Article: TW Bookmark: Welcome to Time...

TW Bookmark: Welcome to Time Warner Bookmark!

TW Bookmark: Warner Books is proud to introduce our special guest, Stephanie Marston, author of "If Not Now, When? Reclaiming Ourselves at Midlife." A marriage, family, and child counselor with a master's degree in counseling psychology, Stephanie acts as a 'midwife' to help women make midlife the extraordinary rite of passage it can be.

TW Bookmark: Welcome to Time Warner Bookmark, Stephanie!

Stephanie Marston: Thank you. It's interesting because midlife has gotten such a bad rap in our culture. It's so misunderstood, and one of my hopes for my book was to help correct the misperception. Women of the baby boom generation have redefined marriage, motherhood, childbirth, friendship, careers — so why shouldn't we redefine midlife? The reality is that by the sheer magnitude of our numbers — 36 million women entered midlife in 1999 and by the year 2005 another 5 million women will have joined us — we are redefining a new middle age.

TW Bookmark: Why does midlife get such a bad rap in our society?

Stephanie Marston: Until fairly recently, midlife was seen as the beginning of the end for women. A label of 'older' (at least for women) meant worthless, sexless, invisible, over the hill. It was assumed that we would suddenly mutate into frumpy old women wearing muumuus, false eyelashes and sporting bad dye jobs. Midlife was seen as a wasteland, a time filled with loss — the loss of power, beauty and youth, and in our youth–worshipping culture women are thought to lose their femininity when entering midlife. The French feminist Francoise Giroud put it well when she said, "If femininity is something you can lose like you lose your pocketbook, hmmm, where in the world did I put my femininity?"

Serendie–guest: What prompted you to write this book?

Stephanie Marston: In part, it was prompted by my own so–called midlife crisis. I was going through a period of intense reevaluation and, to add to my own personal turmoil, my mother died suddenly around the same time. As I often do when I'm going through a difficult period, I went to the bookstore to see what I might find to act as a guiding companion, and I couldn't find anything that I wanted that addressed the issues that I was struggling with. There were a variety of books, but they were primarily about the physical aspects of menopause. None of them addressed the issues that I was wrestling with.

Stephanie Marston: It was at that point that I began the talk with all the smart middle–aged women that I knew, in order to find out how they were handling this thing called midlife. For the past 20 years, my professional passion had been working with children and parents as a professional family therapist, but when my daughter left for college, my interest in parenting diminished and the focus of my private practice shifted. I began to see women in their 40s, 50s and even some in their early 60s, and as a result of my own quest, as well as my clinical work, midlife became my new passion.

Stephanie Marston: Out of the interactions I had with my clients, as well as the initial conversations with other midlife women, the idea for this book was born. I interviewed more than 100 women from all walks of life and a multitude of situations from across both the U.S. and Canada. I was amazed that every woman was interesting in her own way. Each woman's story was unique, yet there were common themes. After each interview, I was elated. I felt like I'd hit pay dirt. Although the women often faced challenging issues, each one was now circling back to reclaim dreams and needs she had lost along the way. What I found, with few exceptions, was that women experience midlife as a time of renewal and rebirth. While some expressed this more tentatively than others, almost everyone characterized this as one of the best times of their lives.

Joey: In "If Not Now, When?" you say this is not our mother's midlife. What do you mean by that?

Stephanie Marston: Our mothers grew up in a time when midlife was seen as the beginning of the end. I don't know about you, but when I think back to my mother at 50, 50 seemed old. When you look around at other midlife women, you might notice that we look pretty darn good. And besides looking good, we're healthier, sexier, and more vital than women of our previous generations. If you think about it, the primary goal of women in our mothers' generation was to be loved, chosen, and financially secure. For many of our mothers, midlife threatened the very foundation of their lives. This certainly isn't the case for the majority of women of the baby boom generation. Many of us felt compelled to find our fulfillment not just in marriage and family, but in the larger world as well. Former Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder put it well when she said, "I have a brain and a uterus and I use both."

Geezer: Why do you call midlife an extraordinary gift? And how can women ensure that it becomes so?

Stephanie Marston: There's a certain sense of urgency that comes with knowing that time is finite, that this isn't a dress rehearsal, that we do in fact have an expiration date. Suddenly life becomes more precious. When women use midlife as a time to reevaluate their lives and to question anything they've been doing for a long time unquestioningly, it blossoms rather than fades midlife. Midlife gives women an opportunity to recall the passions and dreams they abandoned, and to nourish the unused aspects of their personality. It allows us to redefine our attractiveness based on our own preferences rather than on culturally–prescribed standards. It gives us an opportunity to harvest the wisdom, power, and strength we have acquired during the first half of our lives. Midlife allows us to become more understanding and accepting of ourselves because we're aware of our own mortality than we've ever been before. We tend to live more fully and seize the moment to realize our dream.

