Speaker 1: You're listening to a mother mea podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. No one likes an angry woman, not
Speaker 1: me and not you. So screechy, so shrill, so alienating,
Speaker 1: so annoying. Turn her down, turn her off, kick her out.
Speaker 1: Problem is, friends, Rage is a wave that women have
Speaker 1: been trying to ride, tame quiet for a lifetime. Some
Speaker 1: have more reason to be furious than others, and those
Speaker 1: women obviously are the ones. We tolerate it from the least.
Speaker 1: But in midlife rage crashes over many of us at force, uncontainable, unstoppable,
Speaker 1: all powerful. I woke up one day and even my
Speaker 1: hair was irritated. Furious at every inconvenience, rageful at every injustice,
Speaker 1: impatient with everything from the kettle to the Prime minister.
Speaker 1: Incapable of forming the smiling mask of a patient mother,
Speaker 1: respectful employee, supportive partner, dutiful daughter.
Speaker 2: I think on screen, come on, stop this.
Speaker 1: E My midlife fury was bursting out and splattering walls.
Speaker 1: It frightened me. I needed it fixed. The doctor's offices
Speaker 1: of Australia are full of women asking for their rage
Speaker 1: to be reined in so we can get on with things, working, caring,
Speaker 1: making the world turn. I wasn't the only one who
Speaker 1: was frightened. The power of female rage has been terrifying
Speaker 1: for millennia. It's why hysterical women have been demonized, locked away,
Speaker 1: even lost their lives. But is anger really that unreasonable
Speaker 1: a response to forty odd years as a woman. Is
Speaker 1: our midlife anger purely hormonal, tomatic of an estrogen plunge?
Speaker 1: Or are we just sick of this shit? After all,
Speaker 1: there's so much to be rageful about, after decades of
Speaker 1: making nice, of being overlooked or dismissed, oggled or rejected,
Speaker 1: of trying to sneak under the radar of dangerous men,
Speaker 1: years and years of sitting pretty and nodding politely and
Speaker 1: apologizing and forgiving and peacemaking and saying it's fine, I'm fine,
Speaker 1: it's fine, and making everybody else's lives run smoothly while
Speaker 1: yours spotters and strains. And now here you are, at
Speaker 1: your most wise and powerful, and yet you have never
Speaker 1: been so pitied. Oh dear, look at you, still around,
Speaker 1: still here, still striving for relevance, still having opinions and
Speaker 1: wearing clothes and having a face so cute A midlife
Speaker 1: women angry? Or are they just shouting so you notice
Speaker 1: them like a poltergeist flinging vases around the world. Is
Speaker 1: it the estrogen or is it the universe? Unclear? But look,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry this has all sounded a bit angry, hasn't
Speaker 1: it a bit rageful? I do apologize. No one likes
Speaker 1: an angry woman, especially not me. Hello, I am Holly Wainwright,
Speaker 1: and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid meltdown some
Speaker 1: days on mid our podcast for gen X women who
Speaker 1: are anything. But you might have heard, and if you haven't,
Speaker 1: just have a little scroll back that we've already talked
Speaker 1: candidly about joy, about pleasure, about self care. We've been
Speaker 1: honest about money, and about booze, and about bodies and
Speaker 1: about kids. But today, friends, I invite you to do
Speaker 1: something legitimately scary, something that's going to feel weird, rebellious, ugly.
Speaker 1: I invite you to lay down your smiling mask and
Speaker 1: embrace that furious little goblin that's curled up in because
Speaker 1: today we're talking about rage. It's okay, you don't have
Speaker 1: to pretend here. We know that being an angry woman
Speaker 1: is the worst. But we also know that as we
Speaker 1: keep sawing into mid territory, it becomes harder on some
Speaker 1: days more than others, to pretend that we have chill.
Speaker 1: We have no chill, friends, when our rollercoaster hormones and
Speaker 1: our busy lives are clanging into each other at speed,
Speaker 1: and today's guest has no time for the it's fine mask.
