A candid and beautifully written wrinkles-and-all meditation on the
middle years, with all their dilemmas and challenges...
In a society obsessed with living longer and looking younger, what does
middle age nowadays mean? How should a 50-something be in a world
ceaselessly redefining ageing, youth and experience?
The Middlepause offers hope, and heart. Cutting through society's
clamorous demands to work longer and stay young, it delivers a
clear-eyed account of midlife's challenges. Spurred by her own brutal
propulsion into menopause, Marina Benjamin weighs the losses, joys and
opportunities of our middle years, taking inspiration from literature
and philosophical example. She uncovers the secret misogynistic history
of HRT, and tells us why a dose of Jung is better than a trip to the
gym. Attending to ageing parents, the shock of bereavement, parenting a
teenager and her own health woes, she emerges into a new definition of
herself as daughter, mother, citizen and woman.
Marina Benjamin suggests there's comfort and guidance in memory,
milestones and margins, and offers an inspired and expanded vision of
how to be middle-aged happily and harmoniously, without sentiment or
delusion, making The Middlepause a companion, and a friend.
