Oh To Be A Lady. The joys of aging, the expectations that woman have of themselves.

*Disclaimer Alert – if you are not indeed a woman and you find a woman’s body and woman’s health some what uncomfortable – then this blog post may not be your thing.  That’s totally cool – I won’t be offended – Different Strokes for Different Folks.  In conclusion – read on – or not!  This post is nothing too crazy, nor is it gross or anything like that.  Think of it as awareness and self love!  Goodness knows the world needs more of self love and awareness! *

I’m 40, actually, I’m not. Not yet anyway – this year I am 40.  But the year is still young.  When I was ‘younger’, say in my tweens and early teens I thought being 40 was old.  Turns out, when you hit your 30s, turning 40 is just around the corner and all of a sudden you may or may not do (or think about) the following things.  I’m writing them in bullet points because there’s a lot – well, maybe not a lot – but certainly enough.

• Feel the need to start using anti-aging creams for you face and a special cream for under your eyes – you know, for the winkles that you can’t see you have on your face yet.  Don’t forget to moisturise your neck and hand while you’re at it.
• You start going to the hair dresser religiously to get your grey hair and roots covered.  If you can’t afford to go to the hair dresser at least once every 3 – 6 months you buy a DIY home kit, which works perfectly fine – but you just have to find the time to do it.  Between work, juggling kids sports and their social lives, your partner and your self care.
• Vitamins that you may or may not take for sleep, nails, hair growth, magnesium, collagen.  Whatever floats your boat.  These are important to people.
• Contraception and maybe making the decision of maybe having your tubes tied or maybe you’ve already had them tied.  This is a big one.
• Your monthly PMS and Aunty Flow/The Painters AKA your period which is as much of a nightmare as it was when you were a teenager, if not worse.
• The option of having to decide if and when you are ready to either have children or to stop having children.  Then maybe you and your husband have to make a decision as to why and if he needs to have ‘the chop’
• Hair – on your face and your kids telling you ‘Mum you’re starting to grow a beard like Dad’. *rage* I hear hair on your nipples is a thing aswell and obviously hair in all the usual areas whereby society tells us it must be ‘contained’ as to where it grows or if if you want it to grow.  Hello Laser!  
• Weight – OMFG.  I could go on about this issue for HOURS.  You get told you’re too fat, you get told you’re too skinny.  You do everything you can to shift weight and it does not shift, or the weight does shift but it’s not from where you need or want it to shift.  It’s a horrible circle. And what is scarier is that, in some woman.  Once you reach your late 30s it is actually harder to lose and maintain weight then you go to your GP and they send you for all these blood tests to check your thyroid, diabetes, iron and lots of other ‘fun’ stuff. 

I’m am certainly not a doctor, nor do I have ANY kind of medical background.  I’m just a woman that is getting nervous at the fact that I am soon approaching turning 40 years old.  I figure that if I am nervous and anxious about turning 40, there’s sure to be other people in the world that feel the same.  Right?

If you have met me, have seen me or even ‘Instagram stalked me’ then you have probably noticed that I am embracing my hair.  I haven’t dyed my hair (DIY kit or hairdresser) for about 3 years.  I still get it cut, but haven’t coloured it for years.  There was a point where I was going to my hairdresser once every 4-6 months just to cover the regrowth.  Then, when I couldn’t get into the hairdressers I would DIY.  Which was fine – but was a lot of effort for me.  So, one day I thought Fuck It.  I’m going to grow my hair out.  I was colouring to cover the grey hair.  My hair is short so thought that it really wouldn’t take that long for the grey hair to grow out.  I was wrong.  It’s taken a fair bit of time.  I’m fine with that.  I have embraced it.  I love it.  Took a while to do so, people pay A LOT of money to have ‘the grey hair look’.  3 years on I am loving it.  I’m also not one to care much what people think about me.  It’s hair ffs.

I had a conversation with my brother over the holidays, he asked me why don’t I dye my hair.  I asked him why I should?  In his defence he did have a bit to drink and seems my hair was a topic of conversation.  Which was fine, I wasn’t bothered in the slightest.  It was quite a lengthy discussion, some of which I zoned out of.  I did ask him why no one asks or even bats an eyelid when we see men with a full head (or beard) of grey hair.  But there’s some shit expectation that because, when woman have grey hair, we need to dye it.  Get fucked!  Woman have enough issues and shit to do then to be judged by what colour our hair is or isn’t.  I couldn’t give a toss what colour your hair is, my only advice is whatever colour it is, love it and own it!

