40 Plus Woman

Imagine my surprise when I unwrapped the Haight-Ashbury Hippie Hemp soap thinking it would smell of pine and fresh air when in fact it smelled of my childhood.

Are you living the life you planned? Read the second half of Cynthia’s story. “I’m a forty-something single mom of a special needs child. It doesn’t bother me to say it anymore. To get there I had to let go of the life I’d counted on and embrace the life—the real, unplanned, unexpected one—I was given.”

What if your husband walked out on your marriage and autistic child? What if you roof leaked, you lost your job, the sewer line ruptured? What if your dog developed bone cancer; the cat’s kidneys failed? What if your well-ordered life imploded? Read what Cynthia J. Patton did in Part I of A 40 Plus Woman Lives an Unplanned Life.

Julie McDade Whyte shares her favorite place, Stinson Beach. Here’s why she loves the place so much… …for the beach …for the surf …for beach combing …for family …for the peace …for sunsets and knowing the next day will be some of the same. Share your favorite place with photos.  Send to Michelle@40pluswoman.com.    

I love Taos, New Mexico. It’s an understatement but it’s the closest adjective I can find to describe how I feel about the place. I’m going to try to express my adoration for Taos and New Mexico through photographs taken by David S. Martin. A picture is worth a thousand words…

I wasn’t a stripper but god knows I had daddy issues. A childhood spent not knowing my dad. Because I didn’t have much of a relationship with my dad growing up, I had no insight into men. I found it very difficult to navigate relationships with them.

If I am oregano, she is tomato. If she is borage, then I am a strawberry. She’s beans, I’m corn. You see, we are like companion plants—her often openness complements my reluctance; her emotions contrast to my stoicism; often she calms the rant; then she rants and I calm. We alternate moods and emotions depending on the problem or the need.

Who couldn’t feel sorry for a 22-year-old woman who’d lost her mother, lost herself and had to take the solo trek on the PCT to save herself? Don’t you understand if Strayed had stayed with her husband, she would have lost herself even more to heroin, other men, all in the name of numbing herself?

Will social scientists say this urban chicken farming trend was a yearning for a simpler life? A reaction to these tough recessionary years? Nostalgia? Most people I know get chickens once their kids reach a more independent age, and we reach the middle of our lives.

Our aunt loved flowers. I think of taking a cutting of her geraniums, but I never go in the front door. And would they survive winter outside anyway? If my aunt were here, they would be inside and she would be tending them now, but I don’t see them anywhere so I forget it and concentrate on stuffing the car so full we will never have to go back again.