Speaker 1: She has been through too much and lives with a lot,
Speaker 1: and has sought the wisdom to grasp the damage that
Speaker 1: chill can do to us if we don't sometimes pass
Speaker 1: the mic to our furious little goblins. Jacinta Parsons wrote
Speaker 1: a wonderful, sharp and clever book about midlife called A
Speaker 1: Question of Age. I inhaled it before we spoke, and
Speaker 1: I urge you to do that too if you enjoy
Speaker 1: what's about to happen. Jacinta is an ABC Radio presenter,
Speaker 1: a writer, a journalist, a midlife woman who's got a
Speaker 1: big career and it's also a mother and also lives
Speaker 1: with a chronic illness. We talk about that she has
Speaker 1: over the past few years made a series of big
Speaker 1: changes to her life to live a better mid one,
Speaker 1: one where she's not pretending about relationships, about work, about
Speaker 1: her health. In this conversation, we talk about those moments
Speaker 1: when you're suddenly jolted by how the world sees you,
Speaker 1: how to distinguish between an impulsive hormonal episode and a big,
Speaker 1: serious change you need to make, and why exactly it's
Speaker 1: so complicated dealing with the transition from young to old.
Speaker 1: Jacinta's book is brilliant about rage and plenty of other things,
Speaker 1: but it's not rageful, and nor is she. Rather, she
Speaker 1: is a delight and we had the best time talking.
Speaker 1: So put down the mask and join us, me and
Speaker 1: just into Parsons to talk about anger. Since I have
Speaker 1: a question, right, I want to know if midlife women
Speaker 1: are full of rage really or are we just shouting
Speaker 1: because nobody can see us anymore and invisible creatures have
Speaker 1: to make noise a bit like a Poltergeists. We're throwing
Speaker 1: vases across the room, Like, are we really rageful? Or
Speaker 1: is it just that we need to shout to be heard?
Speaker 2: I love that. I think it's two things. I think
Speaker 2: one hundred percent correct. We've become ghost like suddenly we're
Speaker 2: see through and it is a bit poltergeist like where
Speaker 2: we're turning on lights to try and get the attention
Speaker 2: of people who live in our homes with us. Perhaps
Speaker 2: because right across the country when I've spoken to women
Speaker 2: about this, the invisibility thing happens actually earlier than I
Speaker 2: think we would imagine it does. The invisibility is actually
Speaker 2: a really serious issue for so many cohorts of women,
Speaker 2: and it's actually dangerous. And that's where I think legitimate
Speaker 2: rage is as well. We have rage for the fact
Speaker 2: that we are not heard and that we are not seen,
Speaker 2: and that we are not safe.
Speaker 1: That is one hundred percent true. It's often the first
Speaker 1: whiff of it that women get is about a visible invisibility.
Speaker 1: I really loved the point you made in your book
Speaker 1: because it's tied back in a thread through the sort
Speaker 1: of shock of our visibility that happens so quickly in
Speaker 1: our teenageyears. And you write about that as being a
Speaker 1: moment or not not even necessarily teenageers, but our young
Speaker 1: ears that you're sort of walking down the street and
Speaker 1: it's almost like the ground is shifting beneath you, and
Speaker 1: you can feel a force moving. Do you think that
Speaker 1: that's one of the things is that we get this
Speaker 1: shock of visibility and we learn how to deal with it,
Speaker 1: and then it disappears and we're discombobulated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's even more than just sort
Speaker 2: of acknowledging that suddenly we've become objectified and sexualized as
Speaker 2: young as eleven. Apparently the research tells us that girls
Speaker 2: that young are being objectified on our streets. But what
Speaker 2: it does is it creates for us this sense of ownership,
Speaker 2: really unconscious half the time, very covert, but this idea
Speaker 2: that we're owned by the eyes that look at us
Speaker 2: from the outside and we're valued that way and truly
Speaker 2: our safety, our currency, our ability to get jobs, all
Speaker 2: the things that we have found ourselves suddenly in the
Speaker 2: world doing changes. I think it's easy to sort of
Speaker 2: discount this as kind of a vanity exercise of oh,
Speaker 2: now I'm not getting tutored on the street. What this
Speaker 2: really is, though, is the changing regard that we have
Speaker 2: when our sexual utility changes, like when we're not as
Speaker 2: desirable anymore in that particular way, then the interest of
Speaker 2: the world in us is diminished. And I think that
Speaker 2: is really at the heart of it, and that's what
Speaker 2: ties us to that little girl. Is neither of these
Speaker 2: states are wanted.
Speaker 1: What was interesting to me. You write an anecdote in
Speaker 1: your book about the moment that you realized you were
Speaker 1: old in this way, that kind of visibility, the street invisibility,
Speaker 1: if you like, Tell me about when you and your
Speaker 1: friends were walking through the city on a beautiful evening.
