I don't know where I am in this scheme, but I know that when my mom died six years ago was the same time it became abundantly clear that my then 12 year-old son wasn't going to have a conventional life path. It was really traumatic and hard and scary, but one thing I did was I started sewing, because I saw my mom sitting in a nursing home watching SVU over and over and I thought, I'm gonna need something to do if I ever get to that point.
I was...48? And I became a weepy, sweaty, sometimes shouty (occasionally screamy) advocate for my son, and for people getting as nerdy as they want to be. I am not the same woman I was before that spring. I've been in and out of a couple of non-profit jobs since then and have finally accepted that I too, don't need a regularly-shaped life path. So now I'm feeding two blogs, making stuff with some little fiber gangs, and doing the marketing work I used to do, but in smaller settings for people doing things I believe in, at a pace I can stand. I didn't always go willingly and I tried a few times to bail, but this is right for me. I feel more connected to the fun, weird kid I used to be, and there's a nice steady dose of beauty and inspiration in my life now. It's also still scary as all hell, but every day that old shoreline recedes a little more. I wish us all luck. It's fun out here.
"doing the marketing work I used to do, but in smaller settings for people doing things I believe in, at a pace I can stand" -- this is very much where I am in my own Portal (I'm 41). I don't necessarily want to abandon everything I built in my career, but I want to do it more on my terms.
For the past few months I tried to ignore that I was in the Portal and tried to continue my career as "normal"...and I found that I just couldn't anymore. There were definitely structural reasons why this recent job wasn't a good fit for me, but a big part of the reasons why was because I had changed so much and I couldn't deny what I needed anymore. And I'm in a place in my life where I realized I didn't HAVE to deny it.
Also this connection to the fun, weird kid you used to be--felt that one in my bones. The older I get, it's not just that I feel like I become more myself, but I feel like I'm returning to the freer self that I was before the burden of external expectations became internalized.
There are so many hints I didn’t take! I used to work for my dad in his tiny embossing/engraving business and I loved it. But there was always this sense I had to find “a real job.” (See also: The nagging regret of selling my dad’s letterpress machines and all that hundred year old type after he died.)
And I did fine in those jobs, and built some great friendships and a lot of respect from people, but there was always that sense that I didn’t understand how to function in those hierarchies. I found it terrifying. This new collage effect I’m making of my work is also terrifying, but in a more manageable way for me.
Just wanted to say I really liked this sampling plate newsletter format. It was really interesting to gather takes from several different life experiences and expertises :)
My portal began at 35, when I was finally able to admit to others to having been sexually assaulted, and to grapple with what that meant. It had shaped everything about my life, and yet I had kept it compartmentalized, tucked away at the back of my head as if it wasn't relevant to who I was. At 35 the compartment exploded. I was diagnosed with PTSD, I had to draw a whole new set of boundaries, I had to figure out who I was when *not* ignoring this with all my might and main. It was a time of real relief but also deep mental anguish. It got very, very ugly and "sweaty," as you said above.
At the same time I was working toward tenure, and after tenure I hit the absolutely bottom. Then came the work of climbing out of the pit. And my post-tenure career has been nothing short of astonishing to me - I found a whole new focus, a whole new purpose, and back in the early days of the portal I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that I'd be writing about compassion now, and teaching, and consulting on both. I feel like this year the portal closed - not with a sharp snap but with a kind shoo-ing, a "you know what to do" encouragement that's built on a hundred different expressions of support from friends, and a quieting in myself, a peace, a stilllness that is hard earned.
Mine started when I was 37, but I'm 51 and I'm not sure it's over yet. Or maybe that's just a symptom of the fallacious idea that we'll ever be "done" with anything? Anyway, at 37, I knew that I was planning to leave my day job and pursue my dreams when I turned forty. I'd spent my 30's having babies and supporting my husband in pursuing his dreams, and by forty I was going to have everyone in school full-time, the husband would (hopefully) be settled, and it would be my turn to take some risks. So, I enrolled in astrology school. One, because I love astrology and talking deeply to people and I thought maybe I would start a private practice. But two, I was increasingly aware of work that other people were doing that seemed to speak to the zeitgeist in a way that caused them to explode (at the time, Eat, Pray, Love felt like a good example of that-- a book I didn't really enjoy, honestly, but it definitely struck a chord with people). Since astrology is really a clock of the thematic patterns in the world I figured learning more deeply would help me chose my direction in a way that would allow me to meet the moment, so to speak.
And then, 6 months after I reached forty and quit my full-time job to homestead and write a book and see private clients my husband announced he'd started dating someone, wanted a divorce, and moved the direct deposit of his paycheck to a private account, leaving me with $300 five days before Christmas. My dreams of taking my turn burned to a crisp in an instant. I moved out of the farmhouse I thought I would die in into a duplex with another single mom and her two kids and was living on child support, food stamps, and borrowed money from my parents. Everything I thought my future would look like, everything I'd worked so hard and willfully at to redeem myself and my shitty childhood was gone. I felt like I'd fallen off the edge of the world. I felt like death.
