Rebecca Sperry

Life after 39 feels like a vast open sea with no lighthouse to guide me and I love it. From as early as I can remember, there was always a goal; something to work towards, a deadline to meet. I’ve imagined this long series of black dots on the timeline of life. Your goal, to reach each dot having met an expected outcome. But I couldn’t see past 39. From 39 on, the line faded away, because as a woman, it feels an awful lot like everything I was supposed to do ended at 40. That after 40, I was no longer of any value in so many ways so it really didn’t matter what I did. I’d no longer be “young” and therefore I was expected to just fade into the shadows to let another generation of women step into the spotlight.

Generationally speaking, there are a lot of women who are about to (or have recently) stepped across the line that society has chiseled into the concrete - the line that marks valid and valued and invalid and unvalued. But while I’m still hovering on the former side, I would like to reflect on what our generation of women created, what we built for the next generation, and begin celebrating the next half of my life. We are a generation that, in my humble opinion, has bridged the gap between women as a commodity and women as a superpower.

Generation X and the Elder Millennial woman were raised to become the Everywoman by a generation that was expected to have kids, keep a home, and be a wife, but not much else (I’m slightly overgeneralizing this. Many women who are part of the “Baby Boomers” generation held down full time jobs while having a family, too). We kicked against the goads; refusing to just strap on an apron and donn a wedding ring right after graduating high school. However, as much as we wanted to pave the way for a new type of female, the world wasn’t ready to let the old version go. Consequently, we ended up carrying torches in both hands, playing the mother/wife/housewife and the career woman all at the same time. We are a generation of women that had to get a college degree, have a career, have kids, keep a home, and be a wife. And for the majority of us, that is exactly what we did.

We built our lives around deadlines. College from 18 - 21, married at 22 or 23, kids and a mortgage by 28, and while raising kids and keeping a home, we held down full time jobs right alongside the men we were married to (and paid less money to do that same job). We didn’t celebrate a “Dirty 30” because we were too busy working 40-60 hours a week while raising kids and keeping a home. We were career-focused, super moms that fell into the labyrinth of life, but we never stopped to ask ourselves if we wanted any of the things that we were working towards. We just knew that we had to keep working because the reality was that if we weren’t working towards something what was the point of our lives? If we weren’t moms or career women, if we weren’t spouses or partnered off, what were we?

There was no self reflection or healing journeys; no “shadow selves” or “inner children.” We were commodities; sex symbols, wives, moms, teachers, bankers, real estate agents, business women, and while we wanted to believe that we were a generation of strong, independent women, there was still this intense pressure to be tied to a man. It didn’t matter how we felt or how we were treated, and in all honesty, I think we were so busy making a life for ourselves, checking off all of the boxes, that we never stopped to look in the mirror and say, “but what about you”? Our value was tied to what society told us we had to do, look like, and most importantly, our value was directly related to how much we did for everyone else.  

All of the deadlines have passed. The kids are in school, the career is stable, and the mortgage is being paid. But are we happy? Did we live the life we imagined? Or did we live the life that society told us we had to live. Are we some sort of centaur? Half Boss Babe, half housewife? What I’ve come to realize is that, by accomplishing so much so early in our lives, and because we have opened up so many opportunities to ourselves by fighting for equal rights, we have essentially given ourselves the gift of freedom. And, we’re being followed by a generation of women that have opened up a whole new way of living (and thinking) for us to explore at the exact moment that we have the freedom to explore it.

Now that I’m almost 40, the societally-imposed deadlines have all come and gone. Instead of a series of black dots on a line stretching into the ether, I have something a million times better. I have a future that I get to create. I no longer have a hard and fast deadline to meet. No “supposed to’s” to reach and check off of a list. No pressure to have babies because my biological clock is ticking, no houses to buy, school to complete, or dreams to fulfill. Instead I have the freedom to explore my inner self. I have the time to get a second degree in something that I am truly passionate about. And I have no obligation to maintain a lifestyle that society told me I had to maintain for two decades. My work ethic, inability to stop “doing,” will now serve me in pursuit of a second life. A life that I get to create. 

I enter the next decade of my life with zero deadlines. I can pass the torches over to the next generation of women and allow them to hold both of them, one, or none. I can applaud as the next group of women entering their twenties are consciously choosing to be single, to work on their mental health, and find happiness on their own before seeking a partner. While some part of me will grieve the loss of my desirability, (we still live in a world where a woman over 40 is considered too old to be attractive the majority of the time) I am looking forward to being valued for more than how I look. I am silently reveling in the fact that I can lean heavily into making my soul and spirit beautiful, instead of worrying about wearing a smaller size bottom and having a larger (perkier) size top. I foresee a generation of women entering the second half of their lives smiling widely as they realize that their happiest years aren’t behind them, they’re right in front. I know I am.