I had a friend who said that the reason women love shoes so much is that body weight can fluctuate causing clothing size to change – which gets depressing – but shoes are forever!  Fashionable shoes make you feel good and weight gain does not cause your shoe size to increase causing you to face yet another perceived failure.  Clearly this friend was not yet 50!

That was true for years.  My weight – and thus my clothing size – always fluctuated but my favorite pumps would always fit – and always make me feel special.

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We are woman in our fifties and we come in all shapes and sizes.  As with women of all ages we can be sleek and chic or dumpy and frumpy and a host of other visual ranges.

But what do people see when they look at us?  I think that’s an issue we wrestle with our whole lives.  At least I have.  When we’re young girls they look at us and see inexperience and immaturity.  When we’re morphing into women they see gangly and awkward.  Or do they?

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Who doesn’t hate that word?  The very sight or sound of it makes us cringe.  It’s typically considered a necessary evil.  I wonder if the negativity surrounding the “D” word makes it that much harder for us to handle the enormous emotional roller coaster aligned with weight gain and weight loss?

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It all kind of hits the fan at just about the same time – 50ish.  The entrance into the years when AARP starts gunning for you while at the same time you’re laying low, expecting your body to erupt in what could well be a hideous transformation spurred by fluctuating hormones and weirdly unpleasant physical manifestations (spontaneous combustion anyone?).

Many of us have been through it and survived, even thrived.  But we all ducked when we saw it coming.  We didn’t know what to expect and we’d been frightened by reports of those who came before us.  Just the thought of “getting old” unhinged many a stalwart warrior.  Some of us were calm enough to handle it stoically, and some were just a hot mess.

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At various stages of a woman’s life the question of cosmetic surgery rears its head.  For a long time now I’ve been on the fence as to whether or not that’s a smart choice.

As a young woman I took pride in the fact that I did not judge my elder “sisters” – the ones who decided that cosmetic surgery was necessary in order for them to feel good about themselves.  There but for the grace of god, I thought.  My day would come and who knew how I would handle it?  Would I be able to look in the mirror and feel satisfied at what I saw – or would the temptation to look better prove too great?  And for that matter would I be able to afford to have anything done even if I really felt it was necessary?

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It’s not as sexy as it sounds.  Let’s take one more trip back to sleepless nights – since I had one last night.  And yes, that’s after I told you all about my natural sleep aids and how well they work – they’re good but they’re not infallible.  Read the rest of this entry »

I may not be a fashionista, but I am definitely a fashionREALista! 

It all hit me this morning while I was going through the daily ritual of dressing myself for the office.  Now, I am in a business which allows more latitude than many – but it’s also a very young business and that can be a challenge for a menopausal woman.

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Sleep Problems. Oh yeah, that’s another menopausal symptom. When you read about menopause you invariably read about the sleeping problems that go with the territory.

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I’ve noticed in perusing various sites frequented by the “menopausal set” that issues about dressing are uppermost on everyone’s mind.  The majority of us want to dress hip and chic without trying to look as though we think we’re still 20 something.  After all – so many of us are still in the workplace – unlike generations of menopausal women who came before us.  The rest of us just want to be comfortable without looking like something that slept in a dumpster.  Is that too much to ask? Read the rest of this entry »

There are many of you who are proud to announce that you have “never had a symptom and found menopause to be a breeze”.  That’s true.  I hear it occasionally.  To add insult to injury most of you have never experienced an ounce of weight gain during your menopausal episode – and that’s when I really start to get cranky.  But to be fair you should feel good about escaping from the horrors that are visited on the many. Read the rest of this entry »