It would take a whole book to describe the years since then, so many major moments of transformation spiraling around each other. The bitter divorce finalized. My dad died. I confronted my childhood abuser. I bought my own house. I started writing professionally. My mom and I struggled and came back together and struggled and came back together. I was a friend's husband's polyamorous side piece for a couple of years. I moved in with a guy with two kids who I loved like my own and we all entered into the pandemic together, but a year in he revealed he'd been pursuing online relationships with other women for years, had found his "soulmate", and had to be with her. I took a "proper" day job and it was a disaster, making the pandemic a weird sort of blessing. My oldest kid came out as trans, started HRT and had top-surgery. I spent 18 months collecting unemployment and reclaiming my brain. My abusive brother died. I started a newsletter. I started a new relationship with a man I adored, but had to end it after 18 months because he was an alcoholic and I could feel how I would lose myself. I battled depression and problem drinking and embarked on a healing journey with ayahuasca. I unwound all the narratives about being sexually broken and found I loved sex. A lot. I sat with myself and witnessed my own self-sabotage and struggles and began to take some real ownership of my life.
Still don't know what the fuck I'm doing half the time. I'm still just making it up as I go along. Am I through the portal? I have no idea. I am a totally different version of myself than I would have imagined at 37. I inhabit my own skin now in a way that I wouldn't have thought possible. I am all the me's I was and more me than I was capable of before this began, which helps me love myself and other people better. My life and self feel like they belong to me. I am sometimes lonely and despair that the world isn't built for women like me, and I accept that I can only be the one I am. I've worked too hard to be anything else.
Your experience sounds incredibly tumultuous and destabilizing--that must have been so hard. I know you didn't choose the changes that were thrust upon you, but I admire how you continued to seek the next right thing and make choices to facilitate your freedom, even as the changes kept (and keep) coming. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for naming this phase. After eleven years of working really hard and being very diplomatic and circumspect in my career, I've been promoted to the highest rank. I'm happy to have arrived here and it's a relief but mostly it's liberating in the sense that I just don't give a f#@*anymore about things I used to worry about. I'm becoming more unfiltered and honest with colleagues. I have no patience for bureaucracy. I'm focused on the most meaningful aspects of the work. One of my colleagues recently suggested taking on a big project and my reaction was "Meh. I would rather try to make time for yoga (so my neck doesn't hurt every day) and gardening and cooking." It's so liberating not to care as much and in spite of my success, I do regret all the time I spent caring (and yes, carrying, thanks autocorrect for that apt suggestion) too much.
I am there now. Not promoted to the highest rank but finally in my supposed dream career path… and I hate it. I took a leave of absence and filled it with yoga and walks and beginner art supplies and that’s what I want to be at the center now. I’ll work to pay my bills but I won’t care and carry as much.
I’m right there with you. The announcement of my promotion to a C-level role goes out tomorrow, and I care far less than I ever have. I’m squarely in the portal too, and feel I owe it to myself to experience the culmination of this career path, but am also wholeheartedly questioning what next.
I have always felt the world was divided into two sets of people: those who know life can change in an instant, and those who don’t. It happened to be twice in my earlier life: my father died when I was 14, and I had a surgical menopause at 32. I feel a kinship with people who have suffered similar losses, and sympathy for those who have yet to experience true loss. I don’t wish it on anyone, but these experiences do help you realize that time is finite.
I had unexpected surgical menopause at 33. This happened mere weeks ago so I’m very much still processing it but it’s…a lot. I really appreciate hearing about others who’ve been through it even though like you said, I wouldn’t wish such sudden trauma on anyone. It’s bringing up a lot of YOLO feelings and I’m curious to see how that will manifest in the near future.
Oh, my dear, I’m sorry. Be kind to yourself. The first thing to do is heal up. I was off my feet for about five weeks. There will be time for big thoughts later on.
Hi Kelley, I had to undergo early menopause and an eventual ovary removal due to cancer. It was a huge slap in the face of what I expected (kids) and thought I wanted. Five years later, I’m happy with what I do have. It’s a bit of a different calculus--pregnancy would likely have killed me, so it wasn’t as hard of a trade to swallow--but it turns out that we live a life where I’m able to travel a lot, not worry much about disability-related fatigue when it happens, and relax a lot more than I would have otherwise. You maybe eventually decide to have kids another way, or maybe kids were never for you, but you’ll find a way through this. And supposedly the hot flashes will eventually wear off. Running my wrists under cold water helps.
Same, except mine was planned. It was intended to lower my chances of breast cancer, but I ended up getting that anyway - twice. Now is the time to TREAT YO SELF. If there's a trip or a big ticket item you've been wanting for a while go ahead and get that shiny reward. Hysterectomy? Violetta Bicycletta, a Trek Hybrid. Cancer 1? Swimming with Otters at Nurtured by Nature animal sanctuary in SoCal. I have yet to do it for Cancer 2, but I will get to it. You have survived a tremendous ordeal. I'm proud of you!!! Be proud of yourself! Wishing you a speedy recovery, and health care providers with grace to see you as a whole person, not just symptoms on a chart. Rooting for you!!
Lovely, necessary read for me right now. Thank you.
It made me reflect on how common it is for women whose autism diagnosis was missed in childhood to be diagnosed in their late 30s or early 40s. Autistic women are often quite “good” (read: it’s miserable to do) at obscuring their actual experience of the world to perform the normal, expected thing. Perhaps something about being at that age makes them let go, get curious, and get tired of putting the expected foot forward.
Katherine May’s The Electricity of Every Living Thing is a remarkable document of this experience.
My kiddo was diagnosed with ADHD and then ASD during/right after the pandemic. The doctors gently inquired about our background because I was 'so in tune' with his struggles and has supported him so well at home. At which point it hit me like a load of bricks that I share his diagnosis and so of course our house is neurodivergent friendly. Guiding both of us through the transition has been healing but also so challenging.
