Becoming reacquainted with sleep
Wow. It's hard to believe that a few short weeks ago Middle Years Monday didn't exist in the world, other than inside my head. Because already we are a throng of women bursting with possibility. And the honesty with which you are telling me what it is that you need and want from MYM is a thing of beauty - it's what will enable me to do what I can to build something that actually gives you what you're looking for.
Because that is the only point of this - to create a space and some tools and resources that actually make a difference to you and to me. To how we feel inside, to how we move through our week, to how well equipped we are to face with confidence the stuff that comes our way during this life stage. I can't help but wonder what the ripple effect of this could be? If we are supported in ways that help us to... Sleep better; Know we are not losing our minds; Find our joy; Deal with the fear that accompanies the transitions we are experiencing; Navigate our way through our changing priorities and our desire to focus more on ourselves; Reduce our anxiety; Increase our confidence; Show us that we don't need to believe those gremlin voices telling us that life is shrinking for us now, that it is too late. When I think about all the myriad ways we and the people in our orbit stand to gain from this I am filled with anticipation.
So, what can you expect from these newsletters? Well, the truth is that they will evolve over time as I feel my way through this - and as I tweak the format in response to your feedback. Rather than us sticking to a rigid schedule, they will be written and sent out to you when I (or members of the growing MYM team of contributors) have something worthwhile to say. Some of them will be long reads for you to luxuriate in and others will be brisker and focused on a particular piece of news to share. With this being the first I got a bit excitable about wanting to share oodles of stuff with you! Future newsletters may be less fulsome and you'll hear from other women too - this was never intended to be a vehicle for my voice alone. On that note, today I have a specific request...
Your Stories of Hope
A thread that has run through many of the messages and emails I've received from you is a sense of angst that this life stage primarily brings with it downsides and a shrinking of possibilities and opportunities. My intention is that Middle Years Monday is a BS free zone, a space where honesty and plain-speaking are embraced. So you won't find us glossing over some of the harder realities. But my sincere wish is that it is also a place of hope - somewhere you can come to find stories from other women in their middle years for whom their 40s to 60s have brought liberation, clarity and new beginnings. This is where you come in: If you are a woman who fits that description - or you know a woman with a hopeful story to share - then please send me a few compelling sentences about you/her. And I'll be in touch. Thank you! I truly believe that one of the greatest strengths of this community will be in the sharing of our stories with each other and I can't wait to start giving your experiences of your middle years a voice.
Middle Years Monday Illuminations
In each MYM newsletter I'll share with you some of the bits and pieces that have caught my eye, with a line or two about why. And, of course, if you spot anything that you think might be of interest to this community please do drop me an email with a link.
This piece from the New York Times: because it does feel to me like I'm experiencing a kind of 'puberty for the middle-aged' and I like the idea of us giving each other 'The Talk'.
This Menopause Symptom Checker: It's endlessly astonishing how little most of us (including many of our GPs - and until recently, me) know about something so game changing. Seeing this simple checklist cast a whole new light for me on how my life has unfolded over the past few years - and has called into question the explanations and diagnoses I've been offered.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From The Sea: Emma Thompson describes this book as being 'Quietly powerful and a great help. Glorious'. Within its pages the author herself writes that 'Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves'.For me, reading it helped to normalise the sudden, unfamiliar and urgent pull I've been feeling in recent months towards time spent on my own.
Pretty much any of relationship therapist Esther Perel's talks: Based on many of the exchanges I've had with women in their middle years, it seems that this life stage brings with it an inclination towards reviewing and reflecting on the different elements of our lives, including our most significant relationships. I recently wrote on Instagram that 12 years since meeting my husband and 11 years since we wed, I still feel like we're in marriage kindergarten. I have a hunger now for us to grow our marriage up! I'm particularly fascinated by Perel's thoughts on the difference between intimacy and eroticism - and that the latter requires 'otherness'. Binge-watching Perel has become a favourite pastime.
This article on hormones, histamine and hay fever: In the past year or so I've been experiencing a seemingly random array of changes to my health (super sore achilles tendons, peeling skin, the development of hay fever symptoms). To start to understand that the thread which connects these things may well be perimenopause is helping me feel less disorientated.
