Owning our fifties

This is not a space to rant about the awfulness of being fifty. It is a journey to discover the opportunities to reinvent ourselves despite the unanticipated challenges.

Four years into my fifties and I have awakened to the reality that I am in danger of becoming invisible. Not that it started out that way. Flushed with the success of completing my forties physical and mental health intact, I ushered in my fifties on a wave of nostalgia. This was going to be a breeze

No longer constrained by dictates of school lifts and exam schedules the possibilities unrolled before me like a shiny new ribbon:

• Travel
• short courses to study
• explore new possibilities to earn money
• more time for family and friends
• the opportunity to volunteer for causes I’m passionate about.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the life realities that challenge this stage of our lives including:

• people we care about, developing dread diseases
• loss of a parent
• adult children still needing financial support
• or a spouse ready for major life changes of their own which may not dovetail with your plans.

So what I can hear you say. People, no matter their age, are faced with exactly the same challenges. You can lose a parent, get ill, or relocate at any age. Of course you can, but other decades seem to have built-in support and empathy. We on the other hand are too young for pensions and yet labelled too old for countless other things. We occupy a twilight zone. This seems to be the decade where you find yourself fading from view. The relevance of your experience only  mattering to those on the same journey through their fifties.

When did a routine visit to your GP take on sinister overtones? Small twinges, or a bit of heartburn are viewed with terrifying suspicion. Next thing you are enduring batteries of tests you never imagined needing. The worst is hearing your children or siblings, or girls in their thirties at the gym, referring to people in their fifties as old. How did we triumph the fabulous forties, only to be described as old, a handful of years later?

Fifties is the new forties we are told. Yes, they are, but I suspect only Quinquagenarians believe that. We do have an advantage though. A lot of us care less and less about the opinions of others. We need to brandish that attitude like a shield and forge ahead. We need to own this odd little time space and I plan to do just that.