The Women Who Hold Everything Together
Somewhere along the way, we became very good at looking after everyone else. Perhaps this is the stage of life when we learn to look after ourselves too.
There is a strange thing that happens when your children grow up.
You imagine they'll stop needing you.
Mine are 26 and 22 now. They're capable adults with their own lives, work, university, decisions and problems to solve.
And yet I'm still very much their mum.
There are conversations about work. Questions about university. Ideas bounced backwards and forwards. The phone calls where they don't necessarily need you to fix anything, but they need somewhere to put the problem for a while.
Then there's my husband.
He's retired now. I'm still working.
That's been an adjustment in itself.
He can walk into my office in the middle of the day because, technically, we're both at home.
Except he's at home.
I'm at work.
We're still working that one out.
Then there are my parents and both getting older. They're at different stages and need different things from me and my brothers.
The direction of care is slowly changing.
My children still need me, although increasingly I have to let them look after themselves.
My parents need me more.
And there I am in the middle.
The sandwich generation, apparently.
Although I've always thought that makes it sound rather more orderly than it actually is.
Because everyone I care about is somewhere near the top of my list.
And generally, somewhere near the bottom...
is me.
The person who remembers everything
I think women become extraordinarily good at carrying things.
Not necessarily shopping bags or washing baskets.
Information.
We carry an extraordinary amount of information around in our heads.
For me these days, much of it is business.
I'm an entrepreneur, which means there isn't really anyone else to hand the final decision to.
Should I take Lucia Gray into America?
How much money can I invest?
Are sales up?
Are they down?
How much stock do I need?
What happens next?
Nobody else can really answer those questions for me.
Then there are the family finances and all the other decisions and responsibilities quietly running in the background.
Sometimes I wonder how on earth I actually go to sleep.
And some nights, I don't.
But I think this is something many women understand, whether they're running a business or running a household or doing both.
It's not necessarily the doing that's exhausting.
It's the remembering.
The anticipating.
The thinking three steps ahead.
The constant little hum in your brain reminding you there is something else that needs your attention.
There's a name for it now.
The mental load.
I don't remember hearing that phrase when I was younger.
But I certainly recognise the feeling.
The moment I realised I couldn't do everything
My instinct has always been to take care of things.
I deliberately built a career that allowed me to work from home because I wanted to be there for my children.
And somewhere along the way I developed a fairly strong belief that if something needed doing, I should probably do it.
Or perhaps, if I'm being completely truthful:
Nobody else would do it quite the way I would.
Then my son had an accident.
My immediate response was exactly what it had always been.
I'll take care of it.
Doctors.
Appointments.
Questions.
Decisions.
Whatever needed doing, I would do it.
Except this time I couldn't.
I was running a business. I wasn't sleeping. I was stressed and trying to stay on top of everything.
Eventually it became too much.
My husband was caring for our son and I had to say to both of them:
You need to do this.
Make the calls.
Talk to the doctors.
Make the appointments.
Work it out.
And do you know what happened?
They did.
They actually did very well.
It sounds ridiculously simple when I write it down.
But it taught me something I'm still learning.
Sometimes the people around us let us look after them because we always have.
That doesn't necessarily mean they can't look after themselves.
Sometimes we have to believe they're capable enough to let them.
And then your parents start needing you
At almost the same time we're learning to let our children become adults, something else begins happening.
Our parents get older.
For me, the change became very real when my father was diagnosed with dementia.
Suddenly there wasn't an option to think:
Dad can sort that out.
There were things he genuinely couldn't sort out anymore.
The people who spent decades being the adults in your life slowly start needing you to be the adult in theirs.
There's something quite confronting about that.
You're letting go in one direction while taking hold in the other.
Your children need less.
Your parents need more.
And you're standing somewhere in between trying to work out where exactly you fit into all of this.
Nobody warned me what my own body would be doing at the same time
This is perhaps the part of the sandwich-generation conversation that doesn't get talked about enough.
While you're managing all of this change around you, your own body can suddenly decide it has a few things it would like to discuss too.
I've watched girlfriends sail through perimenopause and menopause seemingly without much trouble.
That has not been my experience.