Becoming Reacquainted with Sleep
I know I'm not alone in missing my former uncomplicated friendship with my old pal Sleep. I have some good news though - some changes I've made have brought properly newsworthy results. Much of what I'm about to share with you here first appeared in my Instagram Stories several months ago and was incredibly enthusiastically received. But I talk about it today with even more zeal because I've since fallen off the wagon with much of this stuff and the connection between losing these good habits and a return to truly crappy sleep has been undeniable. I've also started experiencing some impressive nocturnal hot flushes in recent weeks which have made night times even more 'interesting'. So I've promised myself that on 1st September I will start taking my own advice again with renewed gusto. I hope you might find a nugget or two here that speaks to you...
These are the areas in which we've* made changes (*my husband's been brilliantly accommodating in coming along for the ride):
Bed & Mattress
Bedding
Bed linen
Food
Vibes & Clutter
Bed & Mattress
A combination of lack of space and soppiness meant that David and I slept in a double bed (4ft 6 inches) for the first 11.5 years of our relationship. MADNESS! Just before Xmas we bought ourselves a budget divan bed base from IKEA. And thanks to a recommendation in Which? magazine (followed by reading endless reviews and forum discussions) we bought one of the cheapest pocket sprung mattresses around - IKEA's Hovag. Both king size. Whoop!
These turned out to be brilliant decisions because for us Big Bed + Firm Mattress = More Sleep. I know that the idea of sinking into a soft mattress is a lovely one. But for many it seems our bodies need more support. With some trepidation we opted for the firm version of the Hovag. Our bodies loved it immediately. David used to grunt and groan during the night and morning due to sore hips. Since night one on our new mattress his achey hips have vanished. Seriously. As for me, despite my body being happy with the firmness from Day 1, it took a little while for my mind to catch up and adjust to the idea of not having a mattress that you sink into. I absolutely love the support and a brilliant, BRILLIANT thing about the firmness is that David and I no longer disturb each other if we turn over in the night. The combination of size and firmness means the quality of our sleep is far less adversely affected by each other. I now find the mattress kind and supportive rather than hard. And it not costing a small fortune really helped take some of the anxiety out of our decision-making. I'm now 100% happy with it - especially since the arrival of our wool bedding (more of which next).
Bedding (which was gifted)
Before I share more detail about our king size 'Deluxe' bedding set (which includes an all-seasons duvet, a mattress protector and a pair of pillows), you might be reassured to know that The Wool Room didn't impose any conditions on their gift. They certainly didn't know I'd be writing about it here today (Middle Years Monday wasn't even a twinkle in my eye when they gave it to me). I'm telling you about this bedding for no other reason than because I love it.
Right, now that we've got that out of the way I can tell you that We. Really. Bloody. Love. It! And here's why...
From the moment you open the packaging box and pull out the calico bags your bedding arrives in you know you're in for a treat.
From the moment you open the packaging box and pull out the calico bags your bedding arrives in you know you're in for a treat.
Its woolly deliciousness is encased in thick organic cotton and it looks almost too good 'naked' to cover up with bedlinen.
The pillows are customisable! You can unzip their covers and immerse your hands in all of that gorgeous wool and either pull the fibres apart if you prefer plumper, or squash them down a bit if you like a flatter pillow. And (I find this next bit especially exciting) if you love an extra plump pillow you can buy more wool filling to add in. Genius!
The mattress protector means that you've got natural fibres between you and your mattress. And you feel like you're sleeping on top of a duvet. It's not as pillowy as some other toppers, but for me it's enough squish.
Gone are the days of either sweaty synthetics or prickly, smelly and cruel feather or down. The temperature regulation is brilliant. The combination of fibromyalgia (which can make me cold) and my age (which makes me hot) means I'm forever veering between extremes in temperature. And I sleep with a man who likes to be fully wrapped up in the duvet - he never used to mind how sticky that made him but to be honest I found it a bit icky to sleep next to that dampness! The cotton-encased wool duvet means that we feel cosy but not sweaty and I don't have to veer so much between hugging a hot water bottle and throwing off the duvet. Plus the all-seasons option means there's even more control over temperature.
As well as not having a weird smell like other bedding can, The Wool Room describe their bedding as being made in Britain with British fibres; naturally hypoallergenic and dust mite resistant; and "natural, sustainable, renewable and biodegradable". Lots of brownie points there.
