Things That Are True - Ruminations Upon Turning Forty

Warning: cringe-inducing earnestness ahead. If you're looking for cynicism, click away. You'll not find it here.

My 40th birthday party - photo by HWSNBN

A month ago today, I turned 40.

I had a half a dozen half-written posts in my head at the time, which have grown to a dozen since. Things I've wanted to say: an update on my Fit by Forty mission, discussions of celebrations, birthday cake for the non-dairy set, clever quips about passing life's milestones, and some Significant Ponderings Upon Reaching Adulthood. It's taken a month for all of that to simmer on the back burner of my mental landscape and bubble over into this:

I'm 40. And I don't care anymore.


Let me clarify: this is not "I don't care anymore, nothing matters and what if it did." I have not been tsunami'd by a rogue wave of apathy. The exact opposite, in fact. I am as passionate, as engaged, and possibly more driven than I've ever been. This is "I know what I know, I love what I love, and I no longer give a damn what other people think."

This, friends and relations, is what freedom feels like.

This is a huge deal for someone like me. I have expended a lot of energy - enough kW hours to make a serious dent in the global energy crisis - being consumed with anxiety about not fitting in, worrying about what to wear, what to say, how to act. I have, more than once, allowed my fear to sink me into utter paralysis. I've not done things I desperately, achingly wanted to do - talk to that guy, write that song, go to that event, try that new scary thing - because of my fear of Getting It Wrong. Sheer will pushed me forward on occasion, but more often than not, I feigned aloofness and pretended what I really wanted didn't matter. I opted out.

No more.

An actual photo I took today just before the scribbling began

As I write this, I'm sitting in a cafe that is much cooler than I am. I put my pen down periodically (yes, I still write with pen and paper occasionally - I like the tactile nature of it) and dip in and out of the stream of conversation around me, capturing vignettes of people's public and private lives. I'm surrounded by 20-something hipsters. I admire their easy confidence, their languid coolness, their uninhibited friendships. And I wonder what I looked like at their age to a 40 year old woman sitting scribbling in a notebook nearby. Did I seem so easy and comfortable in my own skin? Or could she tell I was afraid of looking foolish every waking moment of every day? And are these beautiful younger-than-me men and women plagued by the angst (existential and otherwise) that plagued me at their age?

It feels sudden, this I-don't-give-a-damn liberation, but I'm sure, like everything else, that it's not that simple, that it's been creeping up on me far longer than I've been aware. It's just the introspection of watching a major milestone approach and go past that's made it front-and-centre.

I spent my twenties figuring out who I was in the wake of a disastrous and abusive relationship. What other people thought of me was always top of mind. In my thirties, I had a better poker face, but I was still consumed with how I appeared to others. The things that made me happy - designer clothes, extravagant vacations, expensive restaurants - were still tied up in how other people saw me. If I deconstructed every choice I made in the ten years between 27 and 37, what other people thought was the single most important factor every time.

Motherhood - ah motherhood: paradoxically crisis-of-confidence inducing and magnificently empowering all at once. While the mere act of living my life, examining my mistakes, and choosing better the next time has contributed to this new, giddy sense of freedom, it's motherhood that has triggered a quiet revolution in the way I look at the world. I've always been someone who had to know how to do something perfectly before I would even try it - as a result I didn't try a lot of new things. But becoming a parent isn't something I could know how to do before I actually did it. No matter how many books I read or friends I talk to, every person's experience of parenthood is different, and I can't do anything but figure it out as I go.

And Get It Wrong. Boy, do I get it wrong. I angst. I worry. I fret. It's a struggle, and a challenge, and a different game every day - which would have stopped me in my tracks ten years ago. Even five years ago.

But I keep doing it anyway. Aloofness isn't possible. Opting out simply isn't an option.

The getting it wrong and doing it anyway is a monumental change for me. Learning to be a parent has given me the permission to fail, and the courage to try to fail better next time. To just get over myself, to challenge my own assumptions, to reach out, to share my hopes and dreams in this space, and most importantly to believe that my hopes and dreams do matter. Pretty heady stuff.

Web cam photo taken right this minute

Hi. I'm Alexis.

My hair gets frizzy. My teeth are crooked. I make mistakes. I know what I know, I love what I love, and I stand up for what I believe in. I'm 40. And I don't give a damn.

Can I get a booyah?

Things That Are True - Breastfeeding

“Your rack is shrinking.”