Speaker 2: Because I think so many women have this experience too,
Speaker 2: where for so long, I guess, you know, regardless of
Speaker 2: how the feminism arrives in you, there is definitely a
Speaker 2: rolled eyes. Oh god, what we have to deal with
Speaker 2: on the streets as young girls, you know, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I got whistled. I can't walk down the street without
Speaker 2: being kind of harassed in whatever way, and then the
Speaker 2: shock when it stops. So my friends and I were
Speaker 2: walking down, you know, a fairly regular street in Melbourne,
Speaker 2: and we're in a group and we're approaching a work
Speaker 2: site and we knew that there were men there, and
Speaker 2: you know, almost like you know, it was a practice response.
Speaker 2: We all kind of got stiff and a little and thought, oh,
Speaker 2: here we go, and we walked past and nothing happened.
Speaker 2: So rather than the usual oh my goodness, it was
Speaker 2: oh my goodness, what happened? Do we not look good tonight.
Speaker 2: What's really interesting in that is that moment of, oh
Speaker 2: my god, am I not really a feminist? Have I
Speaker 2: also really just been after this the whole time? And do?
Speaker 2: I really love it? But what's really interesting is that
Speaker 2: we've been so conditioned to be validated in that way
Speaker 2: that when it left, it was actually a shock.
Speaker 1: The same thing happened to me. I remember very clearly
Speaker 1: a moment when I was walking down the street with
Speaker 1: a young coworker. This is years ago, and she was
Speaker 1: in her twenties or whatever, and we're walking down a
Speaker 1: busy street in Sydney and a car beaped and I
Speaker 1: turned to her and I said, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: people still beaped at girls in the street.
Speaker 2: And then I.
Speaker 1: Had this moment where I went, oh, yes they do.
Speaker 1: They just don't be put me in the street anymore.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting about it, as you're saying, is
Speaker 1: it's complicated because it's not that you want to be
Speaker 1: beeped at, but it's that you've literally spent twenty years
Speaker 1: or however long like valuing yourself that we're seeing yourself
Speaker 1: that way, or just learning to deal with it. I
Speaker 1: love that you wrote about how what happens to us
Speaker 1: in that period of intense visibility that you go through
Speaker 1: at that young age is we learn to see ourselves
Speaker 1: through the male gaze, and we learn to see each
Speaker 1: other through the male gaze, and that's how we value
Speaker 1: each other. So when that's taken away, of course, it's
Speaker 1: a recalibration, right, it should be freeing, and it is freeing.
Speaker 1: But I remember feeling a little bit like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm safe now in the world, which isn't true, but
Speaker 1: also it's jolting because your value is plummeted in the
Speaker 1: eyes of society. Is that how you kind of felt.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent? That's so accurate, isn't it to how
Speaker 2: you know, something that we got very acclimatized to and
Speaker 2: we adapted to, and we put up with and we
Speaker 2: dealt with when that's suddenly gone, though, I think it's
Speaker 2: not only perceived value, it is actually value that we
Speaker 2: see ourselves and how we're treated in the world. Then,
Speaker 2: as the years kind of tumble forward, and I think
Speaker 2: the compassion that we need for what people do in
Speaker 2: that regard, you know, try and keep themselves looking young,
Speaker 2: and all the things that we go to do that
Speaker 2: needs to be understood and kind of given some leeway
Speaker 2: through that frame, understanding that we are just trying to
Speaker 2: recalibrate and understand our value in this world.
Speaker 1: And maybe try and make ourselves still visible because we're
Speaker 1: kind of working out whether we can still play by
Speaker 1: those rules or not exactly.
Speaker 2: And again, this is not about vanity and it's I mean,
Speaker 2: of course it is in some regard, but it's not
Speaker 2: because our value has truly been linked to our youth
Speaker 2: and to whether we are sexually interesting or desirable the
Speaker 2: world outside of us. So it's not a fancy of ours.
Speaker 2: This is something that we've been constructed to understand and
Speaker 2: believe but also experience.
Speaker 1: The reason why that can often be a rage, Like
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes us furious is because
Speaker 1: once you are invisible, and again we play this out
Speaker 1: in just everyday situations like being ignored at the bar,
Speaker 1: or people not really listening to you when you're talking
Speaker 1: in a group situation, or whatever. It might be that
Speaker 1: sort of slightly patronizing voice that people sometimes use. When
Speaker 1: you suddenly notice it being used towards you, that is infuriating. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that strikes me as one of
Speaker 1: the big paradoxes is that here we are at a
Speaker 1: point in our life where we have been through a lot,
Speaker 1: often where we are wise and we understand a lot,
Speaker 1: and it's the point at which we sort of are
Speaker 1: also broadly a bit pitied and patronized. Inside, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm at my most powerful in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: That makes you really cross.
