Why are people so unhappy at age 47.2?
Plus: Kathleen Hanna's memoir • The coach who helps women embrace a new chapter
Meet Joanne Fiddy, 43, a Confidence Coach reinventing midlife for women
Munich, Germany • @riseandvibewithjo • LinkedIn
I’m in the midst of:
Working on my business, Rise and Vibe Coaching, which empowers women in their forties to get their confidence back and find their smile again. The forties are a transitional time, both physically, with perimenopause, and emotionally, as a time of reflection. There is also an element of grief and reinvention that comes with moving into midlife and what that means for someone’s identity.
Growing up and living in an anti-aging culture, it can feel that after 40, women are expected to wither and wilt away. Not on my watch. I’m in the midst of helping clients realise that they have an entirely new chapter in front of them and the power to let go of limiting beliefs, write the script, and build resistance and body confidence to keep dancing through life. It is my passion and gets me up in the morning — that and my two little ones.
I am almost at the end of my training to become a Menopause Training Specialist. Serving my clients is what drives me, and I felt this was an important part of the journey to fully understand and support them and myself. I’m setting up something really exciting in person for International Women in Munich — watch this space.
I’m also raising two little bilingual girls who are almost 5 and 2 years old in Munich. Originally from the U.K., I keep telling myself that this will be the year that I will finally become fluent. However, I have been telling myself that for several years now.
The best thing I’ve done for myself in midlife:
Wake up. I realized that somewhere along this perimenopausal fortysomething journey, I had fallen asleep at the steering wheel of my life and became the bottom of my to-do list.
There was a feeling of “I thought it would be better than this” and an element of unconsciously buying into the fairytale narrative script that women lose their value after 40. Once I realized what had happened, it led me down a glorious rabbit hole of rebelling and researching the beliefs women digested in the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s surrounding their worth, ageism, diet culture, and body confidence.
Calling all midlife trailblazers! We’d love to tell your story. Sign up to become a Founding MidstHer here on The Midst Substack. We’ll email you with more details. If you have questions, email tiffany@the-midst.com.
Only seven days until feminist icon Kathleen Hanna’s book is released! Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk (HarperCollins) promises to reveal the “hardest times along with the most joyful” — and how they continue to fuel Hanna’s revolutionary art and music.
I’ve interviewed Hanna several times but never delved much into her past. In this memoir, she recounts her tumultuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows with Bikini Kill and onto Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her battle with Lyme disease. — Amy Cuevas Schroeder
At what age are we happiest and unhappiest?
Hello, my name is Amy and I’m 47, the most depressing age of life according to a 2020 study by David G. Blanchflower, a British-American labor economist and academic.
If you’re thinking WTF?, I hear you, but the data is pretty solid: 500,000 people in 145 countries participated in the study that correlates mood with economic, social, and political well-being. People are apparently most depressed between 47 and 48 — both in developed and developing countries — with so-called misery peaking at 47.2.
Why are people so unhappy at 47.2?
One theory is that age 47 represents the transition from youth to maturity in modern life. As Saumyaa Vohra says in GQ India, “It is the age-old trope of the midlife crisis, but it isn’t a played-for-laugh TV gimmick; it is a very real reckoning of moving from one phase of life to another, one we deem less favourable than our wild and wonderful youth.”
In other words, life’s “halfway point” tends to make us question everything from our place in the world, what we’ve achieved, and what’s left of our time on the planet (or some other planet).
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A fresh new giveaway + interviews with L7 and Jill Smokler (found of Scary Mommy and She’s Got Issues)
I love this post, and I'd love to be considered as a guest on your Substack. I'm a midlife coach, licensed counselor, art therapist, and the author of Midlife Emergence. I also write a weekly Substack called prism. 💜