I was just diagnosed last week, at nearly 50! I thought I'd already gone through the portal (dumping my partner, starting a career as an author, etc.), but I guess there's another one now, lol. So much to work through.
That line also hit me like a ton of bricks. I spent the pandemic providing childcare for my best friend after her first kid was born literally a week before lockdown. What was supposed to be a year turned into nearly three. I don't regret it and I accomplished what I set out to accomplish - getting him vaccinated before putting him into daycare - but "half gratitude and half boredom" sums up my experience perfectly.
Wowowow, wreck me before 7am, Ann! This is so resonant for me. Your mothers reframe has reverberated down to me too, also giving me the language to describe my current state. I decided to apply for a masters in positive organizational psychology at eight months pregnant with my second child, after 15 years as a copywriter/content person. I saw the program and felt called to do it, and I didn’t want to waste another day not pursuing the thing I was meant to do. I had more to give. I was 36. Everyone is like baffled that I would pursue a masters (and likely a PhD) while my children are so small and I’m working but like ... the force is with me. I cannot be stopped!
I love the framing "the force is with me. I cannot be stopped" because I'm experiencing a period of extreme productivity and I'm a 41 year old lawyer with a toddler and a pretty consuming side gig as treasurer of a large nonprofit. And it feels overwhelming, but it feels necessary, it feels like I'm on fire inside so I must do all the things.
I’ve just walked into the portal. I’m painting like crazy. Angry and not putting up with shit anymore. I miss my maiden body but don’t want to inject myself with poison to hold onto her. This hit me in my core.
The body stuff is so interesting. I’m 48 and in perimenopause (on hormone therapy for 4 years) and in the past 10 months I gained 15 pounds, most of it in the first 4 months. I’m not hugely bothered by it but it’s weird and different. I’ve recently decided I want to get more core strength exercises in my life - not for weight but for tone and well, strength - but I really don’t care what number I see on the scale. The sudden shift in my body hasn’t happened before (outside of something like pregnancy).
I am 51 and realizing I need more stretching and weight bearing exercise so I can handle aging and illness in later life. Mobility is everything in your 60s and beyond.
Holy smokes, this piece is so wonderful and hopeful. I loved reading about all these different women and their various experiences. I think I've just recently been catapulted into the portal. I'll be 42 in a month but have lived through some dramatic life-changing events in the past couple of years:
1) Finally having a baby at the age of 40
2) My father and step-mother ill and consistently on the doorstep of death's door and having to take complete control of their health care directives, finances, and well, overall estate
3) My husband lost his job in May and still hasn't found a new position
4) A miscarriage just over a month ago that was dramatic and painful
It was the miscarriage that did it. I haven't felt control over anything for several years and so, when I finally felt better, I committed to getting up every morning to write. I got my MFA over a decade ago and landed a teaching job; I've been hiding behind being "too busy" for years but really I've mostly just been distracting myself with other things. I can't consume right now because of very limited finances but I can create and that gives me an immense amount of joy in the midst of this extraordinarily difficult season.
“I can't consume right now because of very limited finances but I can create and that gives me an immense amount of joy in the midst of this extraordinarily difficult season.” - this was so well said. I’m experiencing the same at the moment. I hold on to my writing as a lifeboat. It carries we well ❤️
I aspire to the portal. I hope there’s a portal coming. But I think I reset my portal clock by having another baby, and thus am very much currently in a different thing (what is the opposite of a portal?). But there’s something to be said for being comfortably out of the grind, the forced ambition and striving, capitalistic nightmare of the pre-kids, pre-pandemic, pre-… whatever we’re calling the current state of the world. Now I can do my work, get paid, and not have it become my whole life. I think being in that place will allow for a portal as soon as the baby can dress himself (a weirdly freeing milestone).
The opposite of the Portal is Camel Mode. I've been catapulted from one to the other this year and it's been a joy. Hang in there, a few more years and you can start emerging
Oh, wow. That was.... a hard but necessary read (as my 7-year old still says, it left me saying "no I amn't!"). Maybe it's whiplash that I'm currently feeling - I was emerging from camel mode and now I'm back in it and am wondering if it's going to last another 5 years. Good on you for being out and thanks for pointing me to this one!
THIS. I just returned from a gathering of people who had all experienced some form of pregnancy loss, and it was very much a Portal convention. I write about initiations generally, and I think you’ve nailed so many aspects of what I’m noticing in my own interviews: that this moment of initiation is a time when meaning-making and creative energy intensifies at the same time as one’s “Disney princess filter” on the world and the pressure to perform for an external gaze is falling away. It comes when the notion of earning a “happily ever after” via checking the expected boxes becomes either inaccessible (as in pregnancy loss) or unappealing (in the form of pursuing more family-building efforts that may further traumatize and/or end in a similar loss).
There’s that feeling of, well, if I’m not going to birth a biological family in the way I envisioned… what AM I gonna do? And there’s so much flourishing to be found on the other side of answering what is initially an understandably anguish-filled question. ❤️🩹
Yes, I just experienced a miscarriage last month and it definitely pushed me into the portal. It really is a way for me to feel control over some aspect of my life--I can't control what my body does but I can (right now) control what my brain does. <3
</3 I wish it were different for both of us. And, I’m grateful that in this moment, we are coming to the Portal during an era in which this meaning-making can happen in community and not in isolation.
