"Twelve months ago I lost my mind. I woke up one morning and felt like I was about to explode. I was bored. Angry, Tired. Sad. Empty. And I felt all alone."
F*cked at 40: Life Beyond Suburbia, Monogamy and Stretch Marks
These are the first lines in my book F*cked at 40 and they describe so perfectly the state of mind I was in a few years ago when I hit my 40s and realised I had no idea who I was anymore, apart from being someone's mum and wife.
It's weird when you think about it - motherhood always seemed like the ultimate 'girl gang' and I had high expectations about what it would feel like to be part of that 'mom club'. Never in a million years did I expect it to feel as lonely as it did in real life.
You know the saying "it takes a village"? Well, it certainly does, but for many women today the problem is that that village no longer exists. Millions of women are having to do it all by themselves all over the world, and although they are part of a community of parents and mothers, they are also feeling utterly alone.
That feeling hit me like a ton of bricks, literally as soon as I became a mum. For one, I was not aware of the subcategories within the motherhood bracket - you've got your breastfeeding mums, bottle feeding mums, working mums, stay at home mums, messy play mums, baking mums etc, and as a new mum you are made to choose which category you belong to so that people can then judge you for your choice.
My issue was that I didn't feel like I belonged in any of those categories, not perfectly that is. And that feeling of not belonging might sound silly now but at the time it made me feel really lonely because I thought something was deeply wrong with me.
For me those first few years of parenting were so hard but if you saw me you'd never have known it. I hid how much I was struggling and just got on with it, convinced (by their Instagram feeds) that everyone around me was breezing through motherhood . Of course later I discovered that most of them were faking it, but I didn't know that at the time.
So I did the only thing I could think of to survive - I faked it. I actually got so good at it I didn't ever realise I was doing it. And I have a theory about women – we are masters at faking it. We start when we are very young - faking never being hungry on dates, orgazms etc until we become mums and then we realise that all those years of faking it were just practice. They were not the main course, not at all, because no one fakes it like a mum does.
And here's the thing - not only is faking it exhausting, it also leaves you feeling completely empty and all alone.
All those years of trying to play the part I thought I was expected to play eventually took their toll, so that when I finally hit my 40s and the kids were a little older and needed me less, I suddenly had this realisation that I no longer knew who I was. And by the way, please don't get me wrong, my kids still tell me every time they take a dump, sometimes they even want me to look at it, but the big difference came when they stopped asking me to wipe their butts. And I know this might seem like a minor detail but honestly - it freed up my schedule!
On top of this, I had a health scare - a little something on my left breast (which thankfully ended up being nothing). It prompted me to go on a quest to rediscover (or reinvent) who I was. I call it my 'mom life crisis' but to be fair it was more of an awakening and it was a long time coming.
I decided to shed all the expectations society had placed on me and just allow myself to be who I truly am. Perhaps being a 'good mother' didn't have to look a certain way? Perhaps there was no one version of 'happily ever after'? Perhaps those expectations were never really coming from other people at all and were in fact a result of my own thinking and pressure I put myself under?
When I look back, the conclusion I reached in the end was that I was free to be and do whatever I wanted all along. All the things I kept telling myself I couldn't do, or shouldn't do, because I am a mother, or a wife, a woman or a certain age, were all made up - by ME.
But I had to go through the whole journey to reach that point. That journey included many things - from bungee jumping to weekends away with friends, nude spas and more. It was truly a quest that redefined me and brought me so much closer to the people in my life.
There is also something to be said about women in their 40s because I think age played a massive role in this process. I love being in my 40s, I call it the 'f*ck it' decade. My boobs hang down to my knees, I wee when I sneeze, I am constantly thinking about sex and I am slowly approaching menopause and that point in life when I can truly say I have more past than future. But the good news is that when you reach that point you stop caring about what other people think of you.
A lot of people think women go crazy in their 40s and 50s, but we don't. We just stop giving a f*ck. We are no longer expected to be "cute" and what a relief that is.
These days I take the greatest comfort in my relationships with the other women in my life. I have such an amazing community – online and in person – of women who support, celebrate and champion each other and who are not afraid of having hard conversations. I wish I had that type of sisterhood when I was in my 30s and starting a family, and I'm sorry I didn't trust the women in my life enough to tell them how I was feeling back then.
For any woman out there who is reading this right now, my only advice would be to surround yourselves with brilliant women who build you up and have your back. Seek them out and when you find them, cherish them forever.
F*cked at 40: Life Beyond Suburbia, Monogamy and Stretch Marks by Tova Leigh is out now, published by Watkins Publishing, priced £10.99, available online and from all good bookstores
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