Am I Midlife, Later Life Or Just A Hag Now?

Does being a 60 plus woman need a definition?

I’m in a bit of twist. I felt as if I knew where I was in my 50s.

I was firmly in midlife.

I’ve been 60 for over 6 weeks and so far I’m very happy with my new age.

Apart from when people ask me am I ok with it? Then I wonder why they’re asking. I say I’m fine. They say really? Are you really?

What’s that all about?

Anyway,

Like I said I was really comfortable in the 50s club but now I’ve had to give up my membership card and join a new club and I hardly know in it. Anyone outside my circle of school friends who are 60. We’ve all become 60 now over the months since last December.

My 60’s friends are fabulous. But I don’t see many like us outside of this tight knit circle. I guess that can contribute to feeling a bit of an oddity.

Should I even worry or care about fitting into my new age? I’d got really comfortable with being midlife but if I was filling in some sort of online questionnaire there’d probably be a different box to check at 60.

What am I now?

Am I classed as later life? No longer midlife?

Or maybe insert the word ‘hag’?

Am I Hag now??

I suddenly remembered a book I’d came across that was something to do with becoming a hag.

I found it.

Wondered if I might have to transition to The Hag Club.

So I bought it. I haven’t read it yet. I do that, too. Collect books as decor.

It’s called:

Hagitude; Reimagining the Second Half of Life by Sharon Blackie.

It arrived just before I went to Ibiza.

I have a question, though…

Is the second half of your life classed as from 50 onwards?

Does that mean we calculate a full life as 100 years?

Or is it just that this part is the second half and if you’re lucky you’ll make it well past a couple more decades?

I’ve got myself into a right conundrum, haven’t I?

I’d love to know what you think.

The book has this magnificent quote in it so I can’t wait to dive in….

‘There can be a perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish.’

Beautiful.

Usually as older women we only find derogatory words to describe us.

Try searching on the web for ‘words to describe older women’.

Hags, harridans, battle-axes, crones, frumps, old bags, harridans.

All words that traditionally have meant to make us feel invisible and make us shrink away into the wallpaper so I’m keen to find out more in Hagitude.

I really hope to find more positive words and stories about older women. When I was 50 it was the same story and slowly through that decade I started to see change.

I hope 60 plus women can shine, too.

Maybe Hagitude might hold the key.

I even designed a Hag Club t-shirt for a bit of fun.

You can buy it in black or white.

Ciao for now xo