Face hair – that’s a totally different kettle of fish isn’t it? I had all 3 of my children (that should all know better) tell me awkwardly that ‘I’m growing a beard like Dad’.  I was driving and I swear to God if I could of pulled over I would of.  I get it – kids are fun and they say the darndest things.  The 9 year old is fine.  The 18- and 16-year-old, they should know to hush!  When we got home that day, got on ebay and ordered ladies face razors.  That’s the end of that!  My sons haven’t said a word about my ‘beard’, which was a very faint beard ever since. That’s probably cos they made me so self conscious that I face shave my face with special face razors religiously.

I recently had a Mirena taken out of my cervix.  It was embedded in there.  Through no fault of my own.  It was a bit full on and I required day surgery which sucked.  But as a lady, these things are just one of the joys and complications of our body.  A Mirena is a contraceptive ‘device’ which you have put in your cervix and you change them every 5 years.  I’ve had 3 Mirena’s. They work well for my body.   I’ve heard many horror stories about them aswell.  Different strokes for different folks. Do whatever works for you.  I’m on life long blood thinners due to having a massive complications after a caesarean when my 16 year old was born.  I’ll tell ya, being 23, having a newborn, a toddler and being told you have to take medication for the rest of your life is pretty scary.  Although, back then I was so naive and didn’t yet have a back bone (I have a very strong one now) and did pretty much everything I was told by the nurses after I had Mr 16.  As a result, I grew a massive blood clot from my groin to my ankle and later formed 3 clots in my lungs.  Fun times!  Notch this down as another joy of being a woman.

I would like to point out that this blog entry isn’t about how woman have it so tough and men have it easy.  That’s not my intention at all.  I just feel, as a woman that we DO infact have it tough, in life and in health.  I totally understand that men get health issues and have body issues and everything in between.  I feel that society gives woman a hell of alot harder time than men.  Why though?  Why is this a thing?  It sucks.  Example:  When woman ‘complains’ about how we have our periods once a month.  For the record, when I say ‘complain’ I mean that we are just making it known that we have a period once a month.   It’s the WORST!  I explained to my husband and 2 teenage boys about life of a woman once.  I can’t remember the exact situation, but it was a tit for tat bullshit conversation about Men Vs Woman.  I won (of course) The conversation sort of went like this:

Teenagers:  Yeah, but most woman don’t have physical jobs like men.

Me:  Yes, that’s true.  Being a tradie is a very male dominated industry but there are woman tradies around.

Teenagers:  Men have to work while the woman usually stay at home.  How is that fair? {they were talking about after you have a family}

Me:  Not all woman stay at home, they might at the start.  In some cases, Men earn more than woman hence why they work.  They also work to provide for their family and the baby they just made.  I did go onto to explain that there is no rulebook that says the men are to stay home and the woman go to work.  You just do whatever works for you family.  My teens know this as their Dad was a stay at home Dad for about 4 years while I built my business. 

Teenagers:  Wives don’t care if their husband’s get sick – sick was clarified as ‘man flu or a cold or a headache, sporting injury’.  Not sick sick.  As in kidney stones or gall bladder. 

*this one was where the conversation pretty much ended being ‘nice’ and they knew it.  When you have teenagers, you need to learn to be sarcastic (well, depending on what your children are like).  There is heaps of sarcasm in this house.  At times teenagers also think they are being funny when infact they are not, they are being major arseholes.  That never ends well*

Me:  Wives do care when their husbands are sick.  Maybe not to their fullest ability, but to a certain extent they do actually care.  We care.  When Husband’s are sick and they can’t help with the kids or pick something up off the floor. But can magically play on their phone for hours and hours, tell the kids to go away (even for a cuddle), mope around the house for days.  That’s when we stop caring. Do you know why we stop caring?  Because the world doesn’t stop when Wives/Mum’s get sick.  We are still planning the shopping (or even going shopping), dropping the kids off at school, making lunches, making dinner and still feel the need to clean the house for some stupid reason.  See, the Males mind can switch off.  The Woman’s mind can’t.  Its hard. 

I was shopping with my teenagers and Mr 9 once.  They were shopping with me because we all went somewhere (which is very rare because between my work, their work/school and social lives, it gets tricky)

 I was in the woman section with all the pads and tampons.  You know the aisle that makes men feel very uncomfortable for some weird reason.  Anyway, Mr 16 thought it would be funny to throw a pair of pads to Mr 18 and Mr 9 be in the middle.  Piggy In The Middle.  My teenagers are giants so Mr 9 never stood a chance.  I was distracted and had to think.  Sometimes being a mother, you think that teenagers have shame, like teenagers will actually be still and quite.  WRONG!  Note that they did not have their phones to distract them either.  They played Piggy In The Middle for a few minutes until they were getting loud and annoying and I asked them to stop.  There was no one else in the aisle hence why I wasn’t too phased by it all, but they were getting annoying.  I got what I needed (hand soap), told them to come along and I walked off.  But being teenagers they had to be idiots about something.  Me, being a Mum I had to tell them about 3 times to “Stop It and Move” Before they did that they cracked a joke to each other about pads and tampons.  I didn’t actually hear it, but I knew that’s what it was about.   It must have been so hilarious because they were all laughing like freaks and couldn’t talk.  They catch up to me and they were still laughing.  I asked what was so funny and they (the teenagers) said that they think it’s weird and gross that ladies use those ‘things’ (things = pads and tampons)  

 You know when you find something to do to make a baby laugh and then they laugh uncontrollably?  That’s cute right.  It’s a very cute moment,  This was like that.  But imagine the laughs are much much louder, there are no babies involved and wasn’t really cute at all.  It was pretty freaking annoying.