Oh wow, YES. Absolutely this. If I wasn't in "the portal" when I was 37, post-stillbirth, I sure was at 40, when we finally closed the door on fertility treatments and the possibility of future parenthood. (I'm 62 now, and wondering whether I've ever really emerged?? lol -- but that's another (long!) story...!) I just was in a Zoom conversation this morning with a group of other childless women, most of whom had had pregnancy losses and came to the realization they would remain childless, in their early 40s.
I think it takes some of us a while to find our feet again, let along experience that creative surge that AHP writes about here.
Yeah, I think the portal comes at different ages and feels different. My perimenopause started about 44 and was hell. Then, full meno at 50 just in time for the COVID lockdown. My experience of that portal was dark and tight like a cave tunnel or birth canal. No sense of creative energy. That’s only just now coming back at 54. I love that younger women are talking about this but only caution that there may be more portals to come.
One of the things I hated about approaching menopause was that no one older talked about it! I only knew about hot flashes, as a kind of joke.
There should be a manual that women can check at different ages that explains what this new fresh hell our body is giving us is, and whether it's normal, and whether there's anything that can be done about it.
Ha, I can recommend a book that is actually titled "What Fresh Hell Is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, And You" (by Heather Corinna) that approaches the whole thing fairly comprehensively, with a lot of humour and compassion, and with a progressive and inclusive lens. It's as close to a manual as anything, and it's made me feel a lot less insane about some of my own early forays into perimenopause-land.
1000% this. I am becoming *that* woman by sharing my peri/menopausal symptoms with younger women. I told my 32 yo cousin I would be her menopause guide because her mom had a surgical one in her 40s. And she welcomed the sharing. I don’t want younger women to have to figure it out on their own. It’s crazy-making.
I love this. An older friend took me out to coffee and told me her perimenopause story when I was 35 and I was a bit blindsided but also super grateful (and more grateful every year...). Now I want to hear more people's stories!
Yes to the manual. I knew nothing about the changes my body would experience at puberty and nothing about the lasting impacts of pregnancy, breast feeding, perimenopause, and menopause. Plus, the options are different if one has a history of familial breast cancer.
I might suggest talking to a few doctors who specialize in menopause. Even breast cancer survivors with estrogen-positive cancer can often do some forms of hormone therapy. I actually chose a double mastectomy after a DCIS diagnosis so I could stay on hormone therapy without changing up my protocol - zero regrets.
My last period was when I was 58 (!). And when I finally realized, a year later, that I was done, it was in the early months of covid and everything was shut down. I'd always planned to go on a shopping spree for new underwear and get rid of the ratty old panties I only wore when I was menstruating. That plan went out the window (online shopping didn't hold the same appeal), but I did get my husband to take a commemorative photo as I gleefully deposited my stained old undies into the garbage bin. :) Hang in there!
Very much a portal dweller, and I have had the same intuition and conversations with women around me. My own Jungian friend Martha explained to me as this shift between a first experience of becoming where you’re wired to achieve, do, make choices, family, checking boxes, and midlife (portal!) where you turn start looking at what did I leave behind along the way? What choices feel like maybe I should revisit? What was the unlived life and do I want it after all? We’ve called it a blooming too. I’ve been saying that “middle age is my second and most relevant coming of age.” As per usual it’s irritating nobody tells you that it’s powerful and beautiful and not at all a decline!
Yep, I'm definitely in the portal, thank you for this. I'll be 44 in a few days and I'd say it started around 40. While I've never been very interested in climbing the ladder at work and don't necessarily define myself by my job, I have been at the same corporate employer for most of my working life, and my income has steadily increased and I even have a pension. So the golden handcuffs are very real, especially since I'm the main earner in my household, and the main worrier and planner too (I'm sure some of you can relate, lol). The last few years I've really been craving a mini-retirement/sabbatical to get more involved in my kid's school and community, have more time for hobbies/fitness, spend more time with my parents, go back to school, find a new career, etc. But I'm having a hard time making the leap and giving my notice, even though I'm in a good financial situation and my husband fully supports it. I'm getting closer, though, and it's nice to know other women my age are struggling with the same types of questions. Good luck to us all working our way through this time of life.
Not yet! My initial thought was to wrap up a few projects at work then give notice in the spring. But a re-org was announced around the same time I posted this which will go into effect by this summer, and I think it could benefit me if one of two things happens: (a) I'm let go and given a generous severance due to my years of service (I know not everyone would welcome that news, but that would be ideal for me right now!) or (b) I'm assigned a new US-based manager (current manager is in Europe) who will work with me to create a better situation. I'm not-so-patiently waiting to see how things shake out. If I'm stuck with the same manager after the re-org, then I'll start making plans to leave. What about you? Are you looking at options to get out of your current work situation?
I don't know where I am in this scheme, but I know that when my mom died six years ago was the same time it became abundantly clear that my then 12 year-old son wasn't going to have a conventional life path. It was really traumatic and hard and scary, but one thing I did was I started sewing, because I saw my mom sitting in a nursing home watching SVU over and over and I thought, I'm gonna need something to do if I ever get to that point.
I was...48? And I became a weepy, sweaty, sometimes shouty (occasionally screamy) advocate for my son, and for people getting as nerdy as they want to be. I am not the same woman I was before that spring. I've been in and out of a couple of non-profit jobs since then and have finally accepted that I too, don't need a regularly-shaped life path. So now I'm feeding two blogs, making stuff with some little fiber gangs, and doing the marketing work I used to do, but in smaller settings for people doing things I believe in, at a pace I can stand. I didn't always go willingly and I tried a few times to bail, but this is right for me. I feel more connected to the fun, weird kid I used to be, and there's a nice steady dose of beauty and inspiration in my life now. It's also still scary as all hell, but every day that old shoreline recedes a little more. I wish us all luck. It's fun out here.
