How Did This Happen?

Exclusive Excerpt from the Creators of Aging While Female

9 min readFeb 13, 2017

Every so often I read a book about age, and whoever’s writing it says it’s great to be old. It’s great to be wise and sage and mellow; it’s great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can’t stand people who say things like this. — Nora Ephron

This book is for every woman who has faced “OMG, how did this happen?” moments of aging, from ego-gutting recognitions (your mother’s face stares out from your previously reliable bathroom mirror) to nerve-shredding indignities (there are few hours in life less agreeable than those dedicated to the ceremony known as a mammogram — except the ones dedicated to the colonoscopy). And worse.

This is forty and then some. This is aging: something that happens to other people, until it happens to you. That gray hair. Those apple cheeks puddling into jowls. To bother with vanity or (pretend to) ignore it? The pap smear scare. Cold sweat at the doctor’s and hot flashes at night. Issues cosmetic and cosmic — but wait, how did this happen?

Five minutes ago, give or take a decade, we were thirty-somethings, flexing our way through dating and heartbreak and work drama, building careers and planning weddings, running marathons and swaddling babies — and now? You, who used to flinch at the sight of the grisly Dansko women in the Whole Foods parking lot, you, who blithely sprinted past the walking wounded on the track at the gym — here you are now, Birkenstock-shod in the supplements section, straining to read the ingredients labels, or post knee surgery in the Yoga for Healing class, hoarding blankets and vigilantly guarding your spot from pesky latecomers.

It simply cannot be.

And yet somehow here we are, discovering the fight‑or‑flight hell that is “aging while female,” a vexing side effect of what writer Olivia Laing calls the “perpetual, harrowing, nonconsensual beauty pageant of femininity.”

We struggle to transition from freaked-out to fabulous but find ourselves caught between revulsion and pride, fear and fortitude, the need to appear “professional” and “attractive” and the desire to resist social norms that equate “professional and attractive” with “young and hot.”

Let’s face it: getting from the shock (is that my face?!) to the awe (Viola Davis on the red carpet) of growing older requires emotional grace, intellectual grit, an expert dermatologist, and the company of true friends. Even then there’s no guarantee you’ll move from “I feel bad about my neck!” to “I’m an iconic badass!” But chances are you’ll find equanimity, even joy, on your journey.

We can’t provide the expert dermatologist, but we can offer a way to cultivate that grace, grit, and camaraderie, through a book that does for aging what we did for heartbreak in The Hell with Love: Poems to Mend a Broken Heart: guide, amuse, and comfort women who are going through a major life change — this time the natural but often deeply disruptive process of growing older. Through poetry — yes, hilarious, fierce poetry, from Gwendolyn Brooks to Amy Poehler — you’ll find commiseration and inspiration to carry you through pivotal phases of aging:

Insult

(When you don’t recognize yourself in the mirror)

Injury

(When you realize aging is a thing)

Defiance

(When you think you can make it all go away)

Dread

(When you realize you can’t even)

Grit

(When you find a way to live with yourself)

Grace

(When you find a way to live in the world)

So many of us experience aging alone, unprepared and unwilling to face it, from that first sneak attack to many dark nights of the soul.

Despite our cheerful Facebook feeds, we’re confused and embarrassed, grieving what’s lost, afraid of what’s to come, and unsure of how to move forward.

(Try to get all that across in an emoji.) We’ll take you through this journey together, in company that’s safe and wise, funny and supportive.

And who, you may ask, are “we,” daring to accompany you through aging, mixing our words with those of poetic geniuses like Lucille Clifton, Sylvia Plath, and Ada Limón? We’re Mary, fifty-four, and Elizabeth, seventy-one, longtime best friends who love literature (we’re both teachers) and pop culture (both former People magazine reporters) and who for the past thirty years have helped each other make sense of the world, one poem or Broad City episode at a time.

