The Middlepause
On Life After Youth
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"In The Middlepause Benjamin deftly and brilliantly examines the losses and unexpected gains she experienced in menopause. Menopause is a mind and body shift as monumental and universal as puberty, yet far less often discussed, especially in public, which is what makes Benjamin's work here so urgently necessary." —Kate Tuttle, The Los Angeles Times
The Middlepause offers a vision of contentment in middle age, without sentiment or delusion. Marina Benjamin weighs the losses and opportunities of our middle years, taking inspiration from literature, science, philosophy, and her own experience. Spurred by her surgical propulsion into a sudden menopause, she finds ways to move forward while maintaining clear–eyed acknowledgment of the challenges of aging. Attending to complicated elderly parents and a teenaged daughter, experiencing bereavement, her own health woes, and a fresh impetus to give, Benjamin emerges into a new definition of herself as daughter, mother, citizen, and woman.
Among The Middlepause's many wise observations about no longer being young: ""I am discovering that I care less about what other people think."" ""My needs are leaner and my storehouse fuller."" ""It is not possible to fully appreciate what it means to age without attending to what the body knows. . . . I have always had a knee–jerk distaste for the idea that age is all in the mind."" ""You need a cohort of peers to go through the aging process with you. A cackle of crones! A cavalry!"" Marina Benjamin's memoir will serve as a comfort, a companion to women going through the too–seldom–spoken of physical and mental changes in middle age and beyond.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This eloquent and intelligent memoir by Aeon editor Benjamin (Last Days in Babylon) tells of the author's personal experience with sudden menopause after a hysterectomy, when she was struggling with physical pain and hormonal changes and felt "ambushed" by middle age. She lays bare her distress, feeling she was "fast-tracked" to menopause: "Much of the time I feel mournful, assailed by loss." Menopause's relationship to aging is deftly cataloged as Benjamin laments the physical changes in her skin, spine, and vigor, as well as forgetfulness. She notes her positive experience with hormonal replacement therapy, yet is conflicted because of its misogynistic history. Benjamin seeks guidance through diverse content: self-help books and online message boards, scholarly writings by Carl Jung and Erik Erikson, Edith Wharton's novel Twilight Sleep, and writings of the French novelist Colette. This is a measured and beautifully written critique of menopause and middle age that pre-, mid-, and postmenopausal women will find eminently relatable, and that those who love and care for them will likewise appreciate.