Speaker 2: I feel like inside my mind, my most recent book
Speaker 2: that I'm just finishing is actually speaking to seventy eighty
Speaker 2: and ninety year old women, and it's exactly that this
Speaker 2: doesn't diminish as we get older. In fact, that infantilization
Speaker 2: and that diminishment of us as women probably increases in
Speaker 2: more overt ways where we get spoken to like we're
Speaker 2: little darlings and deers. And it's exactly that we are
Speaker 2: in our greatest power, our greatest wisdom, our greatest comfort,
Speaker 2: in our bodies, potentially the sense of who we are
Speaker 2: is potentially at its clearest, and suddenly we don't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: And of course that makes us angry, because it's just
Speaker 2: about validating that utility has always been connected to our desirability,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing more frustrating and aggravating than that.
Speaker 1: After this shortbreak, we hear how to sinter transform to
Speaker 1: rage into wisdom and ask if we can do it too, please?
Speaker 1: What's your relationship with rage? Like your last book was
Speaker 1: also about living with a chronic invisible illness, you have
Speaker 1: been living with crones? Is that correct? Since you're in
Speaker 1: your early twenties, so being hospitalized and going through a
Speaker 1: lot of surgery and procedures at a time when I
Speaker 1: imagine a lot of your contemporaries were off abusing their
Speaker 1: bodies and having a good time, that must have been
Speaker 1: difficult to suppress rage through. Have you found ways to
Speaker 1: live alongside rage?
Speaker 2: It's such a beautiful question, especially connected with illness. It's
Speaker 2: something I had to directly address. You're so right. I
Speaker 2: was really cross, mainly because I felt so isolated in
Speaker 2: the experience, and I was cross. You know, I would
Speaker 2: be fuming quietly at my friends for not understanding things,
Speaker 2: and for not being there at the times, and for
Speaker 2: not understanding the gravity of the experience that I was
Speaker 2: going to. But there was, you know, a real clear
Speaker 2: moment for me where I realized that that doesn't solve
Speaker 2: any problems. In fact, it creates more. With that kind
Speaker 2: of rage where you are angry about a situation, but
Speaker 2: you're projecting it elsewhere. I found a piece in it. Actually,
Speaker 2: I found that there was no way to continue and
Speaker 2: perpetually go that way. And there is this moment I
Speaker 2: suppose that a lot of people get to, which is
Speaker 2: an acceptance of where you are with illness, for example,
Speaker 2: and a way to accommodate it that's powerful rather than reductive.
Speaker 2: And it really helped me love beyond myself.
Speaker 1: Is there a literal way that you did that. Did
Speaker 1: you study deeply? Did you meditate? Did you find faith?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How did you get to that level of being able
Speaker 1: to accept your hand as it were?
Speaker 2: It was hitting the bottom significantly where I felt like
Speaker 2: I was either going to stay there forever or to
Speaker 2: find my way to take responsibility. And it's a really
Speaker 2: hard thing to talk about because illness particularly is one
Speaker 2: of those states that we don't choose. So therefore, what
Speaker 2: can I take responsibility for when it's not mine in
Speaker 2: the first place? Really, but responsibility in that way, I think,
Speaker 2: is okay, how am I going to do this? How
Speaker 2: will it look for me? And so I decided that
Speaker 2: I would do a really good job of illness and
Speaker 2: I would find the joy in it. And that sounds
Speaker 2: really clear, and it sounds like a Hallmark card. But
Speaker 2: through meditation, you're one hundred percent ride through studying what
Speaker 2: it is like to have a body that doesn't work,
Speaker 2: and to think about our bodies differently, that they're not
Speaker 2: who I am, and that it shows me something, it's
Speaker 2: teaching me something, it's showing me through the limitations that
Speaker 2: it's giving me that actually, ah, there's another way, there's
Speaker 2: another way. It also showed me not to be fearful.
Speaker 2: There was so much fear in illness and what could happen,
Speaker 2: and when it did, I was like, ah, I'm actually
Speaker 2: really strong.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I don't want to say after your illness,
Speaker 1: because I know that's not the case. You're living with
Speaker 1: your illness. But you became a mother unexpectedly, right almost well,
Speaker 1: not enexpectedly, but as in you weren't sure your body
Speaker 1: could do it, but your body could do it. And
Speaker 1: I remember feeling that kind of air of invincibility after
Speaker 1: I had my first child, actually thinking if I can
Speaker 1: do that, I can do all kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: that in a way, it's interesting that it's a time
Speaker 1: when the world almost tricks you, because similarly, in a
Speaker 1: way to the aging process, when you become a mother,
Speaker 1: you also get a little bit of that padded on
Speaker 1: the head, like you're just mummy now, like let's talk
Speaker 1: to mom. You know, how's mom and Bob doing today?