However, all of that loveliness does come at a cost. Lots of my Instagram followers had recommended wool bedding to me so on the strength of that I would have gone ahead and invested in it (if The Wool Room hadn't gifted it to me). But I probably would have bought the various bits in stages. It's definitely a considered rather than a spontaneous purchase. But that makes it feel all the more special in some ways.
Bedlinen
You know when you have one of your most beloved friends coming to stay and you do everything you can to make your guest room as nurturing and welcoming as possible for them? You know how you almost certainly wouldn't give them that baggy, yellowing, threadbare bedlinen that you inherited from Great-Aunt Maud in 1981? And you'd probably not leave a pile of shoes and discarded socks and old toast crumbs under the bed? Because you love this person and you'd dearly like them to leave feeling better than when they arrived. Well, I'd like to invite you to extend the same nourishing kindness to yourself as you would your beloved friend.
But, I'm not advocating a crazily wasteful and consumerist approach - or that you cultivate an obsession for extreme order and cleanliness. But I am suggesting that how you feel upon walking into your bedroom and climbing into your bed has an impact on your wellbeing and on your chances of getting a replenishing night's sleep. And I'm inviting you to consider that when it comes to both bedlinen and the set-up and upkeep of your bedroom. Sounds reasonable don't you think? So, this is me lovingly encouraging you to give your bed linen cupboard a review. As Marie Condo would say, do the items there spark joy? Or at the very least, would you put them on your guest bed? If not, are there easy steps you can take to change this without breaking the bank? I'm the kind of person who uses my bed linen for many years. So I'm not suggesting throwing things out and starting again. I'm a really late developer when it comes to the joys of mismatched bedlinen. Somehow it just didn't occur to me that it was a *thing* until the last couple of years. But now I find a matching set kinda joyless. So I'm slowly building up a collection of throws and lovely linen pillowcases that perk up my old duvet covers no end. Current favourites are from Aerende, Piglet (seen on my bed in the above pic) and IKEA. And I don't need to tell you that if you struggle with overheating and itchy skin then anything but natural fibres are a no-no.
Food
Ok, this is the hard part. The bit where you are tempted to scroll on down because donuts are non-negotiable. And I totally get that because there's nothing I like more than sitting on our local beach drinking a hot cup of steaming tea and tucking into that still-warm, sugar-coated deliciousness bought from one of the many kiosks in my town that offer them. But I especially wanted to share with you the hugely tangible impact on my sleep that I have experienced through paying more attention to two things: sugar and high-acid foods. I thought that there was NO WAY that I would EVER consider swapping my beloved breakfast of two pieces of buttery toast, one with marmite and the other with peanut butter and marmalade. But's that how profound the changes in my sleep and wellbeing have been. I can't promise that your body and mine will respond in the same way to these things. But I'll share my experiences in case they help you to try a few weeks of eating differently so that you can see whether that's part of the solution you've been waiting for to the problem of your consistently crummy nights.
Sugar - On both my paternal and maternal sides of the family there have been a lot of struggles with addiction. I've gotten off fairly lightly relatively speaking but when I looked at my diet with honesty last year I realised that my sugar intake was something I could do with looking right in the eye. So, for a couple of months David and I stopped it altogether. Not just synthetic sugar but also things like honey and maple syrup. That felt like the only way of re-setting our relationship with it to one of choice rather than compulsion. The impact on my wellbeing was profound, notably in two ways:
Unhappy, restless nights during which I routinely woke up 4,5 or more times to toss and turn and get up to have a pee became a thing of the past. Now I'd wake up once or twice - and sleep so much more soundly. And disturbance caused by my restless legs also became a distant memory. This was a game-changer and I was so, so relieved to learn that I have some control over my nighttime experience.
My pain levels dropped significantly. I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia (although the more I learn about perimenopause and the crossover of symptoms, the more I question this) and frequent pain is a common symptom. The impact of this can be particularly hard to deal with at night. I would frequently get woken up by pain from the pressure of the pillow against my face, the mattress on my hips, the weight of one knee against the other. Whatever the reason for your musculoskeletal pain, if this is something you're finding it hard to live with I'd heartily encourage you to see whether you too might experience major improvements by looking at your sugar intake.