Said my husband, the poet, the other night as I was undressing for bed.

And it’s true.

The Boobs of Doom, we named them early in my pregnancy, when they swelled from a B to a D cup seemingly overnight, when my aureolae grew to the size of demitasse saucers and my nipples became rather aggressively brown and determined to have a look around for themselves. Post partum, as the milk came in, they ballooned to a DD/E. Yes, from a B to an E. That’s 4 cup sizes for those of you playing along at home… We began to affectionately call them The Boobs That Ate New York.

My husband, delighted, felt like he was married to a 1950’s pin up.

I found my new mammarian bounty cumbersome. Although I appreciated that the giant boobs balanced out what had become a seriously generous ass, I couldn’t get used to them. They were in the way. Running to catch the elevator left me gasping in pain. No bra could adequately contain them, and they were inconvenient, leaking milk at inopportune moments. And the nursing pads, and their failures. Classy, that breast pad peeking up out of the top of your shirt, milk leaking out of your no longer protected nipple below. Especially in the grocery store when you’ve finally carved out 15 minutes for yourself away from your adored but exhausting little one, and someone else’s baby starts to cry and oh dear here come the pins and needles and… Gush. Awesome.

I may be the only woman in the history of breasts to rejoice that mine are slowly disappearing. I am so happy, now that The Boy is getting most of his nourishment from solid food, that these unruly milk factories are now tucking themselves sensibly into D cups again. (D cups! What I once would have considered “stripper boobs” are now something I find sensible…)

But here’s the thing:

I have loved breastfeeding. LOVED IT. Far more than I ever could have guessed, back in the unknowing days of my pregnancy, reading all the reasons that breastfeeding is a Good Thing, approaching it as an intellectual concept, wanting to do what was best for my child.

I have loved it so much more than I would have imagined in those early difficult days. (And they are difficult. Don’t let anyone fool you on that count. It is hard, and it does hurt, and you will torture yourself with guilt for wanting to give up, even if you keep going. Gawd, the senseless guilt we new mothers heap on our own heads…)

And here’s why I have loved it so:

I’m an admitted control freak. I like to know what’s coming. I have to have a plan. I have to know how it’s all going to happen, fit together, and turn out in the end. And I've always been this way. My parents tell stories of having to prepare small-child-me for outings by describing, in detail, what was going to happen. Once they didn’t know there would be a dog at a friend’s home we were visiting, and apparently I freaked out to an embarrassing degree.

Being a control freak and a brand new mom simultaneously is… Well, it’s imfuckingpossible, frankly. I felt so out of control. I felt so lost in not-knowing. Things were happening to me and around me without me having any clue what was coming next. For someone like me, this was at times sheer torture.

But I could feed my child.

Even when I was so tired I couldn’t remember my own name, I could feed my child. I held on to that, like an anchor keeping me still in the maelstrom that my life had become.

Yes, there are a million reasons to breastfeed. You can read about them somewhere else. Here’s the one that made the difference for me, and that I don’t see discussed much: breastfeeding gave me a tremendous sense of power.

And not the wrong kind of power – not power over something or someone. Not a power born of ego. At a time when I was plagued with insecurities, buried in guilt, and terrified of Doing It Wrong, watching my baby grow and thrive, knowing that my body was his sole source of nourishment gave me a real sense of quiet competence. I have, my entire life, always defined myself intellectually. As I watched him grow out of the tiny onesies I’d so lovingly bought before he was born, and saw his skinny little newborn legs fill out and develop pudgy rolls, I gradually grew into a sort of awe for my physical self.

Look! Look what my body can do.

The Boy at 3 months


His body takes breast milk I've made and turns it into eyelashes. And fingernails. And teeth! As an atheist, this is the closest to a sense of reverence I have ever been.

The Boy sleeps - 10 months old

Even today, as The Boy reaches 11 months on The Outside, I look at him and rejoice in how healthy and happy a little guy he is.

The Boy at almost 11 months

And I forgive my still alarmingly generous ass, and the way I look in a bathing suit at 11 months post partum, and all the physical imperfections my control freak self used to pick apart in the mirror.

Because look what my body can do.

The Boy at the playground a couple of weeks ago

Now that The Boy has started self-weaning (we're down to 3 or 4 feeds a day), I won’t miss The Boobs That Ate New York.

But I’ll miss what they’ve represented.