Speaker 1: You know that kind of very infanticizing bullshit.
Speaker 2: I feel so strongly about that stuff, and I rejected
Speaker 2: it for that reason. I just.
Speaker 1: Well, you rejected it so much I read, which I
Speaker 1: loved that you refuse to go to mother's.
Speaker 2: Ground my partner instead. I was like, I don't want
Speaker 2: to be that thing.
Speaker 1: It's a time when the world is trying to trick
Speaker 1: us into thinking that we're weak, when actually we've just
Speaker 1: been through something and probably for very many of us
Speaker 1: and very many of the women listening to this, in
Speaker 1: all kinds of manners of difficult, challenging, painful, traumatic ways,
Speaker 1: we've actually just been something that's only made us stronger.
Speaker 1: So it's like the world's constantly trying to say little
Speaker 1: you when you're like, no, the size of me is unfathomable. Again,
Speaker 1: no wonder we're angry.
Speaker 2: I could go back. Yeah, it is such a crime,
Speaker 2: isn't it. At our greatest strength, we are given you know,
Speaker 2: straws to fight the world with. Really, it's such an injustice,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It is?
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a cruel trick in a way.
Speaker 1: So the thing that happens in this peer of midlife
Speaker 1: when you are wrestling with this identity and this invisibility, which,
Speaker 1: as we've said, is kind of a symptom of the
Speaker 1: changing of your identity from young to old, and there's
Speaker 1: a line that suddenly you've crossed and you kind of
Speaker 1: need the outside world to signal it to you. A
Speaker 1: lot of us go through a period of change then,
Speaker 1: and I know that you've been through a lot of
Speaker 1: change in this past couple of years. You have changed
Speaker 1: your professional life, your personal life. You know, you've made
Speaker 1: a lot of adjustments to the way you live. How
Speaker 1: do you think women recalibrate this time without kind of
Speaker 1: making wild gestures at the world. You know that we
Speaker 1: might have once called a midlife crisis that might be
Speaker 1: ill advised. So like trying to entangle necessary change from
Speaker 1: just a reaction to all of this.
Speaker 2: Ah, again, you've got to stop asking great questions. Because
Speaker 2: I had to check myself in the big changes I
Speaker 2: was making, and someone did look a bit and said,
Speaker 2: just be careful, this isn't your perimenopause kind of creating
Speaker 2: for you a desire again. I hope this doesn't sound
Speaker 2: too woo woo, but I really think one of the
Speaker 2: great aspects of the feminine is connection. You know, to
Speaker 2: really feel when either you're emotional and you're having an
Speaker 2: emotional reaction and you're upset and you're angry, or you
Speaker 2: know the answer. And when you know the answer, as
Speaker 2: I did to both of those big life changes, you know,
Speaker 2: breaking up a twenty five year marriage and changing my
Speaker 2: kind of job life, I just knew.
Speaker 1: Had you been ignoring that knowing for a long time?
Speaker 1: Do you think no?
Speaker 2: But it became just clear. I just remember, oh right,
Speaker 2: that's the answer, you know, those moments where you just know.
Speaker 2: And I think what I had done previously in my
Speaker 2: life was try and find all the reasons why that
Speaker 2: might not be true, or you know, complicate what is true.
Speaker 2: So I think that was the first thing for me.
Speaker 2: This is true, this needs to change. And then the
Speaker 2: question is, okay, well, how do I go about this
Speaker 2: in the most loving and constructive way? What is the
Speaker 2: best way to do this change? So, if you're changing
Speaker 2: and your feelings of change, I think are in those
Speaker 2: moments of throwing the world up and shooting it all
Speaker 2: out and breaking windows and stuff. Maybe that is the
Speaker 2: symptom of the restlessness and the rage that comes from
Speaker 2: other things that you just want to change things.
Speaker 1: Because where you are just feels too impossibly itchy and uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: But I think we'd always know the answer, and I
Speaker 2: think it's just going back to the old ways of
Speaker 2: trusting ourselves when we do sit quietly, when we do meditate,
Speaker 2: when we do have that knowing that we have the
Speaker 2: confidence to then strategize, then use our other parts of
Speaker 2: us to work out, Okay, how do I actually do
Speaker 2: this well?
