Once upon a time I was a young woman about to get married to a young man and embark on the common path of becoming a wife and mother. It was an assumed path that I didn’t question. But a tragic turn of events attacked all assumptions and interrupted that path, causing me to question everything. Almost 25 years later I find myself in my fifties – married without children – no longer that young woman with the fertile future, but a wise woman with a full life.
A woman in her fifties is in her prime, a less pressured prime compared to being in her twenties. We know who we are, or at least who we want to be, married or not, children or not. Yet this prime is plagued by the natural process of aging. While we as women may come to welcome the next phase of life, we can still feel the frowns of judgment as we get older.
It seems aging is more accepted for women who are mothers, especially grandmothers. They can find themselves in a separate, cherished category, reserved for a role that is praised and lauded. But what if this role has not been assigned? What if we didn’t accept the presumed path of parenthood? Where then does our aging out status leave us?
There are numerous reasons a woman of a certain age does not have children. No justification or explanation is required. Yet the quiet message from society whispers that it’s unfortunate or unnatural, and therefore there must be a suitable explanation. Sometimes it’s choice, sometimes it’s circumstance, perhaps often a combination.
We are all relational beings, needing a sense of belonging, purpose, connection. Women in particular are primarily defined in relational terms – the ultimate being Mother. Without the title of Mother, we often experience an extra emphasis on Daughter or Partner. We somehow still find ourselves in a central function, serving as the glue that holds everyone and everything together.
Women seem born to sacrifice, whether they officially “mother” or not. In return we may gain belonging, purpose, connection, but if we are not careful, we can be robbed of what our middle age prime can offer in serving and connecting to ourselves.
As my years in age have stacked up, I’ve considered them a staircase to my self-development and my self-knowing. With every twist and turn of my life thus far, I’ve discovered something new. I intentionally embrace my midlife without motherhood status, relishing in my partner, friend and aunthood. But most importantly, my “MEhood”.
It’s the relationship between my past and present that I nurture most, allowing my future self to cherish all she has lived, regardless of age, title or function. She is enough and always was.
