Who Said This Was the Age We Were Supposed to Have It All Figured Out?

A letter from the Host.

There was a time when forty sounded incredibly grown-up. Then, rather inconveniently, we got here.

I remember when forty sounded ancient.

Not old exactly. Just... established.

Forty-year-old women, as far as I understood them, knew what they were doing. They owned proper coats. They had opinions about mortgages. They remembered to book dentist appointments six months in advance and presumably never found themselves eating toast over the kitchen sink because they'd forgotten to buy anything for dinner.

Their lives were settled.

At least that's how it looked when I was twenty.

Then you get somewhere around this age yourself [or close to it!] and discover something nobody thought to mention:

You still feel like you.

There is no ceremonial handing over of the answers. Nobody appears on your birthday with a leather-bound manual entitled Right, Here's How Everything Works.

You can be incredibly capable and still have absolutely no idea what you're doing about one fairly significant part of your life.

You can run a company and Google can you freeze cooked rice?

You can raise children and still call your own mother because something happened and you don't know what to do.

You can have a pension, a skincare routine and several respectable pieces of furniture and still occasionally look around at your life and think:

Hang on. Is this it? Is this what I'm doing?

I find that strangely reassuring.

We were sold quite a tidy version of adulthood

There was a sequence.

You grew up. You found somebody. You built a career. You bought somewhere. You had children, if you wanted them. Eventually there was a nice kitchen and perhaps a dog.

The details varied, but the general idea was that life moved towards settled.

And once you got there, presumably you stayed there.

Except women in their late thirties, forties and fifties are increasingly discovering that life doesn't work like that at all.

Relationships end.

Careers that once felt exciting begin to feel strangely small.

Friendships change.

Children grow up.

Parents get older.

Bodies change.

Money changes.

Priorities change.

Sometimes you change before anything around you does, which may be the most disorientating version of all.

You can look at a life you deliberately built and realise that some part of you no longer quite fits inside it.

That doesn't necessarily mean the life was wrong.

It may simply mean you aren't finished.

There is a peculiar pressure around this age

At twenty-five, changing direction is exciting.

At forty-five, people start asking questions.

Are you really going to leave that job?

You're dating again?

You're starting a business now?

You want another baby?

You don't want children?

You're moving?

You're going back to university?

You're leaving him?

You're staying with him?

Apparently there is an invisible committee somewhere keeping minutes.

And women seem to be particularly good at imagining its disapproval.

Because by this point, we have accumulated evidence. A CV. A relationship history. Responsibilities. People who depend on us. A version of ourselves that other people recognise.

Changing something can feel less like making a decision and more like disrupting the entire filing system.

So we stay.

Sometimes because staying is right.

And sometimes because we think we've missed the age at which we're allowed to begin again.

I don't think we talk enough about the middle

We love beginnings.

New relationship. New house. New job. New baby. New business.

And we understand endings, even when they're painful.

But there is often a long, strange stretch between the two where you know something is changing but you don't yet know what it's changing into.

That part isn't particularly photogenic.

You don't have the triumphant I finally did it story yet.

You may not even know what it is.

You're simply less certain about things that used to feel certain.

Perhaps you're bored.

Perhaps you're restless.

Perhaps you're grieving a version of your life you thought you'd have.

Perhaps everything looks perfectly good from the outside, which somehow makes wanting something different feel even more unreasonable.

There is a temptation to rush this stage.

To announce the new plan. Buy the course. Download the app. Reinvent yourself by Monday.

But perhaps the middle isn't a problem to get out of.

Perhaps it's where we notice what no longer fits.

Starting again doesn't always look dramatic

We tend to imagine reinvention as somebody selling everything and moving to Italy.

Which, admittedly, has its appeal.

But most new chapters begin much less impressively.

You apply for something.

You say no.

You go somewhere alone.

You tell somebody the truth.

You open the document.

You make the appointment.

You stop pretending you're fine with something you haven't been fine with for years.

You buy a ridiculously expensive notebook because apparently this new life requires stationery.

Then, very slowly, something shifts.

The strange thing about changing your life is that you often don't realise you're doing it while it's happening.

You think you're making one small decision.

Then another.

Then another.

And eventually you look back and realise those tiny decisions were the beginning.

Perhaps we're not meant to arrive

I used to think confidence meant knowing.

Now I wonder whether it has more to do with being willing not to know.

To say: I thought I wanted this. I'm not sure I do anymore.

Or: I have no idea how this is going to work, but I want to try.

Or even: My life is good. I am grateful for it. And there are still things I want.

That last one matters.

Wanting more doesn't automatically make you ungrateful for what you have.

You can love your children and miss freedom.

You can appreciate your marriage and want more from your own life.

You can be successful and ambitious for something completely different.

You can have built something beautiful and still feel the pull towards another room.

We are allowed complexity.

Maybe this is actually the interesting bit

Because there is something rather wonderful about reaching an age where you've lived enough life to know that plans go wrong and somehow you survive them.

You've loved people you thought you'd love forever.

You've lost things you thought you couldn't live without.

You've made terrible decisions that eventually became excellent stories.

You've probably spent money on at least one item of clothing that can only be explained by whatever was happening culturally at the time.

And you're still here.

Maybe we don't arrive at forty with all the answers.

Maybe we arrive with something more useful.

Evidence.

Evidence that we've figured things out before.

Evidence that we can change our minds.

Evidence that the life we imagined at twenty isn't the only life available to us.

And perhaps enough experience to know that a little uncertainty doesn't mean everything is falling apart.

Sometimes it means something is moving.

So if you don't have it all figured out...

Good.

Neither does anybody else.

Some people simply have better kitchens.

There isn't an age by which your life has to become a finished product. You haven't missed the deadline for becoming interested in something new, wanting something different, falling wildly in love, changing direction, making money, losing money, beginning again or deciding that something you once wanted isn't for you anymore.

Perhaps adulthood isn't the point at which we finally become certain.

Perhaps it's the point at which we realise we can trust ourselves even when we're not.

And if you're standing somewhere in the middle right now, no longer quite where you were, not yet sure where you're going, you don't necessarily need to rush.

Have a look around.

There might be more life here than you thought.

From our house to yours.