Why I’m Not Saying the ‘M’ Word

Yes, men…o…pause.

Damn girl. Lately I've noticed something strange.

The minute a woman reaches a certain age, the conversation around her starts to shrink. Not in a dramatic way. It's more subtle than that. One day you're talking about a new business idea, a creative project, a trip you want to take, or some weird new hobby you've fallen in love with, and then suddenly every article, podcast, ad, and social media post seems determined to redirect the conversation back to the same place.

Your hormones.

I understand why the conversation exists. Bodies change. Aging is real. There are things women go through that deserve to be spoken about openly, especially after so many years of women being expected to quietly tolerate discomfort, confusion, or major life changes without much support.

That's not the part I have an issue with.

What bothers me is how quickly the conversation turns into an identity.

I have actually started asking my friends not to say the M word around me. I say it jokingly, but I also mean it. I'll be sitting there, having coffee, and someone will bring it up and I immediately think, please don't say that too many times because now my phone is going to hear it and suddenly every app I open will be trying to convince me that this is the central storyline of my life.

I know that sounds ridiculous but it feels true.

We live in a world where one conversation can turn into a full personality assessment by breakfast. You mention a couch and suddenly every ad thinks you're redecorating. You talk about a vacation and your phone decides you're moving to Portugal. So yes, I am a little suspicious of what happens when a word follows me around too much.

But it's not only the algorithm I'm thinking about. It's also my own mind.

I've become really interested in neuroplasticity, mostly because I like the idea that we are not as fixed as we think we are. The brain is always learning what to pay attention to. It gets better at finding whatever we keep telling it matters. If you start looking for proof that you're falling apart, I think your brain becomes very good at collecting evidence.

That doesn't mean symptoms aren't real. It doesn't mean we can positive-think our way out of biology. I don't believe that, and I don't want to pretend I do. But I do think the story we attach to our bodies matters.

I don't want every tired morning, every weird mood, every bad sleep, every moment where I forget why I walked into a room to become part of some larger narrative about decline. Some days I'm just tired. Some days I'm overwhelmed. Some days I have too much going on. Some days I ate crackers for dinner and stayed up too late scrolling through other people's kitchens.

Not everything needs to become evidence. Especially when, in so many ways, this part of my life feels less like decline and more like return.

I feel more myself than I ever have. Not in a perfect, polished, deeply healed way. More in the way that I know when I don't like something now. I know when a room feels wrong. I know when I'm saying yes because I actually want to, and when I'm saying yes because some old version of me is trying to be liked.

There is something incredibly freeing about arriving at an age where you don't have the same appetite for performance.

I don't want to trade that freedom for a new label.

I don't want to finally get to the place where I feel like myself and then immediately be handed a category that explains me back to myself through hormones. Because that's the part that feels off to me.

The cultural conversation is acting like this is the main event. Like the big story of this age is what our bodies are doing, what they're losing, what they might need, what they can no longer get away with.

And maybe for some people, that conversation is useful.

For me, it feels too small.

It’s funny, because I spend a lot of time thinking about skincare. I literally started a skincare company. But for me, skincare has never been about fighting age. It’s about feeling good in my own skin. Those are two completely different conversations, and I think women deserve more of the second one.

I'm much more interested in what I still want to learn. I keep thinking about all the things I didn't do when I was younger because I was too shy, too worried about looking stupid, too busy trying to be chosen, too concerned with what kind of woman I was supposed to be.

Now I care less about being chosen and more about choosing.

That feels like the actual shift.

So no, I'm not saying the M word right now. Not because I'm scared of it. Not because I think I'm above it. Not because I believe refusing to say something makes it disappear.

I'm choosing not to build an altar to it. I'm choosing not to let one biological reality become the headline of a much stranger, richer, more interesting chapter.

I want to learn something new. I want to break rules that never made sense to me in the first place. I want to get fit, not as a punishment or a panic response, but because strength feels like a good place to put my attention.

Maybe that's the whole thing.

Attention.

What we give it to. What we let name us. What we accidentally practice believing.

And right now, I don't want to practice getting older.

I want to practice feeling alive.

And now you know.

xo

Shelley