Speaker 1: And did you feel like that path opened up before
Speaker 1: you or did you have to hack it out with
Speaker 1: a machete?
Speaker 2: Now I think it opened up, but it wasn't like
Speaker 2: use your short thing, but there was definitely for both
Speaker 2: of those. Just once you make a decision, then the
Speaker 2: world does kind of start providing the answers, not because
Speaker 2: of magic, but because you've opened up your mind to
Speaker 2: see them. Now, Oh okay, well that could be a solution,
Speaker 2: because the hardest thing is to make this decision to
Speaker 2: change how that change happens is a myriad of possibilities.
Speaker 1: More of my conversation with your Sinterer Parsons coming up
Speaker 1: next about age rage and how you decide it is
Speaker 1: the moment to make those big life changes. It's also
Speaker 1: tricky because often by a midlife we've been doing whatever
Speaker 1: it is we're doing, whether that's in relationship or work,
Speaker 1: for quite a long time, and it's a very big
Speaker 1: part of our identity. Were you afraid of making those
Speaker 1: kind of changes, particularly say your work life for example.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that you're still doing all kinds
Speaker 1: of creative things and you are still on radio and Melbourne.
Speaker 1: But when you decided to step back from a daily
Speaker 1: show that was obviously a big part of your life,
Speaker 1: did you worry about who you'd be.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, because you know that they're the things that
Speaker 2: come and get you at three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2: Have I done the wrong thing? Why did I do this?
Speaker 2: I have done this sort of stuff before, where something's
Speaker 2: happened and I've thought, no, I've got a change. And
Speaker 2: what I do in that moment is make sure that
Speaker 2: while I'm still in that situation, that I'm very cognizant
Speaker 2: of why I'm doing it so that I don't mythologize
Speaker 2: the situation I was in and think, oh, I was
Speaker 2: actually the best time of my life, and what have
Speaker 2: I done in that moment of change? You think, I'm
Speaker 2: doing this for these reasons. Whether it's right or wrong
Speaker 2: to make this choice, it's a choice I have to make,
Speaker 2: so whatever happens from here, this is the path. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to regret it or think that it wasn't
Speaker 2: the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And I think you're right about them being no such
Speaker 1: thing as a perfect choice. It is something we need
Speaker 1: to let go of.
Speaker 2: That's it. We have to let go of that. When
Speaker 2: you talk about identity, though, the thing that really shocked
Speaker 2: me was breaking up my relationship. I was very aware
Speaker 2: of my work identity and how much that had made
Speaker 2: me feel certain ways and positive things about myself. But
Speaker 2: I had no idea how much I had actually really
Speaker 2: identified as a mother and as a family until quite
Speaker 2: a few months, even further down the track after it
Speaker 2: was gone. That's sort of when it hit me. It's like, Wow,
Speaker 2: I had no concept that I had really bought that
Speaker 2: so hard, you know, being someone who didn't go to
Speaker 2: mother's groups and you know, I'm just a free will
Speaker 2: and goal and then it was gone, and that was
Speaker 2: a shock to me. And I think the truth of
Speaker 2: how we feel in these circumstances is so important to
Speaker 2: try and reckon with so that you don't find yourself
Speaker 2: in those kind of moments of oh, had no idea.
Speaker 2: Had I been more truthful about how much I considered
Speaker 2: myself and identified as a mother and as a partner
Speaker 2: and as a family, I think I would have been
Speaker 2: able to deal with that perhaps a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Did you have to kind of find a group of
Speaker 1: people to be around you during that time who would
Speaker 1: help you sort of push into this new identity.
Speaker 2: I think actually I did the opposite. I think I
Speaker 2: realized that part of this was about being alone and
Speaker 2: how I would find myself alone, and I sort of
Speaker 2: felt like I had to go through the fire with
Speaker 2: that and have those moments of really attending to how
Speaker 2: it feels on Christmas Eve when you're by yourself, and
Speaker 2: to not rush it to sort of sit in that
Speaker 2: but also not get consumed by it. But it needs
Speaker 2: its space to grieve the change. Changes and choices aren't
Speaker 2: just all about this unending you know, leaping through the
Speaker 2: air with joy. It's also about the grief of goodbye formerselves.