When late motherhood and right‑on‑time perimenopause collided for Mary, she searched in vain for a book or website that would “get” what she was going through, something that faced aging head‑on, with smarts, humor, irony, and cold, hard truth. Nothing that screamed menopause, infirmity, death, but nothing delusional about the wonders of decrepitude: “Oh, the fragrant wisdom of old age, musty with self-knowledge, I inhale it with gusto!” No. All she wanted was something relatable and real, not Ten Top Tips for Tip-Top Aging, not Look At My Gorgeous Over‑40 Ass books by ex‑models and celebrities. Where, oh where was her Are You There God? It’s Me, Perimenopausal Margaret?

Elizabeth weighed in: “A little wine every night, a little Celexa every morning, and Valium as needed — oh, and Toni Morrison every day.” And while drug-phobic Mary rejected booze and meds, she did find solace and strength in Elizabeth’s doses of pop-literary therapy, from Margaret Atwood to Samantha Bee. And so: this book was born, a poetic how‑to for women growing older, rooted in the wisdom of great thinkers and writers.

We aim to weave together our cultural experience of aging with poems that can help us cope. Because what’s so different, really, between Emily Dickinson’s steely truth telling and Amy Schumer’s brilliant feminism, or Dorothy Parker’s devastating wit and Lena Dunham’s unapologetic frankness? They all evince an attitude toward aging, a female point of view that celebrates the Grace Paley–meets–Melissa McCarthy approach:

“We are here, we exist, we are beautiful and gross and human; we grow up, and we grow old, and so what?”

One reason Schumer has struck such a chord with women of all ages is that she speaks truth to the power of sexism in our culture. We can all laugh at Schumer, Tina Fey, and Patricia Arquette sending Julia Louis-Dreyfus up the river after celebrating her last “fuckable” day (in the now classic sketch) because we know it’s true: after “a certain age,” women become invisible in our culture — unless they avail themselves of the subterfuge that writer Jennifer Weiner lamented in a New York Times op‑ed: “How do you preach the gospel of body positivity when you’re breathless from your Spanx? How can you tell your girls that inner beauty matters when you’re texting them the message from your aesthetician’s chair?” As Weiner said of the pressure to age pretty, “It’s sexist, and depressing, and expensive, costly in terms of both money and time.”

And that’s where this book comes in, a guide for when you don’t have the time, money, or comedic company of Schumer’s merry menoposse. A poem is free therapy you can access anytime, like a prayer or a song. The best poems, the ones that stick with you, console you when you’re grieving and steel you when you’re scared — they “get” you, your weirdness and fears and inside jokes, just like a best friend, and they won’t walk away when you lash out or melt down. Pick up these poems when you wake, sweating, at two a.m. and can’t get back to sleep — you’ll find them wide awake with you, cursing the dark, making you laugh, and maybe even soothing you back to slumber. Or let these poems rile you into righteous action, whether it’s “leaning in” harder or letting go sooner — whatever moves you toward living life on your own terms.

Ultimately, that’s what this book is about — crafting a life that you choose, despite the challenges of midlife and beyond.

As we grow older in a culture of constant self-scrutiny and social snark, let’s destigmatize aging by talking about it (and living it) without embarrassment and dread, without shame or self-loathing.

Let’s build on a moment when attitudes toward “aging while female” just may be changing: from Beyoncé to the Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), Amanda Peet to Ava DuVernay, Emma Watson to Emma Thompson, Shonda Rhimes to Sonia Sotomayor . . . to Oprah and beyond (we can hardly stop ourselves) — smart, powerful women are already rejecting and subverting cultural norms around growing up and growing older.

We want to join our voices with theirs, and add the resonance of poetry, which endures when trends have come and gone. Great poetry — funny and tender, piercing and true — can help us face both the insults to the flesh and the injuries to the soul that come with growing older. As we’ve done for each other, we’ll accompany you through it all, from a state of shock and frustration to a feeling of peace and acceptance, as in Grace Paley’s “Here”: