly on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y. It means I hold myself in the land of social awareness but with enough self absorbed ego that I need to see at least aspects of myself represented in the characters I consume. In an exercise of pure ego, I wanted to take a break from the hard hitting amazingness of the Trojan Horse Affair and the rhtymic tones of Once Upon a Crime, and find myself in a friendly chat of interesting people who, as self absorbed as it is, are a bit like me.
My search criteria was pretty loose. I wanted a conversational podcast that made me laugh and was centred around late 30s, early 40s women who were at the same stage of life as me. Well, not just me, my friends and me. I wanted something that hit the woman of 40 debrief that discussed raising young families, different kinds of families, the precipice I’m staring at as my body begins to fail me and I’m starting to realise it’s not ‘an accident’, how my once socially, political activist brain is adjusting to not being able to participate like it used to, extraordinary women I may meet on the street doing amazing things while also living in the pit of early parenthood and the roller coaster of navigating adult female friendships.
I understand that it’s a lot to ask for, I totally get that, but what I found didn’t seem to sit quite right. The women in their 40s laying down podcasts had a very specific vibe. These women described their partners, their teenage or adult children and spent most of their sessions talking about how to manage their ‘me’ time and what it was like to find purpose outside of their families and ways they could or world find themselves now that there was time.
The truth is – I was a bit jealous. I am in my 40s and I am not in that stage of my life. My friends are in their 40s and they aren’t in that stage of their lives either. What is emerging in the 2020s is that the women I know in their 40s, have young kids. We are ageing older women who had babies and families in our late 30s and early 40s and we have not given up on our brains. We have travelled the world, been married and divorced, managed infertility, glass ceilings and careers.
My friends are either trying to make a baby or have got a new one. They are running non-profit organisations. They are making career changes. They are studying. They are running side hustles. They are managing a house. And they doing it all at the same time. But in this version of 40, these women refuse to stop moving. They are tired but they are not stopping.
In a world where we are reminded at least every fifteen minutes that we need to be kind to ourselves, that we need to take a moment and enjoy motherhood, it only adds to the guilt of ‘everything.’ The whole time we are worried that our long held place in society has been swallowed by the next generation of women who are as scared of being as replaceable as we think we are.
The myth they sold us as adolescents was that we can do anything. I had a purple sticker on my diary in high school that said ‘girls can do anything,’ and as I get older, it’s becoming more and more obvious it was in fact a bit of a lie. 90s propaganda that tried to swing the dick slinging 80s back a little bit this way has failed us. We can do anything, (almost) but the way my adolescent brain interpreted that piece of purple plastic, was that I could do everything.
These women in their 40s are absolutely trying to do everything. We wanted an education, a slut phase through Europe on a bus, a career that wasn’t impacted by our current romantic partner, a creative endeavour and enough money to buy the shoes we wanted. We’ve had two decades of a life before we’ve started parenthood and this adjustment to the life we no longer have is a bit fucking hard.
We also come from the old school of social media. Facebook was not a thing in our adolescence and we are really fucking happy about that. But in response, we use our feeds like your grandma’s photo albums. They are not filled with self accepting truths of pain, growth and finding ourselves. They are filled with smiling photos of our kids, dinners and people with a drink in their hands. Our grids are curated to remind of us of the moments of joy in our lives – not the journey of our growth as individuals.
The problem with that is we think our friends ARE doing everything and are VERY fucking happy and doing it all in fancy shoes. We forget that our own feeds are curated, just like theirs. So the honesty in our female friendships is only revealed drunk, on a couch, in a once yearly mum’s gone wild girls’ weekend.
It’s on these couches we reveal the challenges of divorce, ageing bodies, perpetual exhaustion, passed over promotions, feelings of rejection, uselessness and the admission that sometimes we feel like we can’t do anything.
What I want on my drive to work is to find these women. These women who work so hard to convince themselves that the path they have chosen is the right one even if it is fucking hard and sometimes you wet yourself when you’re on the trampoline with your toddler.
I am 41. I have a toddler. I have a side hustle. I am studying. I am working. And I go to swimming lessons on a Friday. I worry about incontinence. I worry about affording the fancy new flat shoes I’ve just bought. I worry about keeping my infant child safe from the shit storm of a world that brings year 9 girls into my classroom.
So on my way to work post day care drop off, I want a story about a woman who has tried to do it all and is still moving – even if it’s slowly. I want a story about a woman who was confused for a grandma at daycare drop off, I want a story about a woman who decided to say fuck it and threw in her entire career at 43 and started a crochet business and has survived. I want a story about a woman who had that operation that sews her pelvic floor back together. I want a story about a woman who has decided at 44 that a polyamorous relationship is what’s going to work for her. I want a story about women who love their friends more than their husbands. I want a story of a woman who has tried. Not a famous one. Not one with a famous husband. But a woman in her 40s who bought a caravan and told the world to go fuck itself. Has anyone seen a podcast like that?
life in big frilly knickers 