At times I feel as though if there was something hormonal that could happen to me during this stage of life, I'd experience it.
Hormonal fluctuations.
Thyroid issues.
Inflammation.
Pain.
And sleep.
Or rather, the lack of it.
Waking at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning night after night is exhausting.
There were periods when I'd go to bed and wake in pain after spending far too many hours sitting at my desk.
And underneath all of it?
I kept charging through.
Because that's what I'd always done.
Work still needed doing.
People still needed me.
Life didn't stop because I wasn't feeling particularly wonderful.
But eventually I realised something.
I couldn't keep treating my own body as though it was the least important thing I had to look after.
I don't want to spend the next chapter watching from the sidelines
This is probably what's changed my thinking more than anything else.
I'm heading towards 60.
And instead of finding that depressing, I'm actually quite excited about what's ahead.
I've worked for a very long time.
Over the next three to five years, I'd like to start stepping back.
Travel more.
See more of the world.
Walk around cities I've never visited.
Explore.
Have lunch somewhere beautiful.
Wake up the next morning and do it all again.
I've spent decades building a life.
I want to be physically capable of enjoying it.
And that has changed the way I think about looking after myself now.
I started back at personal training because I realised I needed to get stronger.
And I mean actually stronger.
Not thinner.
Not "in shape."
Strong.
At the moment my muscles regularly inform me that they're not entirely thrilled about this new arrangement.
But that's a different kind of pain.
It's the feeling of using muscles that haven't been doing enough for a long time.
And strangely, I quite like knowing what it represents.
I'm building something.
Not for today.
For the woman I want to be at 60, 65 and beyond.
I've stopped looking for the closest parking spot
The changes have been surprisingly small.
I bought myself a standing desk because sitting all day wasn't working for my body anymore.
Now I'm up and down throughout the day.
Years ago, when I worked from home, I'd be annoyed if I had to stop working to put on a load of washing or do something around the house.
It interrupted me.
Now?
I see it as five minutes away from my desk.
Five minutes of walking around.
Five minutes when my body isn't sitting in the same position.
I used to look for the closest parking spot to the shops.
Now I'm perfectly happy to park further away.
I'm actually looking for opportunities to walk.
That's a very different mindset.
I'm not exercising because I'm punishing myself for something I ate.
I'm moving because I want a body that will carry me into the life I want next.
And I wish I'd understood that earlier.
Self-care in midlife isn't what I thought it was
For years, I think I misunderstood self-care.
We've turned it into another enormous list of things women should apparently be doing.
Meditate.
Journal.
Drink enough water.
Eat perfectly.
Exercise.
Stretch.
Sleep eight hours.
Practise gratitude.
Do your skincare.
Take your supplements.
Walk ten thousand steps.
Have a morning routine.
Have an evening routine.
Suddenly even relaxing requires an impressive amount of organisation.
I don't need another job.
I've also realised that the best wellness systems aren't about adding more things to my life. They're about making the things I already need to do feel easier.
What I've discovered is that the things that genuinely make me feel better are much simpler.
I've become much more interested in the small daily routines that make life easier than trying to create the perfect wellness routine.
Starting my morning a little later because I've finally accepted that I'm not a morning person.
Eating well.
Working for a few hours and then going for a walk when the sun is out.
Going to yoga.
Training.
Finishing work at a reasonable time.
Not working every weekend.
Having lunch with friends.
Going shopping simply because I feel like wandering around the shops.
Every second month I've started having a facial on a Sunday afternoon.
I never really did that when I was younger.
Now I love it.
Not because I suddenly became obsessed with facials.
Because for that little part of Sunday afternoon...
I stop.
The same thing happens at yoga.
Or in an infrared sauna.
There's nowhere else I'm supposed to be.
Nothing I can answer.
Nothing I can fix.
Nothing I can organise.
I just stop.
And I've realised:
All my life, I haven't really stopped.
Now I'm learning how.
I'm still not very good at doing nothing
I wish I could tell you I've completely mastered this.
I haven't.
I've become much better at giving myself permission to have lunch with a friend.
I can have a facial without feeling guilty.
I can go to yoga.
I can take time out.
But sit on the sofa in the middle of the day and read a book?