40ish: In your book you talk about the virtues of discovering your 'bad girl' at midlife. Can you explain what you mean?

Stephanie Marston: Yes. There's the old saying, "Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of." The truth is that we're supposed to go heavy on the sugar and hold the spice. In my book, I talk about bad girls as not hesitating to speak their minds and to stand up for what they believe in. Bad girls don't walk on eggshells and if they do, they wear stiletto heels. Bad girls aren't afraid to play hardball when it comes to negotiating a deal. Bad girls throw caution to the wind and paint their house steel blue with lavender trim when every other house in the neighborhood is basically beige. Bad girls don't hesitate to take an occasional mental health day and go to a day spa for pampering. Bad girls say no without a moment's hesitation and they're not afraid to teach their husbands how to operate heavy equipment — like the washer and dryer.

Stephanie Marston: When I say 'bad' I mean it in the very best sense of the word. You know, bad as in boldly, unabashedly ourselves. There's something truly freeing about throwing off our personal and societal restraints and allowing ourselves to be who we fully are rather than the edited sanitized version of ourselves. One of the primary tasks of midlife is to move beyond our limited view of ourselves. The drive now is towards wholeness, to become a 3–D Technicolor version of ourselves. We are being asked to reclaim our power.

Stephanie Marston: Have you noticed that women get a little dangerous at midlife? We're no longer so concerned with what people think of us or how much they love us. We can't keep the lid on ourselves any longer. Our motto is "No more baloney." We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Midlife's a time when women begin to tell it like it is. Since childhood, we've been taught to mistrust our own experiences and to keep our mouth shut. I'm kind of appalled when I think back on it, but on my bedroom wall I had a plaque that showed three monkeys — one covering its eyes, another its ears, and the third its mouth. What was I thinking? It's obvious now that I wasn't thinking. But this sentiment seems to have been a motto of girls who grew up in the late '40s and '50s. We were conditioned not to see what we see, hear what we hear, or know what we know. Girls were taught not to raise difficult issues. Well, those days are gone.

Stephanie Marston: I recently went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. I walked in, sat down in the chair, the hygienist put the napkin around my neck, and as I settled in to get my teeth cleaned she began to cough and sneeze dramatically. I asked if she was sick. She said she was mostly over her cold and that she wasn't contagious. I tried to settle down, but I couldn't ignore my growing discomfort. I asked, "Do you think you should be working?" She shot back. "I can't miss another day of work just because I have a cold." As I sat in the chair, I had visions of her germs engulfing me for the hour that she was going to be working in my mouth. To make matters worse, I was leaving the next day to go on vacation. I finally burst out, "I'm not comfortable." She said, "It's no worse than if you went to the grocery store." So I got up from the chair, put on my jacket, and said, "I'll come back another time." I walked out to the receptionist and rescheduled my appointment. In the past I might have politely nailed myself to the chair, but not any longer. One of our responsibilities as we go through this midlife passage is to speak the truth — the truth about what we've learned, the truth about what we see, the truth that lives in our hearts. We now have the responsibility to speak because we are the ones who know. I'd like to redefine the derogatory phrase 'bitch' as someone in total control of herself.

SbQ: I feel just a tad friskier since I turned 40, and couldn't care less now about what people think — of my hair, wardrobe, who I date, etc. Did you find a similar change?

Stephanie Marston: Absolutely. Right on! There's a chapter in my book called "Strut Your Stuff Even If It's Sagging." Since adolescence many of us have relied on external validation to confirm our sense of attractiveness. When girls stare in the mirror they're measuring themselves against an impossible standard of beauty, and this continues to be true for us today. Teenage girls are so concerned with how they're supposed to look that they can't see themselves clearly. What we learned as teenagers doesn't magically disappear over time. Many of us spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture the courage, expressiveness, and self–confidence we had before adolescence.

Stephanie Marston: In the 100–plus women I interviewed, as well as women in my private practice, none has ever been completely satisfied with her body. They complained about having thunder thighs, about being too thin, flat–chested or large–breasted...and the list went on. We measure our appearance against a fashion god who bestows approval or disapproval based on unrealistic ideals. The image we often have of ourselves is not our own, but rather a collage of images that conform to external standards of beauty. It takes years for us to move away from those images. Ironically, just as we're coming into our own, we become invisible in our youth–worshipping culture. I know it's upsetting, especially since most of us still feel attractive. This is when we wished we were living in Europe where older women are still appreciated, but while this lack of visibility can be difficult, it also brings us good news. It allows us to redefine ourselves and our sexuality, not in terms of youthfulness or some unrealistic ideal, but in terms of our own self–confidence and self–acceptance.