They were all still laughing uncontrollably. Mr 9, giggling asked what the pads were for were for.  The Teens, knowing me well, laughed and begged me not to explain anything to him because they knew I would say something that would gross them out.  Mr 9 really wanted to know what Pads were.  In his little brain pads are used for tackling practise at footy training.  These were not the same pads.  I told Mr 9 that woman use pads for when they bleed out of their vagina once a month. That’s the truth.  That’s what I said.  Dead set, anyone would think that that day, my kids were given Happy Gas and they overdosed on it or something because their laughter got worse and worse and now they were actually crying in laughter.  Like for fox sake. I admit I did giggle with them at one point but I was getting annoyed because 1) I told them to stop being idiots and loud 2) People were staring and looking at ME like I should be able to control these idiots.  I couldn’t.  Pretty sure they were born that way 3) I answered a question about what they were for and the boys still thought it was funny.  BOYS SUCK!  What was annoying me more was that they couldn’t even be a tiny bit impressed that a woman’s body is amazing.  I then I had to quickly remind myself that because it doesn’t effect their lives right now. At that moment.  Then they didn’t care.  I couldn’t care less either. I just wanted to get the hell out of the shop cos they were pissing me right off. 

Have kids they said.  It would be fun they said! 

My kids don’t ask much about those kinds of things anymore, which doesn’t bother me, they know if they have a question then to ask and we’ll tell them.  That’s how questions work.  One of the Teens have a girlfriend so I think he has a very good understanding of what periods and ‘that time of month means’.  He keep a fair distance away from her. 

Slight change of topic, not a total change of topic but I feel this is important to this conversation.  The majority of my following and readers are female so this is relevant.

Shout out to all the following ladies. 

• All the ladies that think they are flawed because they can’t shift body weight (my hand is raised) Slow and steady wins the race.  Just start, don’t give up and keep going.

• All the ladies that are yet to fall in love with themselves and their bodies.  I’ve only recently  fallen in love with myself.  Again.  It’s fucken hard to love yourself with all the expectations of the ‘world’ and what the ’world’ thinks you should and shouldn’t look like (Instagram plays a part in this) Fuck the world man! Fuck the haters! Be yourself.  Love yourself and do yourself for YOU.  No one else!

• All the ladies that think that they should be, or have expectations to be: the best wife, the best girlfriend, the best sister, the best friend.  Don’t worry about it.  Be the best person YOU can be!  If that means you have to serve your kids cereal for dinner because you’ve been working all day or the baby didn’t settle.  Do it.  If that means that you must cancel lunch with your sister because all you want to do is sleep off a hangover.  Do it! If that means you don’t want to have sex with your partner because it’s the middle of summer and the air con is broken.  Don’t do it!   Do what makes YOU feel good and what YOU need to do to get through the day, week and moment.  

• All the ladies that are not in a good head space and pretend that they are every day.  The ladies that go on with their lives fighting thoughts in their head for whatever reason.  I love you.  I don’t know you.  But I do know that you are amazing, and you are worthy and you need to talk to someone.  Anyone.   https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ < Follow the link if you need it.

• All the ladies that are not yet Mothers but are urging for that missing piece in their lives. 

• All the ladies that don’t want children.  Kudos to you Babe.  Woman shouldn’t be defined by if they do or don’t want/need children.

I could do a shout out to ALL the ladies of the world, but this post would be mega long and turn boring.  So I won’t.  What I will say is that being a woman and aging is hard and stressful and sometimes utter bullshit. Like complete bullshit! However, through ALL of that, we must learn to embrace and or love ourselves.  We are ALL worthy of self love and we are ALL worthy to do whatever we want to our bodies to make us happy.  If that means plastic surgery and Botox.  Do it.  If that means getting a tan every week.  Do it.  If that means you want to look younger and in denial about aging.  Fucken do it!  You do YOU.  Age however the hell you want to age.  Be yourself.  For yourself! Just please do these 2 things.  Embrace your body (and your health) flaws and all and learn to love yourself!  YOU ARE WORTH IT!

Finally, if your teenagers and your youngest child ever act like lunatics in the shopping and I see you.  I’ll going to pat you on the back and tell you it’s all going to be ok.