Writing About Midlife

Writing will help you, heal you, introduce you to yourself. Join me on Medium Day and let’s discuss.

Women’s Stories Matter

As a teacher, writer, and midlife woman, I find that women so often think they are not real writers, or that their stories are not important or that no one will care about what they have to say.

This is not true.

In the classes I teach, women bring up all the time how they feel left out of history. It came up this week when a woman in class was talking about her education in the Ivy League in the 1970s. She said she wanted to write about the sexism, homophobia, and mental health issues she witnessed at that time. The class was riveted.

The only way we can capture our stories is if we write them and share them. We need to steep in the knowledge that women’s stories are important, that they matter, and that women need to hear and know and read other women’s stories. Writing our stories transform us, maybe even saves our lives — or someone else’s life. We will never know if we don’t write our stories. We will never know if we keep them locked inside of us.

Mileage is a Plus

Here’s a little secret about aging: as we age, women often feel freer, more confident, bolder, not less. Midlife is a great time to reflect, unpack, divulge, share, be seen and heard and be vivid in our lives. The fading out can happen while we are trying to please and trying to perfectly parent and trying to find love and our life path and ourselves.

At midlife, we’ve got some mileage. We have lived through love and loss and disappointment and success and betrayal and faith and loss of faith and who know what else. Our bodies have changed and gotten rounder and quirkier and maybe stronger and more delicate at the same time. In midlife, we have seen some daggers and some rainbow shiny hills and navigated some dark holes that maybe we have even fallen into and had to claw ourselves out of, inch by inch. In other words, we have lived.

Midlife is a great time to write.

Your Words are Worthy

Don’t let anyone tell you that you need to be something else, something more, to be worthy of writing. You don’t. You don’t need to be younger or older or more famous or less down on your luck. You don’t need to be anything other than what you are to write. As Nike says, just do it. Writing will help you, heal you, re-introduce you to yourself. Your words are worthy.

Writing is a courageous act. It takes courage. If you can find a supportive community, it makes a difference. Having writer friends to talk writing with, to uplift and encourage and inspire your spirit, can help anchor your commitment to write and keep you riding the wave of your momentum.

If you feel the call to write or need inspiration or simply want to talk women and writing in a relaxed and open forum, join us on Medium Day at the Writing About Midlife Author Panel at 7:30 am pst/10:30 am est. In this session, you’ll learn how small moments and major transitions can inspire midlife essays, how to use prompts to inspire fresh material, and how sharing your work can help take your writing about midlife to the next level. Hope to see you there!