"doing the marketing work I used to do, but in smaller settings for people doing things I believe in, at a pace I can stand" -- this is very much where I am in my own Portal (I'm 41). I don't necessarily want to abandon everything I built in my career, but I want to do it more on my terms.
For the past few months I tried to ignore that I was in the Portal and tried to continue my career as "normal"...and I found that I just couldn't anymore. There were definitely structural reasons why this recent job wasn't a good fit for me, but a big part of the reasons why was because I had changed so much and I couldn't deny what I needed anymore. And I'm in a place in my life where I realized I didn't HAVE to deny it.
Also this connection to the fun, weird kid you used to be--felt that one in my bones. The older I get, it's not just that I feel like I become more myself, but I feel like I'm returning to the freer self that I was before the burden of external expectations became internalized.
There are so many hints I didn’t take! I used to work for my dad in his tiny embossing/engraving business and I loved it. But there was always this sense I had to find “a real job.” (See also: The nagging regret of selling my dad’s letterpress machines and all that hundred year old type after he died.)
And I did fine in those jobs, and built some great friendships and a lot of respect from people, but there was always that sense that I didn’t understand how to function in those hierarchies. I found it terrifying. This new collage effect I’m making of my work is also terrifying, but in a more manageable way for me.
Thank you, Hope. That's exactly what I needed to hear today <3
Glad it helped.🙂
Just wanted to say I really liked this sampling plate newsletter format. It was really interesting to gather takes from several different life experiences and expertises :)
My portal began at 35, when I was finally able to admit to others to having been sexually assaulted, and to grapple with what that meant. It had shaped everything about my life, and yet I had kept it compartmentalized, tucked away at the back of my head as if it wasn't relevant to who I was. At 35 the compartment exploded. I was diagnosed with PTSD, I had to draw a whole new set of boundaries, I had to figure out who I was when *not* ignoring this with all my might and main. It was a time of real relief but also deep mental anguish. It got very, very ugly and "sweaty," as you said above.
At the same time I was working toward tenure, and after tenure I hit the absolutely bottom. Then came the work of climbing out of the pit. And my post-tenure career has been nothing short of astonishing to me - I found a whole new focus, a whole new purpose, and back in the early days of the portal I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that I'd be writing about compassion now, and teaching, and consulting on both. I feel like this year the portal closed - not with a sharp snap but with a kind shoo-ing, a "you know what to do" encouragement that's built on a hundred different expressions of support from friends, and a quieting in myself, a peace, a stilllness that is hard earned.
fellow survivor here, just celebrating with you ❤️
Mine started when I was 37, but I'm 51 and I'm not sure it's over yet. Or maybe that's just a symptom of the fallacious idea that we'll ever be "done" with anything? Anyway, at 37, I knew that I was planning to leave my day job and pursue my dreams when I turned forty. I'd spent my 30's having babies and supporting my husband in pursuing his dreams, and by forty I was going to have everyone in school full-time, the husband would (hopefully) be settled, and it would be my turn to take some risks. So, I enrolled in astrology school. One, because I love astrology and talking deeply to people and I thought maybe I would start a private practice. But two, I was increasingly aware of work that other people were doing that seemed to speak to the zeitgeist in a way that caused them to explode (at the time, Eat, Pray, Love felt like a good example of that-- a book I didn't really enjoy, honestly, but it definitely struck a chord with people). Since astrology is really a clock of the thematic patterns in the world I figured learning more deeply would help me chose my direction in a way that would allow me to meet the moment, so to speak.
And then, 6 months after I reached forty and quit my full-time job to homestead and write a book and see private clients my husband announced he'd started dating someone, wanted a divorce, and moved the direct deposit of his paycheck to a private account, leaving me with $300 five days before Christmas. My dreams of taking my turn burned to a crisp in an instant. I moved out of the farmhouse I thought I would die in into a duplex with another single mom and her two kids and was living on child support, food stamps, and borrowed money from my parents. Everything I thought my future would look like, everything I'd worked so hard and willfully at to redeem myself and my shitty childhood was gone. I felt like I'd fallen off the edge of the world. I felt like death.
It would take a whole book to describe the years since then, so many major moments of transformation spiraling around each other. The bitter divorce finalized. My dad died. I confronted my childhood abuser. I bought my own house. I started writing professionally. My mom and I struggled and came back together and struggled and came back together. I was a friend's husband's polyamorous side piece for a couple of years. I moved in with a guy with two kids who I loved like my own and we all entered into the pandemic together, but a year in he revealed he'd been pursuing online relationships with other women for years, had found his "soulmate", and had to be with her. I took a "proper" day job and it was a disaster, making the pandemic a weird sort of blessing. My oldest kid came out as trans, started HRT and had top-surgery. I spent 18 months collecting unemployment and reclaiming my brain. My abusive brother died. I started a newsletter. I started a new relationship with a man I adored, but had to end it after 18 months because he was an alcoholic and I could feel how I would lose myself. I battled depression and problem drinking and embarked on a healing journey with ayahuasca. I unwound all the narratives about being sexually broken and found I loved sex. A lot. I sat with myself and witnessed my own self-sabotage and struggles and began to take some real ownership of my life.
