No One Really Prepared Us for Becoming Older Women

Midlife isn’t just about menopause or empty nesting. Discover why women over 50 are renegotiating work, identity, purpose and ageing in this powerful new stage of life.

We were prepared for getting the job, building the career, finding the partner, raising the children and climbing the ladder. Society has done a pretty good job of helping us imagine the first half of adulthood.

But what about the next thirty or forty years?

Today’s midlife women are living longer, working longer and staying healthier for longer than generations before us. Yet many of the stories and structures that surround women still feel decidedly out of date.

It strikes me that midlife women are being asked to renegotiate their relationship with work, ageing and identity at precisely the point society often expects us to have “arrived”.

Perhaps that’s why so many women over 50 are finding themselves asking new questions.

Midlife Women and Work: Leaving Corporate or Staying Put?

Some women are leaving corporate careers to build businesses of their own. What nobody tells you is that becoming a solopreneur in your fifties or sixties isn’t simply a career transition - it’s an identity transition.

It asks something very different of us. More visibility. More uncertainty. More trust in ourselves.

Others are staying in corporate life. As we are increasingly called upon to work into our late sixties and beyond, I wonder whether we’re talking enough about what women need during this stage of life.

Perhaps it’s more flexibility. Perhaps it’s the opportunity to mentor and offer wisdom. Perhaps it’s work that feels more purposeful or better accommodates caring responsibilities for ageing parents. Perhaps it’s simply permission to evolve.

The conversation about women and work shouldn’t stop at fifty. In many ways, it is only just beginning.

Menopause Isn’t the Whole Story

Of course, menopause is an inevitable part of midlife for women and it deserves the attention it is finally receiving.

If you’re in the thick of it, I want to offer a small note of hope from the other side. I’m post-menopausal and I can honestly say that it gets better.

We hear a great deal about the challenges of menopause, rightly so, but perhaps we don’t hear enough from women who have emerged feeling more themselves again.

Menopause matters. But it isn’t the whole story of midlife. What Does Age-Appropriate Even Mean?

The women I work with are I’ve also found myself smiling at the headlines about older women being criticised for not behaving in age-appropriate ways. Whether it’s Madonna’s clothes, her relationships or simply her refusal to conform to other people’s expectations of what a woman in her sixties should look like, I find myself asking: what exactly is age-appropriate? And who gets to decide?

One of the great privileges of getting older, I think, is becoming increasingly less interested in asking for permission.

Perhaps one of the gifts of ageing is learning that we don’t need to shrink ourselves to make other people comfortable.

Parenting Adult Children Is Another Midlife Transition

Soon, many women will wave their children off to university for the first time. Others will celebrate graduations or watch them begin their first jobs. It’s exciting and joyful, of course. But it can also feel surprisingly discombobulating.

For years, perhaps decades, our lives have been shaped by the practical and emotional work of parenting. Then, suddenly, things shift. The rhythms of our days change and new questions emerge.

How do we parent adult children? How do we support without overstepping? What becomes possible for us now?

Parenting doesn’t stop when our children become adults, but our role inevitably changes. And once again, we’re invited to renegotiate our identity. Not because we’ve lost something, but because life is asking us to grow into something new.

Midlife Is a Period of Evaluation

What strikes me most is that all of these conversations are happening at once.

Midlife isn’t a single event or experience. It’s a period of life that invites us to re-evaluate who we are and what we want now. Work, family, friendships, purpose, contribution, freedom and ageing can all feel in motion at the same time.

We may be leaving jobs, redefining our relationships with our children, caring for ageing parents, making new friends, letting go of friendships or circles that no longer feel like quite the right fit, or asking bigger questions about how we want to spend the next thirty or forty years of our lives.

We may find ourselves wanting more meaning, more flexibility, more joy or simply more space to become who we are now.

No wonder it can feel both exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure.

The more I reflect on all of this, the more I realise that no one really prepared us for becoming older women.

We were prepared for getting the job, building the career, finding the partner, raising the children and climbing the ladder. But very few of us were given a roadmap for what it means to become a woman in her fifties, sixties or seventies. What it means to live longer lives. To continue growing and changing. To want different things. To become wiser, perhaps bolder, and sometimes more questioning than ever before.

We’re having to create that roadmap ourselves.

And whilst that can feel unsettling at times, I think it’s also rather exciting.

We’re not simply getting older. We’re discovering what is possible when we allow ourselves to keep evolving.