One of the things I yearned for when I was newly pregnant, at the age of 46, was to hear stories and to connect with other women like me, who had landed on the parenting road after half-a-lifetime without children.
But I had trouble finding them. There weren’t mommy bloggers my age; there weren’t parenting books written by older moms; and there wasn’t a single group on Meetup.com that was targeted at my demographic.
What I discovered about myself at that time, and what I’ve learned about other midlife mamas in the years that have followed, is that when we have children later in life, we often do so quietly.
Most of us aren’t blogging about our experience, joining meetups, shouting our pregnancies from the rooftops (or the modern equivalent: posting our ultrasounds on Instagram). We are hunkering down, making way, steadying ourselves for the transition from one life chapter to a new one.
And whether our journeys were unassisted or assisted, whether we are birthing or adopting, there are so many risks, so many things that could go wrong. It can feel feel safer to hold our cards close to our chests, to keep things under wraps.
But we are also yearning for examples of other women who’ve traveled similar roads, for the solace that comes with knowing we are not alone. I devised the Midlife Mama Story Collective to be a place where we can own our stories, share them, and in doing so, help to expand the definition of motherhood in the 21st century.
The face of motherhood is indeed changing: It is my face. Yours. Ours.
Welcome and thank you for sharing,
Natasha Dworkin | Midlife Mama | www.midlife.mom