High-Acid foods - I've had IBS for as long as I can remember. And then last year I had a health scare and in the days whilst I was waiting for the investigative medical procedure I wanted to try and ease my digestive symptoms. So I followed my instinct and decided to reduce the acid in my diet. Now that sugar was a rare treat rather than a regular occurrence my diet was in many ways pretty healthy. Mostly gluten-free with very little *bad* white carbs - and with lots of garlic, lemon, olive oil, tomatoes, brown rice etc. So this was just an attempt to address some very particular digestive issues. I bought a book called The Acid Watcher Diet and we embarked upon what the author calls the *healing phase*, during which acid levels are kept especially low. So onion, garlic, tomatoes, chilli (in other words, my daily staples!) were gone. And so was my peanut butter and marmalade toast brekkie (even though it was now made with sugar-free spreads). Well my friends, the most unexpected things happened. Not only did my IBS and other digestive symptoms all but disappear (even though through this new regime I re-introduced wholegrain brown bread and pasta back into my diet) - but so many other fibromyalgia/perimenopause symptoms receded also. AND, I now woke up and got up to pee a maximum of once a night. And nighttime tossing and turning was a thing of the past. Bloody brilliant!
The return of 'old Pip' - I'll also share with you the other dramatic changes I noticed to my health and wellbeing when adopting a much more mindful approach to acid. *Brain fog* - the impact on cognitive ability that often comes hand-in-hand with both fibromyalgia and perimenopause/menopause horrified me. I went from having perfectly high levels of mental acuity to no longer being able to follow the thread of any literature other than the most superficial of short magazine features - and on some occasions to not remembering my own address. I felt so bereft about this change. But all was not lost. Within weeks of starting the Acid Watcher Diet I could read and absorb books again, retain important data in my head, hold my own in conversation and manage detailed and multi-stranded projects. God, the relief.
And a myriad other symptoms that I'd been living with for years subsided dramatically. The sore throats and swollen glands; the frequent headaches; the deep, deep fatigue. Suddenly my day-to-day wellbeing felt so much more predictable. I could make long journeys again without being totally wiped out for days. Making plans for day trips and even nights away with confidence that I wouldn't have to blow them out returned. And my mood lightened significantly too.
The negative impact I've experienced in recent months since letting Life's challenges overcome me - and therefore my diet to drift - has been dramatic. The quality of my sleep, the way my brain is functioning so sluggishly, the return of aches and pains and fatigue - it's this that has given me confidence to share my experience with you here with a degree of evangelism. I'm so looking forward to returning to 'old Pip' in the coming weeks.
Vibes & Clutter
I've decided that I don't need to waggle my finger in your virtual face and talk to you about how to turn your bedroom into a peaceful sanctuary. Because I'm fairly certain you know how to do that! So all I will do is remind you dear friends that you are so deserving of a bedroom that makes you feel good. So please, treat yourself as you would that beloved house guest I mentioned earlier and do what you can to make your bedroom feel like a warm embrace, a place of nourishment and restoration. I have no doubt that it's a piece in the sleep puzzle.
Blimey. That was MUCH more of an epic newsletter than I was imagining. I do hope it contained some gems for you. Now I'll return to my MYM to do list which includes things like speaking with a lawyer (to make sure I'm setting everything up 'properly'); liaising with a lovely copywriter who contacted me to offer pro-bono help; continuing to contact my wish list of collaborators so that we can work together to support and inspire you; reflecting on the incredibly useful and pragmatic conversations I've been having with my mentors about how to put the building blocks in place so that MYM is a sustainable resource for women in their middle years, which can thrive in the long-term - rather than being a fleeting burst of light that is pulled together in a frenzy of passion and hope over experience. I've learned what happens when projects are fuelled solely out of an ardent desire to make a difference, without something of a plan - albeit a loose and flexible one - that grounds it in reality. If you're up for allowing me into your headphones for 27 minutes, I talk about this (as well as the birth of the #middleyearsmonday hashtag) during this podcast which I recorded for Ruth Poundwhite's Everyday Difference project. One listener described it as "wonderfully insightful, vulnerable, beautiful and inspiring" and I received lots of DMs from women (and one man!) telling me that it had got them thinking, crying and nodding along in recognition - I hope you might enjoy it too.
Until next time I send you my warmest wishes,
Pip x
Disclaimer:
Everything here is shared in good faith with an intention to support and inspire. However, neither Pip nor Middle Years Monday claim to understand your personal circumstances, we are not dispensing medical advice and you should not take anything here as a replacement for advice from a qualified health practitioner.