Sometimes the years around 50 feel like losing yourself.
With distance, we may discover that an old identity was dissolving so a truer life could emerge.
There are experiences we cannot understand while we are living through them.
At the time, we are often simply trying to survive. We do not yet have the language, perspective or capacity to see what is really happening. It is only later, when enough time has passed and we feel safe enough to look back, that the pieces begin to form a story.
I believe my perimenopause began when I was around 43. At the same time, my mum became seriously ill. She died three years later, after a long period in which my attention was focused almost entirely on her, my children and everything that needed to be carried.
There was very little space left for me to notice what was happening inside my own body and life.
By the time I finally came up for air, I was about 47 and deep inside a transformation I had not realised had begun. From my perspective, it felt as though something had changed overnight.
When the old life loses its colour
The world seemed to turn into a black-and-white film. I no longer enjoyed being around people. I did not look forward to travelling, riding my bike or doing any of the things that had once made me feel alive.
Nothing brought me joy.
When I try to describe that period now, the closest word I have is suicidal, although I still do not know whether that is technically what I was experiencing. I only know that life had lost its meaning, and the love I felt for my children was the thread that kept me connected to it.
At the time, I thought something had gone terribly wrong with me.
I began desperately searching for answers and discovered Human Design. Around the same time, I learnt what happens to a caterpillar inside the chrysalis. Its old form dissolves before the butterfly can emerge.
That image gave me hope because it offered a different interpretation of what I was experiencing. Perhaps falling apart did not automatically mean that my life was ending. Perhaps an identity which had served me for decades could no longer carry me into the next chapter.
The woman I had been was dissolving, but the woman I was becoming was not yet visible.
That space between identities can be frightening. We have spent decades knowing who we are through our roles, responsibilities and relationships. We have been the ones who organise, nurture, provide, solve problems and keep life moving.
Then, somewhere around 50, the old answers stop working.
The life that once fitted us may begin to feel unbearably small. Things we tolerated for years become difficult to ignore. Relationships, responsibilities and ways of working that once felt normal may suddenly feel unequal or exhausting.
We may also feel a strong need to withdraw from the world.
This is often described as isolation, which makes it sound like an automatic problem to solve. Of course, there are times when withdrawal is connected to depression and a woman needs real support. But I do not believe every desire for solitude should be treated as evidence that something is wrong.
Sometimes a woman needs privacy because she can no longer hear herself beneath the demands, opinions and expectations surrounding her.
She may need to close the door for a while because something new is forming behind it.
The wisdom that arrives afterwards
I understand those years differently now.
I do not think I needed to become more resilient, more positive or better at pushing through. I needed space to grieve my mum, my younger self and the identity I had spent decades building.
I needed to retreat from the noise long enough to remember who I was underneath all the roles I had carried.
The wisdom did not arrive while I was in the middle of the experience. It came later, when I could look back without judging the woman I had been. From that distance, I could begin to recognise what that chapter had been asking me to release.
This is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about the way we speak about women around 50. We are often given the impression that growing older is a process of decline and that our task is to preserve as much of our younger selves as possible.
My own experience has taught me something very different.
Growing older can be a profound movement towards truth. We become less willing to abandon ourselves to keep other people comfortable. We begin to notice what drains our energy and what makes us feel alive. We can finally see the patterns running through our lives and understand that our experiences were not random or wasted.
I no longer believe women should have to wear their suffering as proof of strength. There is nothing empowering about expecting women to survive increasingly impossible circumstances and then praising them for their resilience.
But I do honour what those years taught me.
They taught me that withdrawing is not always disappearing. Sometimes it is how we return to ourselves.
They taught me that an identity ending does not mean our life is over. It may mean that a deeper and more honest life is ready to begin.
Most of all, they taught me that the years around 50 are not simply something we must endure. They are a threshold where we can finally understand what our lives have been preparing us for.
If you are standing somewhere inside that transition, The 50 Threshold will help you explore what may be changing and why this chapter is asking something different of you.
With so much love & respect for what you are building.
Sharonah x