Still don't know what the fuck I'm doing half the time. I'm still just making it up as I go along. Am I through the portal? I have no idea. I am a totally different version of myself than I would have imagined at 37. I inhabit my own skin now in a way that I wouldn't have thought possible. I am all the me's I was and more me than I was capable of before this began, which helps me love myself and other people better. My life and self feel like they belong to me. I am sometimes lonely and despair that the world isn't built for women like me, and I accept that I can only be the one I am. I've worked too hard to be anything else.
Just slow clapping here for the courage to sit with yourself and owning your life back
There are likely portals and again more. That’s how it was for me. I don’t know that they can be easily categorized by a year.
Thank you for sharing all of your experiences here 💗
Your experience sounds incredibly tumultuous and destabilizing--that must have been so hard. I know you didn't choose the changes that were thrust upon you, but I admire how you continued to seek the next right thing and make choices to facilitate your freedom, even as the changes kept (and keep) coming. Thank you for sharing.
Wow that’s a lot!
This is everything. I see you and I celebrate you.
Thank you for naming this phase. After eleven years of working really hard and being very diplomatic and circumspect in my career, I've been promoted to the highest rank. I'm happy to have arrived here and it's a relief but mostly it's liberating in the sense that I just don't give a f#@*anymore about things I used to worry about. I'm becoming more unfiltered and honest with colleagues. I have no patience for bureaucracy. I'm focused on the most meaningful aspects of the work. One of my colleagues recently suggested taking on a big project and my reaction was "Meh. I would rather try to make time for yoga (so my neck doesn't hurt every day) and gardening and cooking." It's so liberating not to care as much and in spite of my success, I do regret all the time I spent caring (and yes, carrying, thanks autocorrect for that apt suggestion) too much.
I am there now. Not promoted to the highest rank but finally in my supposed dream career path… and I hate it. I took a leave of absence and filled it with yoga and walks and beginner art supplies and that’s what I want to be at the center now. I’ll work to pay my bills but I won’t care and carry as much.
I’m right there with you. The announcement of my promotion to a C-level role goes out tomorrow, and I care far less than I ever have. I’m squarely in the portal too, and feel I owe it to myself to experience the culmination of this career path, but am also wholeheartedly questioning what next.
Congratulations, you earned it. Maybe you can use it to create a kinder workplace. They definitely need people whose lives are not grind-focused.
Well said!
I have always felt the world was divided into two sets of people: those who know life can change in an instant, and those who don’t. It happened to be twice in my earlier life: my father died when I was 14, and I had a surgical menopause at 32. I feel a kinship with people who have suffered similar losses, and sympathy for those who have yet to experience true loss. I don’t wish it on anyone, but these experiences do help you realize that time is finite.
I had unexpected surgical menopause at 33. This happened mere weeks ago so I’m very much still processing it but it’s…a lot. I really appreciate hearing about others who’ve been through it even though like you said, I wouldn’t wish such sudden trauma on anyone. It’s bringing up a lot of YOLO feelings and I’m curious to see how that will manifest in the near future.
Oh, my dear, I’m sorry. Be kind to yourself. The first thing to do is heal up. I was off my feet for about five weeks. There will be time for big thoughts later on.
Thank you ❤️❤️
Hi Kelley, I had to undergo early menopause and an eventual ovary removal due to cancer. It was a huge slap in the face of what I expected (kids) and thought I wanted. Five years later, I’m happy with what I do have. It’s a bit of a different calculus--pregnancy would likely have killed me, so it wasn’t as hard of a trade to swallow--but it turns out that we live a life where I’m able to travel a lot, not worry much about disability-related fatigue when it happens, and relax a lot more than I would have otherwise. You maybe eventually decide to have kids another way, or maybe kids were never for you, but you’ll find a way through this. And supposedly the hot flashes will eventually wear off. Running my wrists under cold water helps.
Same, except mine was planned. It was intended to lower my chances of breast cancer, but I ended up getting that anyway - twice. Now is the time to TREAT YO SELF. If there's a trip or a big ticket item you've been wanting for a while go ahead and get that shiny reward. Hysterectomy? Violetta Bicycletta, a Trek Hybrid. Cancer 1? Swimming with Otters at Nurtured by Nature animal sanctuary in SoCal. I have yet to do it for Cancer 2, but I will get to it. You have survived a tremendous ordeal. I'm proud of you!!! Be proud of yourself! Wishing you a speedy recovery, and health care providers with grace to see you as a whole person, not just symptoms on a chart. Rooting for you!!
oooh how this resonates! I think it could even be divided into those who know life can change in an instant and those who don't *yet* !
Absolutely.
Lovely, necessary read for me right now. Thank you.
It made me reflect on how common it is for women whose autism diagnosis was missed in childhood to be diagnosed in their late 30s or early 40s. Autistic women are often quite “good” (read: it’s miserable to do) at obscuring their actual experience of the world to perform the normal, expected thing. Perhaps something about being at that age makes them let go, get curious, and get tired of putting the expected foot forward.
Katherine May’s The Electricity of Every Living Thing is a remarkable document of this experience.
My kiddo was diagnosed with ADHD and then ASD during/right after the pandemic. The doctors gently inquired about our background because I was 'so in tune' with his struggles and has supported him so well at home. At which point it hit me like a load of bricks that I share his diagnosis and so of course our house is neurodivergent friendly. Guiding both of us through the transition has been healing but also so challenging.
So happy for him that he has you and his family
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 37 and I'm still coming to grips with the amount of masking I have done (and continue to do).
I was just diagnosed last week, at nearly 50! I thought I'd already gone through the portal (dumping my partner, starting a career as an author, etc.), but I guess there's another one now, lol. So much to work through.
