Gen X has simply reached the messy middle and needs guidance navigating it physically and mentally. Well, now I am 54 and feel that I'm almost through that confusing part of life, and I bring you good news: this unravelling is temporary. We stand in front of the mirror and wonder who we're looking at. Women born to Baby Boomer parents handle stress well we push on through with a smile.īut as we head out of our mid-40s, many of us are ambushed by the sudden disappearance of our mojo. As editor of Cosmopolitan and Elle, in the newspaper features I've written and commissioned, and in the podcast I now co-host, Postcards From Midlife, I have examined, discussed and forensically investigated our experience as women. I have built my whole career as a journalist on understanding the lives of the women of Generation X.

'What's wrong with me?' I kept muttering under my breath, just like my increasingly independent daughters, who said the same thing to me every time I appeared, in that brutally dismissive way of teenage girls.Įx-Cosmopolitan editor Lorraine Candy (pictured) has shared her top tips for acing life's 'Second Act'Īnd yet, in all my WhatsApp friendship groups, other women were saying it, too - experiencing the same confusion, the same midlife sense of loss and a looming identity crisis. Out of the blue I couldn't sleep, I couldn't remember anything and I was exhausted all the time. Taking clean laundry slowly up and down the stairs. I just wanted to 'drip' around the house all day, like a sad midlife goth. The same biscuit tin staring at me from the same shelf every day the same shopping list at the same supermarket each week.Īnd sometimes, out of the blue, I couldn't summon the energy to care about anything. Sometimes, I would be gripped by an inexplicable rage at the small regularity of things. Minus the 'will she, won't she' affair with dashing businessman Leonard.Īll of a sudden I felt overwhelmed by my life.

One day in my late 40s, I woke up and found I'd turned into her. Remember melancholy Ria, played by Wendy Craig, from the TV sitcom Butterflies in the late 1970s?

Obsession k loraine