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Redefining Ourselves

In our youth-obsessed culture, many women find that 40 is the birthday most fraught with anxiety. Forty, we have been told, means the demise of youth, the onset of middle age, the beginning of the end. Menopause looms, with its hot flashes and cessation of the fertility cycle that has defined our feminity. Younger, firmer women are entering the workforce, competing for our jobs and mates. Mention 40 to a thirty-something woman, and her heart may freeze, for a second, with undefined fears.

Some women - perhaps the majority - continue to buy into the myth of 40 as a milestone to be feared - and so create that reality. Others, more wisely, recognize that the forties are a time of rebirth, an opportunity to redefine and reinvent ourselves while we still have time and energy to pursue our dreams with force and clarity.

This is more true in this new Millenium than at any other time in history. Medical advances prolong our youthful appearance and fertility, so that those of us who have delayed motherhood may still choose to bring a child into the word. At the same time, more men in their late twenties and thirties are embracing the allure and experience of women who have passed the fortieth mile marker. Today, those of us who have passed 40 have an increasing array of mating choices.

Career choices have expanded as well. After crashing glass ceilings and instilling family-friendly policies in the corporate world, women over forty today are redefining the working world again by starting their own enterprises, entering the political world, pursuing additional degrees, returning home to care for a new generation of children . . the choices are as varied as the women themselves.

The majority of today's women over 40 hail from the Baby Boom, a generation that has redefined America since they toddled their first post-war baby steps. As we redefine ourselves and embrace new opportunities, we are erasing the fearful words on the fortieth milestone, transforming it from a tombstone to a door that opens to ever-expanding vistas.

Learn more about this author, Cheryl Claypoole.
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