Yes! So much this.
Oh my gosh this: "You’re like, wow, I thought I’d get a warm glow. All of this, it’s half boredom, half gratitude.”
Yes! I started working part time to spend more time with my kids and I don't love it. This sentence was really validating.
That line also hit me like a ton of bricks. I spent the pandemic providing childcare for my best friend after her first kid was born literally a week before lockdown. What was supposed to be a year turned into nearly three. I don't regret it and I accomplished what I set out to accomplish - getting him vaccinated before putting him into daycare - but "half gratitude and half boredom" sums up my experience perfectly.
I loved that line SO MUCH.
Yes - I immediately thought - that is exactly how I feel.
Wowowow, wreck me before 7am, Ann! This is so resonant for me. Your mothers reframe has reverberated down to me too, also giving me the language to describe my current state. I decided to apply for a masters in positive organizational psychology at eight months pregnant with my second child, after 15 years as a copywriter/content person. I saw the program and felt called to do it, and I didn’t want to waste another day not pursuing the thing I was meant to do. I had more to give. I was 36. Everyone is like baffled that I would pursue a masters (and likely a PhD) while my children are so small and I’m working but like ... the force is with me. I cannot be stopped!
Also, to your point, I don’t want to be left picking up the pieces of myself after they’ve grown. So why not lean into the chaos while it’s happening.
I love the framing "the force is with me. I cannot be stopped" because I'm experiencing a period of extreme productivity and I'm a 41 year old lawyer with a toddler and a pretty consuming side gig as treasurer of a large nonprofit. And it feels overwhelming, but it feels necessary, it feels like I'm on fire inside so I must do all the things.
I’ve just walked into the portal. I’m painting like crazy. Angry and not putting up with shit anymore. I miss my maiden body but don’t want to inject myself with poison to hold onto her. This hit me in my core.
The body stuff is so interesting. I’m 48 and in perimenopause (on hormone therapy for 4 years) and in the past 10 months I gained 15 pounds, most of it in the first 4 months. I’m not hugely bothered by it but it’s weird and different. I’ve recently decided I want to get more core strength exercises in my life - not for weight but for tone and well, strength - but I really don’t care what number I see on the scale. The sudden shift in my body hasn’t happened before (outside of something like pregnancy).
I am 51 and realizing I need more stretching and weight bearing exercise so I can handle aging and illness in later life. Mobility is everything in your 60s and beyond.
Holy smokes, this piece is so wonderful and hopeful. I loved reading about all these different women and their various experiences. I think I've just recently been catapulted into the portal. I'll be 42 in a month but have lived through some dramatic life-changing events in the past couple of years:
1) Finally having a baby at the age of 40
2) My father and step-mother ill and consistently on the doorstep of death's door and having to take complete control of their health care directives, finances, and well, overall estate
3) My husband lost his job in May and still hasn't found a new position
4) A miscarriage just over a month ago that was dramatic and painful
It was the miscarriage that did it. I haven't felt control over anything for several years and so, when I finally felt better, I committed to getting up every morning to write. I got my MFA over a decade ago and landed a teaching job; I've been hiding behind being "too busy" for years but really I've mostly just been distracting myself with other things. I can't consume right now because of very limited finances but I can create and that gives me an immense amount of joy in the midst of this extraordinarily difficult season.
that sounds like a lot of really hard stuff you are slogging through. sending you some rainbow care bear beams and joy through the internet.
“I can't consume right now because of very limited finances but I can create and that gives me an immense amount of joy in the midst of this extraordinarily difficult season.” - this was so well said. I’m experiencing the same at the moment. I hold on to my writing as a lifeboat. It carries we well ❤️
I aspire to the portal. I hope there’s a portal coming. But I think I reset my portal clock by having another baby, and thus am very much currently in a different thing (what is the opposite of a portal?). But there’s something to be said for being comfortably out of the grind, the forced ambition and striving, capitalistic nightmare of the pre-kids, pre-pandemic, pre-… whatever we’re calling the current state of the world. Now I can do my work, get paid, and not have it become my whole life. I think being in that place will allow for a portal as soon as the baby can dress himself (a weirdly freeing milestone).
The opposite of the Portal is Camel Mode. I've been catapulted from one to the other this year and it's been a joy. Hang in there, a few more years and you can start emerging
https://www.thecut.com/2023/05/is-camel-mode-inevitable-for-parents.html
Oh, wow. That was.... a hard but necessary read (as my 7-year old still says, it left me saying "no I amn't!"). Maybe it's whiplash that I'm currently feeling - I was emerging from camel mode and now I'm back in it and am wondering if it's going to last another 5 years. Good on you for being out and thanks for pointing me to this one!
THIS. I just returned from a gathering of people who had all experienced some form of pregnancy loss, and it was very much a Portal convention. I write about initiations generally, and I think you’ve nailed so many aspects of what I’m noticing in my own interviews: that this moment of initiation is a time when meaning-making and creative energy intensifies at the same time as one’s “Disney princess filter” on the world and the pressure to perform for an external gaze is falling away. It comes when the notion of earning a “happily ever after” via checking the expected boxes becomes either inaccessible (as in pregnancy loss) or unappealing (in the form of pursuing more family-building efforts that may further traumatize and/or end in a similar loss).
