The Second Spring: Women and aging
I recently celebrated my 53rd birthday. I’m a spring baby. There are quite a few of us, actually. My son was also born in September, and when I was in labour with him, the midwife was distractedly in and out of my birthing room: ‘They’re popping them out left, right and centre!’ she cried.
Aging seems to happen in fits and spurts.
During my forties it was gradual. In my fifties, it feels more sudden: a spurt of aging. Maybe I’m more aware of the turning of the years as I have a barometer of my wedding photos from just eight years ago—when I was 47—in which I appear so much younger!
Why is it that as women we have such difficulty embracing the process of aging?
The author, Ana Davis with dear friend and colleague Lisa Fitzpatrick at my recent 53rd birthday party
Of course, all of us—men as well—resist the turn of the years and its impact on our once lithe bodies, but somehow women feel its pain more deeply.
Even in our third-wave (or is fourth now?) feminist world, beauty is still widely considered a woman’s main currency: the thing we most value.
We hang a lot of our biological worth on our looks.
And the perfect images of Social Media don’t make it any easier.
While more of us are educated, more of us are in the workforce as equals, sometimes superiors, to men, that doesn’t take away our feminine desire to be beautiful.
This can mean that when we butt up against the perceived ugliness of the deepening double chin, the widening crow’s feet, the sagging bosoms, the thickening waistlines, many of us struggle and fight against the inevitable.
Even for me, as a long-time feminist, from my youth when I was committed reader of Naomi Wolfe’s The Beauty Myth, and a teacher and author who has devoted almost two decades to work that uplifts and empowers women, this whole aging thing has been, and most likely will continue to be, an unravelling, a letting go of the ideal of youth.
Yet I consider myself well-equipped for this journey into aging than most; I understand that to move through to any new phase in life, we must let go of the old before we can embrace the new. It’s an ancient lore of all rites of passage rituals: there’s always a death, a mourning, and then a rebirth. Menopause, one of the most momentous phases in a woman’s life, certainly encompasses this process.
That is, if we step back and allow it to happen.
But so many women are in denial. As my cohort of middle-aged friends navigated their late forties, I noticed a number who seemed in relative denial about this thing called menopause. Maybe because it can creep up on you, over a period of years.
I’m still stunned at the lack of understanding around what I call the stages of menopause—that we first go through ‘perimenopause, which is the lead-up to menopause, and menopause itself is a label we can give ourselves only once we’ve stopped bleeding for twelve months.
Lasting anywhere from two to ten years, perimenopause can be an endurance event. That’s why I argue that it’s much better to know what we’re dealing with, to be prepared, to be standing open and ready.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the menopause is called ‘the second spring’. It’s a lovely affirmation of the reinvention of self that is possible during midlife. This new self blooms in a way that is deeper and more resonant than our youthful, ‘maiden’ self. A woman can be more keenly connected to her body in a way that she never has been before.
‘I’ve learned the importance of starting with the body and all its senses. Which is why I go to my body to ask what this new country of aging will be like,’ wrote second-wave feminist legend, Gloria Steinem.
Steinem went on to suggest that our ‘less forgiving’ bodies are in fact, a gift because they ‘transmit warnings faster—not as betrayal, but as wisdom’.
Illness or hormonal shifts we experience as we transition into menopause can be perceived as messengers of our soul, as harbingers of a way forward— if we slow down, listen, respond, and course-correct if necessary.
This means, for example, I can still enjoy wine, but I know to stop at one or two glasses, that’s all my body will allow these days. I’m learning that rather than a deprivation, this is the gift of sensitivity that helps me take care of my body in a much more conscious way than I ever did when I was younger.
And what about this beauty fixation? Is there any cure? Another feminist icon, Germain Greer, would say ‘yes’!
‘Only when a woman ceases the fretful struggle to be beautiful can she turn her gaze outward, find the beautiful and feed upon it,’ wrote Greer.
This goes some way to explain the increasing urge to garden, to be in nature, that we often experience as we mature. Every year I take greater pleasure in the blooming of the orchids in my garden, also in observing and appreciating the simple beauty around me—on a beach walk, or simply feeling deep reverence for the sway of a gum tree through a window. It is one route to making peace with who and where we are on this life trajectory: to open our awareness outward, and to realise that we are just one part of the fabric of life.
Finally, if all else fails, and you’re still bemoaning the passing of the years, it can always be helpful to practise gratitude. I remind myself that this is a privilege to be moving through my fifties. I have friends and lovers who have not made it this far, who can no longer admire the orchids in their garden or smell the sweet jasmine of spring.
References
Gloria Steinem, from Revolution from Within, and Germain Greer from The Change, in Breaking Free: Women of Spirt at Midlife and Beyond, edited by Marylyn Sewell, Beacon Press, 2004.