Stephanie Marston: As we shift away from the stereotypes of beauty, we discover the power to define ourselves in our own terms, but it takes time. Many women I spoke with seesawed back and forth between acceptance and tentativeness. So many women have been conditioned from childhood to believe that their appearance is their one and only self. The further we move away from the ideal of youthful beauty, the more we think that something's wrong with us. Every wrinkle, every age spot is an attack on who we truly are. Consequently, our essential self at times feels like a stranger, someone we'd like to know, but not at the expense of our safety and security. Many of us have tried at different times to extract ourselves from living up to others' judgement and now we're finally doing it.

Stephanie Marston: Take a minute and think about older women who you think of as attractive, or even women our own age that you find attractive. Chances are what is attractive about them is their warmth, their ease, their genuine interest in other people. It has less to do with physical image and everything to do with confidence and being fully ourselves and being comfortable in our own skin. At midlife we have the opportunity to redefine attractiveness for ourselves. The truth is self–confidence is a powerful beauty potion. Sure, we care about our appearance, but at midlife it's about maximizing our physical appearance and connecting with our sense of self–worth. In case you haven't noticed, authenticity and strength are sexy.

Aries Rising: Is midlife for women really just another developmental stage?

Stephanie Marston: Yes, it is a developmental stage, but somewhere between the age of 40 and 50, a woman will be shaken to her core. We often experience what I call a psychological emergency that throws us into a period of intense questioning. A psychological emergency can be triggered by a divorce, the death of a parent, a child leaving home, or needing our involvement far more or far less, a change in work, or a shift in the power balance of our primary relationship. We begin to rethink our experiences, relationships, and choices and reconsider what lies ahead. We begin to ask "Who am I really?" "What do I love?" "What are my own real needs and desires?" The choices we make as a result of this reevaluation will resonate the rest of our lives. Just as in adolescence — which is another important developmental stage and a major developmental transition, when we withdrew from the task and attachments of childhood — in midlife we must draw from the goals and priorities of our adulthood.

Stephanie Marston: It's only relatively recently that adult development was studied with the work of psychologists like Erik Erikson, Roger Gould, and others, that a new way of thinking about human growth was acknowledged by social scientists and psychologists. But most of the research was done by men who wanted to gain insight into their own psychological development. It wasn't until women entered the field of social psychology in large numbers that women's issues were studied. Harvard professor Carol Gilligan was one of the pioneers in the study of women's development. While girls fall asleep to themselves in adolescence, they lose track of their self–confidence, exuberance, and competence as they judge themselves against an impossible feminine ideal to please others, to be pretty, to be nice, to try and attract the opposite sex. Midlife, thank goodness, is the mirror image of adolescence. Throughout early adulthood women strive to achieve the ideal they established in adolescence. We need the experience of living before we can confront the limiting accommodations we've made from others' expectations. It's often not until midlife that a woman fully takes possession of her psychological strength and assumes complete responsibility for her own fulfillment. Now that we're no longer dependant on our own appearance to define us, now that we're less concerned about other peoples' opinions, we can recapture the freedom that many women experience during middle childhood. We reenter a period when we were self–confident, followed our own instincts, and explored our many and varied interests.

Stephanie Marston: Midlife is a time when women come full circle and reclaim the outspokenness, enthusiasm, adventurousness, and vitality we once had. In my book I talk about the return of the wild girl. Midlife is often a time when we retrieve the girl in blue jeans, ponytail, and denim shirt that we left on the shores of adolescence. In speaking with numerous women, both in my private practice as well as during interviews, it became clear that while each woman's longing is unique, there is a universal theme. They all want to be who they truly are and to reinstate themselves as the center of their own lives. Midlife is about remembering — remembering who we truly are; remembering our visions, hopes, and dreams; remembering our deepest yearning. It's about remembering what we've lost and reclaiming it. Midlife is a time when we come fully into our own, reclaiming our strength, passion, vitality, wisdom, and compassion. It's a time from which every woman can emerge a new person.

TW Bookmark: We hear our midlife gaining on us, so it's time to go! Thanks, Stephanie, for being with us today. Any final words for our audience?

Stephanie Marston: Take this rite of passage and use it for everything it's worth. The opportunity for growth and transformation is nothing short of remarkable. Midlife is a time to be celebrated. It's a time to take your passion and make it happen. After all, if not now, when?

TW Bookmark: Many thanks to our audience for joining Time Warner Bookmark today, and, of course, to our special guest, Stephanie Marston.

TW Bookmark: Read more about If Not Now, When?.

TW Bookmark: This has been a production of Hachette Book Group USA and the Talk City Marketing Group. Copyright 2001. All rights reserved. Posted with permission by Talk City, Inc.

Copyright © Stephanie Marston