Speaker 2: I think that's really legitimate and really important that as
Speaker 2: we evolve and as we move, as we change as women,
Speaker 2: that we're also allowing ourselves to say goodbye to parts
Speaker 2: of us that are no longer there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, because the temptation is the alone on Christmas Eve situation,
Speaker 1: is to fill that diary, reach for that wine, make
Speaker 1: everything be busy and buzzing and hectic, to distract far harder,
Speaker 1: but ultimately better to sit with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to ask yourself in those moments, why
Speaker 2: am I here? And the reason you're there is because
Speaker 2: you know of really beautiful things and really important things.
Speaker 2: It's not because you're a deficit. It's because you've made
Speaker 2: brave choices that aren't always the easiest to live with
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 1: Back to rage for a moment, back to my angry,
Speaker 1: fist shaking self. So being consumed by it is no
Speaker 1: way to live, as we just discussed when you're talking
Speaker 1: about how you have to come to peace with it,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about your chronic condition. But it's also
Speaker 1: exceptional fuel sometimes, right, which is possibly one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why many people are so afraid of all kinds
Speaker 1: of angry women, some more than others. Are midlife women
Speaker 1: going to save the world or are we too tired?
Speaker 2: I think we're really tired, you know what, I think
Speaker 2: elder women world. Actually, I think the midlife is still
Speaker 2: time for us to have older and younger women really
Speaker 2: care for us. I think it's one of the hardest
Speaker 2: transitions for women, but I think we emerge better and
Speaker 2: stronger outside of the middle. I'm really excited about aging
Speaker 2: for that reason. And the middle is kind of your
Speaker 2: preparation point, you know, your liminality, almost where before you
Speaker 2: get to really kick into life, perhaps the way you've
Speaker 2: always wanted to.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting because there's a part in your book
Speaker 1: where you say the middle is the worst bit, right,
Speaker 1: And I railed against that a bit because I was like,
Speaker 1: but hold on, I'm closer to youth than I'm going
Speaker 1: to be in another five to ten years, so surely,
Speaker 1: surely this is a good bit. But that's because I'm
Speaker 1: still seeing my worth and value tied to youth rather
Speaker 1: than to anything else. So what you're saying is this
Speaker 1: transformation that we go through in these years is necessarily difficult.
Speaker 1: And messy and challenging, but only if you're railing against
Speaker 1: the idea of really being old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's difficult because of the beautiful questions
Speaker 2: we're asking, you know, who the fuck are we? What
Speaker 2: are we now? If we're not mothers that have children
Speaker 2: in our homes anymore, if we're not you know, all
Speaker 2: the things that we've been so focused on. How do
Speaker 2: we prepare to move out of that stage? That's hard.
Speaker 2: But the moving out of that into this next part,
Speaker 2: which is the woman. Ah my gosh. Having had conversations
Speaker 2: with so many of them, I am so excited about
Speaker 2: it because the anger, the rage turns into the fuel
Speaker 2: that you're talking about, and it becomes something wonderful.
Speaker 1: Have they also let go of the unnecessary rages, like
Speaker 1: so I rage against my face, right, And I'm suddenly
Speaker 1: not alone in that as a midlife woman. And it's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a part in your book where you talk about
Speaker 1: the invention of the mirror and how suddenly changed everything
Speaker 1: about the way we perceived ourselves. And now, with phones
Speaker 1: and relentless documentation of ourselves, we are more connected, possibly
Speaker 1: than ever, to our physical appearance, and that can be
Speaker 1: a source of anger when it doesn't match how you feel.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the time when you're in the bar
Speaker 1: and you and you and a stranger were having a
Speaker 1: really exciting, passionate debate and then.
Speaker 2: And then you know those great times. I thought, Wow,
Speaker 2: how exciting to meet someone another woman, you know, having
Speaker 2: a great chat as you do. It's so much fun.
Speaker 2: And then she turned to me and she was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I love talking to you so much.
Speaker 2: I wish you were my mom. And then I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, like she sees, actually how old I am,
Speaker 2: but I don't feel like it on the inside. What
Speaker 2: you know, and what I've been thinking about lately, because
Speaker 2: in writing the book, I sort of thought, Okay, we
Speaker 2: feel much younger, we're much younger than we look. But
Speaker 2: maybe this is what aging feels like. Maybe getting older
Speaker 2: feels so alive and wonderful. We attribute all of these
Speaker 2: wonderful things to being young. But the rebel that I feel, like, like,
Speaker 2: the fun that I have in my body now is
Speaker 2: probably more than it was ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, we get.
Speaker 2: Naughty and it's fun.