I'm still working on that one.
There's a little voice somewhere that tells me I should be doing something productive.
I suspect I'm not the only woman who has that voice.
Maybe it takes time to unlearn decades of believing our value comes from what we accomplish for everyone else. I'm slowly learning that doing things more gently doesn't mean doing them less well.
Maybe sitting down with a book will be my advanced course.
I'll let you know how I go.
One of the gifts of getting older
We talk a lot about what women lose as we age.
Youth.
Hormones.
Energy.
Muscle.
The ability to eat exactly what we ate at 30 and expect absolutely nothing to happen.
But we don't talk nearly enough about what we gain.
Experience.
Perspective.
Judgement.
Confidence.
The ability to walk into a complicated situation and recognise that you've seen something like this before.
The ability to help someone younger avoid a mistake you had to learn the hard way.
The ability to say, "Don't worry about that bit. This is the bit we need to fix."
And perhaps, eventually, the confidence to recognise:
I'm actually very good at this.
I've found that surprisingly lovely.
Because while I'm working on making my body stronger for the next chapter, I've realised something else.
I'm not starting that chapter from scratch.
I'm walking into it carrying decades of knowledge with me.
And unlike some of the other things I've carried over the years...
this is something I don't want to put down.
What I'd tell my 40-year-old self
If I could sit down with myself at 40, I don't think I'd tell her to work harder.
I wouldn't tell her to make more money.
I wouldn't tell her to build a bigger business.
I'd tell her:
Those things will sort themselves out.
There will always be another job.
Another project.
Another bill.
Another opportunity.
Another way to make money.
But look after your body.
Build strength while you're younger.
Eat well.
Move.
Don't wait until your body is hurting before you start paying attention to it.
Because maintaining strength is so much easier than trying to build it back later.
And take the moments.
Have lunch.
Go away.
Sit in the sun.
Spend the afternoon with someone you love.
Do something simply because you enjoy it.
Because those moments don't come back.
I'd also tell her something I'm only really learning now:
Believe in the people around you.
They're stronger than you think.
They can make the appointment.
They can make the phone call.
They can solve the problem.
They can look after themselves.
Sometimes we become so good at holding everything together that we don't notice we're also preventing other people from learning how to hold their own pieces.
You don't have to carry everything simply because you're capable of carrying it.
There's one more person I'm responsible for now
My children are still on my list.
My husband is on it.
My parents are on it.
My businesses are certainly on it.
But I've realised there is someone else I need to start making decisions for.
Future me.
The woman I hope will be walking through some beautiful European city in five years.
The woman who can carry her own suitcase.
The woman who has the strength and energy to explore all day.
The woman who can say yes when someone asks, "Shall we walk there?"
The woman who worked hard for decades and finally has more time to enjoy what she built.
Every time I go to training, I'm doing something for her.
Every walk.
Every time I stand instead of sit.
Every time I leave my desk.
Every Sunday afternoon when I stop.
I'm starting to put something aside for my future that has nothing to do with money.
Strength.
And perhaps that's what self-care means to me now.
Not putting myself ahead of everyone else.
I'm not sure that's even what I want.
It's simply putting myself on the list.
The women who hold everything together
I know so many women who are holding an extraordinary amount together.
Children.
Parents.
Partners.
Businesses.
Jobs.
Homes.
Finances.
Friendships.
And all the invisible things nobody else even knows they're carrying.
We're capable.
We're resilient.
We're very good at getting on with it.
But perhaps there comes a point when being capable isn't about how much more we can carry.
Perhaps it's knowing what we can finally put down.
Letting our adult children solve their own problems.
Letting our partners step in.
Accepting help.
Taking the afternoon off.
Going for the walk.
Booking the facial.
Building the strength.
And maybe, eventually, sitting down in the middle of the day and reading the bloody book.
Because the people we love deserve our care.
But so do we.
And perhaps self-care in midlife isn't about reinventing ourselves at all.
Perhaps it's simply remembering that we are one of the people we're responsible for looking after.
And maybe it's time we moved ourselves a little further up the list.
I'm curious, what is one thing you've started doing for yourself as you've got older that you no longer feel guilty about?