There’s that feeling of, well, if I’m not going to birth a biological family in the way I envisioned… what AM I gonna do? And there’s so much flourishing to be found on the other side of answering what is initially an understandably anguish-filled question. ❤️🩹
Yes, I just experienced a miscarriage last month and it definitely pushed me into the portal. It really is a way for me to feel control over some aspect of my life--I can't control what my body does but I can (right now) control what my brain does. <3
</3 I wish it were different for both of us. And, I’m grateful that in this moment, we are coming to the Portal during an era in which this meaning-making can happen in community and not in isolation.
Oh wow, YES. Absolutely this. If I wasn't in "the portal" when I was 37, post-stillbirth, I sure was at 40, when we finally closed the door on fertility treatments and the possibility of future parenthood. (I'm 62 now, and wondering whether I've ever really emerged?? lol -- but that's another (long!) story...!) I just was in a Zoom conversation this morning with a group of other childless women, most of whom had had pregnancy losses and came to the realization they would remain childless, in their early 40s.
I think it takes some of us a while to find our feet again, let along experience that creative surge that AHP writes about here.
I am 56 and still in perimenopause (!!). This portal is not always a short journey.
Yeah, I think the portal comes at different ages and feels different. My perimenopause started about 44 and was hell. Then, full meno at 50 just in time for the COVID lockdown. My experience of that portal was dark and tight like a cave tunnel or birth canal. No sense of creative energy. That’s only just now coming back at 54. I love that younger women are talking about this but only caution that there may be more portals to come.
One of the things I hated about approaching menopause was that no one older talked about it! I only knew about hot flashes, as a kind of joke.
There should be a manual that women can check at different ages that explains what this new fresh hell our body is giving us is, and whether it's normal, and whether there's anything that can be done about it.
Ha, I can recommend a book that is actually titled "What Fresh Hell Is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, And You" (by Heather Corinna) that approaches the whole thing fairly comprehensively, with a lot of humour and compassion, and with a progressive and inclusive lens. It's as close to a manual as anything, and it's made me feel a lot less insane about some of my own early forays into perimenopause-land.
None of my elders aunts etc did. I’m telling lots of people! So many different symptoms!
1000% this. I am becoming *that* woman by sharing my peri/menopausal symptoms with younger women. I told my 32 yo cousin I would be her menopause guide because her mom had a surgical one in her 40s. And she welcomed the sharing. I don’t want younger women to have to figure it out on their own. It’s crazy-making.
I love this. An older friend took me out to coffee and told me her perimenopause story when I was 35 and I was a bit blindsided but also super grateful (and more grateful every year...). Now I want to hear more people's stories!
Yes to the manual. I knew nothing about the changes my body would experience at puberty and nothing about the lasting impacts of pregnancy, breast feeding, perimenopause, and menopause. Plus, the options are different if one has a history of familial breast cancer.
I might suggest talking to a few doctors who specialize in menopause. Even breast cancer survivors with estrogen-positive cancer can often do some forms of hormone therapy. I actually chose a double mastectomy after a DCIS diagnosis so I could stay on hormone therapy without changing up my protocol - zero regrets.
And Marence, I was inspired by Anne Helen's piece and wrote a bit about it on my own Substack.
My last period was when I was 58 (!). And when I finally realized, a year later, that I was done, it was in the early months of covid and everything was shut down. I'd always planned to go on a shopping spree for new underwear and get rid of the ratty old panties I only wore when I was menstruating. That plan went out the window (online shopping didn't hold the same appeal), but I did get my husband to take a commemorative photo as I gleefully deposited my stained old undies into the garbage bin. :) Hang in there!
Very much a portal dweller, and I have had the same intuition and conversations with women around me. My own Jungian friend Martha explained to me as this shift between a first experience of becoming where you’re wired to achieve, do, make choices, family, checking boxes, and midlife (portal!) where you turn start looking at what did I leave behind along the way? What choices feel like maybe I should revisit? What was the unlived life and do I want it after all? We’ve called it a blooming too. I’ve been saying that “middle age is my second and most relevant coming of age.” As per usual it’s irritating nobody tells you that it’s powerful and beautiful and not at all a decline!
Just commented above that it feels like a metamorphosis. From a damn good caterpillar into a butterfly.
Yep, I'm definitely in the portal, thank you for this. I'll be 44 in a few days and I'd say it started around 40. While I've never been very interested in climbing the ladder at work and don't necessarily define myself by my job, I have been at the same corporate employer for most of my working life, and my income has steadily increased and I even have a pension. So the golden handcuffs are very real, especially since I'm the main earner in my household, and the main worrier and planner too (I'm sure some of you can relate, lol). The last few years I've really been craving a mini-retirement/sabbatical to get more involved in my kid's school and community, have more time for hobbies/fitness, spend more time with my parents, go back to school, find a new career, etc. But I'm having a hard time making the leap and giving my notice, even though I'm in a good financial situation and my husband fully supports it. I'm getting closer, though, and it's nice to know other women my age are struggling with the same types of questions. Good luck to us all working our way through this time of life.
Did you do it??? This sounds very similar to what I’m going through and would love hear how it worked out.
Not yet! My initial thought was to wrap up a few projects at work then give notice in the spring. But a re-org was announced around the same time I posted this which will go into effect by this summer, and I think it could benefit me if one of two things happens: (a) I'm let go and given a generous severance due to my years of service (I know not everyone would welcome that news, but that would be ideal for me right now!) or (b) I'm assigned a new US-based manager (current manager is in Europe) who will work with me to create a better situation. I'm not-so-patiently waiting to see how things shake out. If I'm stuck with the same manager after the re-org, then I'll start making plans to leave. What about you? Are you looking at options to get out of your current work situation?