Fine, Fine, Fine: What Women Are Really Saying

We started out calling this book Flourishing in Your Forties.

That title did not last. And the reason it did not last is the whole point of everything that followed.

For Rachael and me, and for the clients we have worked with, women specifically, we are conditioned to just let everyone know that we are fine. How are you today? Fine. Fine, fine, fine.

And we are not fine.

We are going through a variety of things and we say fine anyway, because that is the answer we were taught to give. So the title became I'm Not Fine, Thanks for Asking. The objective of I'm not fine is to get to the authenticity of what it is like to be a woman. Sometimes we are not fine. And that has to be okay too.

The question underneath everything

I am always very interested in what is going on around me, and lately what I keep hearing from women in my age range is not a complaint. It is a question.

Where are we at in this life. What is our purpose. What are we really doing here.

I have spoken to women about this. I have read about it. I have experienced it myself. And the sentiment I keep running into is overwhelming in how consistently it shows up.

Do I just blow up my whole entire life and move to an island, or do I stay here and try and figure it out?

It may not only be women, by the way. That is just who I tend to speak to most and who is in my space. But when I hear it from women, I think what it actually means is this. We are tired of living somebody else's version of our own lives. We are feeling exhausted by it.

Why I do not think this is a crisis

Here is where I part ways with how this usually gets framed.

When a woman in her mid forties starts asking whether she is happy with where her life is, the reaction she often gets is that something has gone wrong. That she is having a crisis. That she should be grateful. That this is what midlife does to people and she should wait it out.

I think that reading is backwards.

I think we are, thankfully, in a space where we can actually start to question these things. Am I happy with where my life is? Am I happy with what is happening? And too many times the answer is no.

That is not a malfunction. That is the first honest answer someone has given themselves in a long time.

What worries me is what happens next. Because when the answer is no, women feel like they are stuck. And I do not think stuck is what is actually going on. What I am seeing now is women trying to figure out what the other options are. The question is not the problem. The framing of the question is.

What I actually asked myself

I did make a big change. I moved. And people sometimes want that story to be more dramatic than it was.

Without question it was a significant turning point. Call it a midlife crisis, I am not sure. But the questions I asked myself were smaller and more practical than that word suggests.

Am I happy every single day? And is my bucket getting refilled enough?

When I was spending a majority of my time in the US, the answer to that was no. I just felt like I constantly had my foot on the gas. There were no times to even coast. There were no times to relax. It was just always this pressing, pressing feeling.

So I looked at what I actually wanted. I wanted a little bit of a slower pace. I wanted to grow my own food. I wanted to see sunlight. I wanted more of a feeling of peace of mind.

For me, that was clear, and it meant moving.

It is a big decision to move anywhere. If you move from one town to the next in the same country, that is a big deal. So I am not going to pretend the size of it does not matter.

But the size of the change is not the measure of whether it counts.

Both things can be true

This is the part I would most want women to hear.

These big decisions come across your life sometimes. And what I would love to say to women is, let's not be afraid of them. Let's explore them to see what we really get to do.

We can make big changes and we will be all right.

And we can stay put too, and make small adjustments.

All of those things can be true.

That is not a compromise position or a softer version of the advice. It is the actual answer. The reason the blow-it-up-or-stay question feels so heavy is that it only offers two endings, and both of them cost something. One costs you everything you have built. The other costs you the honest answer you just gave yourself.

There are more than two options. There always were. What changes is whether you believe you are allowed to look for them.

Where this leaves you

If you are reading this and something in it landed, I would offer you the same two questions I asked myself.

Are you happy every single day? Is your bucket getting refilled enough?

If the answer is no, that is not a verdict on your life or evidence that you have failed at midlife. It is information. It means something in the current arrangement no longer fits, and that is worth listening to rather than quietly managing around.

You do not have to know what to do about it today. You only have to stop treating the arrangement you are in as the only one available to you.

Because I do not have to be stuck. And neither do you.

Rachael Gass and Andie Herbert wrote I'm Not Fine. Thanks for Asking. for women in their forties, fifties and sixties who are worn out by pretending everything is fine and want honest answers instead of platitudes. It covers the real terrain of this season, including perimenopause, caregiving, career reinvention, shifting identity, friendship and beauty standards, grounded in research and in the stories of six composite women drawn from a decade of coaching conversations. If any of this resonated, you can preorder it here: https://www.imnotfinethanksforasking.com/

What would you change first if no one needed an explanation? I would like to hear it in the comments.