Speaker 1: And then well, if you can find a way to
Speaker 1: let go of that anger about that superficial appearance, there's
Speaker 1: more peace to have us do the more important work
Speaker 1: that you're talking about the eldest. The eldest will do
Speaker 1: and indeed have a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the anger is really cool because
Speaker 2: what it asks us to do is actually work it out,
Speaker 2: Like we're having this conversation and it's a beautiful one
Speaker 2: because we're working this out right now. Who are we?
Speaker 2: And what a great experience to be provoked to ask
Speaker 2: the question Aging insists that we do. Because the outer
Speaker 2: form that we've relied upon for so long to identify
Speaker 2: with changes, we're not that anymore. So who the fuck
Speaker 2: are we? And that answer is the fun. And if
Speaker 2: we're prepared to ask the question and really look for
Speaker 2: an answer but it's maybe something else, then that's where
Speaker 2: the gold is. And I think that's why I wrote
Speaker 2: the book. I wanted to know how I could prepare
Speaker 2: myself to start thinking about it in the other way.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that I've been talking to about rage
Speaker 1: all this time, the book itself is not angry. I mean,
Speaker 1: it has portions of that, but it's very much more,
Speaker 1: as you've said, an exploration having gone through what you've
Speaker 1: gone through in the past few years and the changes
Speaker 1: you've made and the process of writing this book, what
Speaker 1: have you learned? Like, where are you now with all this?
Speaker 1: And what wisdom could you pass on?
Speaker 2: Oh? I love this because this is what I've been
Speaker 2: asking everyone lately, is the question of wisdom. This is
Speaker 2: not a gig where we sorted out. It's an eternal
Speaker 2: kind of propulsion in learning. And I think once you
Speaker 2: settle into that and know that the shit things actually
Speaker 2: end up being great, and you know that you know
Speaker 2: all of these things, that through time and through the
Speaker 2: application of heat, we kind of get a sense of
Speaker 2: how this works. What I know is that we need
Speaker 2: the rage to change the conditions for women who are
Speaker 2: in dangerous predicaments because they are women and because they
Speaker 2: are aging. Every time I think about that, I'm filled
Speaker 2: with purpose and determination. But for me, I think I
Speaker 2: am softening, not because I don't have passion, but because
Speaker 2: I think I can see myself moving into another space
Speaker 2: and I really like it. I love that.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably a good place to end.
Speaker 2: Oh, like, I've had the best time ever.
Speaker 1: Well, my goblin friends, I hope you found that as
Speaker 1: cathartic and insightful as I did. The book just since
Speaker 1: is working on. The one about women even wiser than
Speaker 1: will be out next year and what it is will
Speaker 1: be telling you about it. But in the meantime, A
Speaker 1: Question of Age is out now and there's a link
Speaker 1: in our show notes the way you can get your
Speaker 1: hands on it. For me, that conversation helped me to
Speaker 1: understand things that are always swirling around my head now
Speaker 1: as I will my daughter growing and my self changing,
Speaker 1: that it's entirely normal and understandable that this time of
Speaker 1: enormous transition, just like puberty, just like mtrescence if you're
Speaker 1: a mother, comes with huge upheavals and very big feelings.
Speaker 1: But also it's more than that. Our experience has made
Speaker 1: us bolder and wiser, and our tolerance for being dismissed
Speaker 1: is shrinking to almost nonexistent, and that's okay. Please go
Speaker 1: and check out our conversation with Leslie Morgan about sex
Speaker 1: in midlife if you want to hear another empowered, take
Speaker 1: no prisoner's woman up end the expectations put on us.
Speaker 1: And also our very first episode, the one with the
Speaker 1: incredible Julie Goodwin, to whom I will always be grateful
Speaker 1: for kicking off these very honest conversations about what you
Speaker 1: can and can't live with as you move into mid
Speaker 1: And thank you all so very much for being here
Speaker 1: with us for these moments. I'll see you back here
Speaker 1: next week when GOLP I'll be talking to arguably Australia's
Speaker 1: most successful author, Moriarty about the rich stories of women's
Speaker 1: second acts.
Speaker 2: Women like you.
Speaker 1: Of course, I want to tell you that if you
Speaker 1: are finding rage or anger, or anxiety or depression issues
Speaker 1: coming up as part of perry menopause or menopause unmanageable,
Speaker 1: making your life incredibly difficult, there is help at hand,
Speaker 1: and we've put the links to some organizations that can
Speaker 1: help you in our show notes. Enormous thanks to our
Speaker 1: team that's executive producer Named Brown, producer Crystal Cornelson and
Speaker 1: Tarlie Blackman and Talah Porge's and Tom Lyon for their
Speaker 1: sound editing and design. I'll see you next week