Telling the truth about your life as a middle-aged woman

I've always thought it strange that there's often a hesitance to publish stories, in some markets, about the things that actually matter the most. Sure, the latest GEOCON developments to hit the shores of Tuggeranong or analysis of the government's pre-election promises might make for scintillating reading, but that kind of stuff bores me senseless.

I want to read about humans, about their interactions, their faults and desires and those very things that make us human: love, family, sex, pain, fears...

This story my friend had posted was titled "A weird liberation: why women are exposing the wild truth about midlife and menopause". It talked about that scene in Fleabag where Kristen Scott Thomas tells Phoebe Waller-Bridge that menopause is the "most wonderful f------ thing in the world" because it frees you; about Caitlin Moran's much lauded new book More Than a Woman; about the spate of books and podcasts now exploring the experiences of middle-aged women.

And here I am writing about ways to survive the school holidays.

It's all got me thinking about whether I should be using this opportunity where I have a voice, in a world where so many women don't, to actually say something worthy. I'll be the first to admit there are weeks when I have nothing worthy to say, and I'll fall back on writing about some television show I collapsed in front of at the end of a day dealing with all those things that make us human. It's a cop-out, I know. But one thing I've come to know is that sometimes you need to allow yourself an easy exit because, well, you know.

If you've been a regular reader, and I know that there are some of you out there, thanks friends, you might think I have been writing about this kind of stuff all along. The babies are almost grown up, the marriage well over, the negotiation of a new single life all laid out before you. You're probably wondering if there's actually anything I haven't divulged over the years. There's been plenty.

This Guardian story quoted Moran as saying, about her decision to write about midlife: "The last 10 years of feminism have been brilliant and I was a part of it - writing about being a hot young mess ... It's all about sex and periods and masturbation and that's all been just great. But now I guess it's the next phase of life."

I guess that's where I'm at too. Rather than continuing to pretend I'm some hip young mum sprouting ways to give your kids an Insta holiday, perhaps I need to be more honest about the next phase, the phase I'm in.

I know I've somewhat subconsciously gone off on a tangent writing about books and movies and completely trivial things because I sometimes wake up each Wednesday, with a column deadline looming, and am completely terrified by the next phase.

Sure there are days when I feel completely in charge, days when I say to myself, 'Look at all you have accomplished in the past five years on your own, indeed your whole life'. Days where I know I am smart and funny and a good friend and an even better mother.

But there are days too where I feel all a bit useless. The kids are almost grown up and if I can't define myself as a mother for much longer, what else am I? It terrifies me too to realise that some days I can feel myself giving in to the idea that I will be alone forever. It's not that I need a man. But I want one. I kind of like them. But it's more than that. It's about not being invisible, in life, at work. I want someone to say "I see you".

If so many of us middle-aged women are starting to stand up and make ourselves heard, perhaps there is no more fitting time to let the late Helen Reddy's I am Woman lead us into the next phase.