The Great Abyss After 40

Between business struggles, parenting a teenager, and the creeping sense of invisibility, a 40 plus woman navigates the uncertain terrain of adulting, holding on to courage, conviction, and a stubborn will to keep going.

It was a sunny day in Coimbatore. The sky was a clear cerulean blue. I climbed into my SUV, ready to take on the day. Someone had sent me a carpe diem text that morning, and it spoke to me. I will tell you why.

I rarely open WhatsApp forwards these days, and Instagram ones are heading the same way. I love the people who send them, but I have run out of patience. So a random carpe diem message, factoring in my awareness of association bias, felt oddly meant for me. I would like to think of myself as a rational, outwardly logical, 40 plus woman with 10 dogs and a 13 year old son in tow. Adulting, I have realised, can be confounding even for those eyeballs deep in it.

So I opened it. It was about election results in Tamil Nadu, results that had blown past exit poll predictions.

At the red light, I had time to think about the day before. On the surface, everything seemed the same. Beneath it, a quiet disbelief. The calm before a promised calm. I felt like I was living inside the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities, a time of incredulity and brightness. Dickens has always been a favourite. My father's favourite villain was Fagin from Oliver Twist.

Did I mention I almost forgot the name of the book. Brain fog, they said, after 40 is a new reality. At sixes and sevens, much to my son's exasperation.

I noticed the silver streaks in my hair and sighed. The great abyss that begins in the big four. Time freezes, and yet you keep hurtling into it, arms stretched, hoping for a smooth landing.

My mind drifted to my business. Convincing people to buy a genuinely good product, discounting my own enthusiasm, is hard. Friends, some do, most do not. Family, the same. I am not anti anyone. I like people, I love their stories. But that does not take away the quiet ache of feeling invisible.

As adults, we are expected to be resilient, monk like, to have figured it all out. Some days I feel like an imposter, winging it. Straddling numbers, science, logistics and marketing, all connected by ravines, gorges and peaks.

I look at my son, buried in his laptop, writing an anime. My heart breaks a little. He is 13, on the edge of everything that is coming, expectations, heartbreaks, exams, competition and fear. He will need armour made of courage and conviction.

I wade through life, sometimes confident like a raft on rapids, sometimes like a drifting log. Building something forces you to meet parts of yourself you would rather not. I signed up for it knowing the pitfalls, the pinatas that will burst when things finally go right.

Maybe that is what adulting is for me. More than bills and responsibilities, it is staying the course when things get hard, not walking away too soon, leaving no stone unturned even when the price is high, with sacrifice, solitude and a stubborn kind of verve.

More than anything, I hope my story resonates with someone on the same journey, another kindred soul, and helps them drop anchor and stay firm even when the tempest threatens to swallow them whole.

And maybe my son knowing that his mom is someone he can look up to.

Molecularly Yours,

Sanjana

Curiously Irrepressible  

First dreamer. Accidental chemist @ Green Molecule - Clean Confidently

A Personal Note

P.S.: This is simply my personal experience and not a prescription for anyone else. We all find our spark in different ways—to each his, her, or their own. This is not a roadmap at all, just something that worked for me.