if you ever want to know the truth, just ask a woman over forty. when a woman turns forty, her very last f*ck flies right out the window.
welcome to the home of truth-telling without the safety net. we don’t do self-help, we do honesty. this blog is for women in their “i’m done sugarcoating” era. we talk love, life, bodies, ambition, grief, menopause, friendships, work, and the glorious mess of becoming yourself in public. the quiet resentments. the loud reinventions. the comebacks you didn’t post about.
a sneak peek of what you’ll find here.
5/5
the double-edged sword of grief. living without them
they say losing a parent changes you forever. they also say time heals all wounds. what they fail to mention is that grief isn’t linear, it’s an unpredictable mess of emotions. like a tornado, utterly devastating. one moment, you’re standing in the calm before the storm, convinced you can weather it. the next, you’re being lifted off your feet, and dropped into a reality where everything you once knew is shattered & drenched in sorrow. a part of me died that day.
5/5
when your friendship turns into a trail of crumbs.
“some people don’t love you; they don’t even care about you. they just want to stay connected to you. they love the benefits. so, they do the minimal. a little phone call here and there, maintaining the connection, so when they need / want you, they still have a way in.” some of those friendships no longer serve me, yet here i am still holding on to some of them for dear life. friendships that were once filled with daily communication now seemed to survive off breadcrumbs.
4/5
why your success is sexy, until it isn’t…for him.
it starts, as these things often do, with an avalanche of adoration. the flowers, the texts, the grand declarations of how you’re unlike anyone they’ve ever met. in the space of a fortnight, he’s planned your entire future, gushed about your brilliance, and made you feel like cleopatra, michelle obama and sophia loren all rolled into one. welcome to the world of love bombing, where the currency is excessive affection, and the bill is always come due. usually paid for by you.
5/5
It’s dark out there and at times there is no light.
in the words claudia antunes. “teach your inner demons to roam your mind without damaging your thoughts” I’m a forty something woman, who has achieved many great things in life, but do I have it all? nope, do I even think this is possible? i’m still unsure. and sometimes that takes me to dark places. but i don't beat myself up because it’s ok to feel sad. there i said it. you are not alone.
5/5
there are no bad dates, only great brunch stories.
what is the point of bad dates if not to have amusing anecdotes to share with your friends? gabrielle zevin. the other day i was talking to a guy i was once seeing, he's my mr falls too fast, about his dating experiences pre and post me. our conversation sounded something similar to the top trumps of dating experiences. I tried my level hardest not to laugh, you couldn’t make this s**t up if you tried.
5/5
he never hit me, yet he hurt me every day.
we’ve all been there. we thought we’d met someone warm and caring . someone we could see a future with, but started seeing flashes of behaviour that didn’t quite fit with the person we thought they were. so, we brushed it off, thinking we were imagining it. before we knew it, it's our one-year anniversary. yes, we’re still together but those flashes have now become a way of life.
5/5
the silence can’t be heard but it feels deafeningly loud.
“sometimes, the space we create by taking a break is filled not with clarity, but with the deafening silence of unresolved feelings.” unknown. it’s not been that long since we last spoke, since we agreed that we’d take some time out to contemplate whether our relationship, that started off with so much promise, had a future. where we uttered those four small, yet poignant words “let’s take a break”.
5/5
menopause – welcome to the hormonal hellfire.
“when we asked for a smoking hot bodies, menopause wasn’t quite what I had in mind.” azalea and ivy.
i used to think menopause was for other women. older women. women with sensible cardigans. but like an uninvited guest, it showed up early, kicked off its shoes, unpacked like a relative who overstays their welcome, and made itself at home. menopause. honestly, that nine letter word, needs a bloody update in the dictionary to woman-o-pause.
5/5
once you grow, you glow. let your inner light shine.
over the last few years, i’ve been on a different kind of journey, one that turned out to be one of the most extraordinary journeys of my life. the currency used here isn’t money, instead you trade old habits, inhibitions, and patterns of behaviour, a unknown place that you don’t plan to go but the plane makes an emergency stop. a place where you have to be prepared to step out of your comfort zone and embrace a true journey of discovery.
