Reflection on turning 40

I recently turned 40. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

I certainly have a sense that I'm no longer part of the "it" crowd, the beautiful people. It's not people my age that feature in make up ads or even nappy ads. Television is limited to 40 year olds caught in a comedy of errors about aging.

I begin to feel like maybe once you hit forty you become a bit invisible. A midlife wallflower.

Professionally, women in their 40s tend to be left to their own devices. Sometimes it seems like a quiet checking out, sometimes a shifting of previous priorities, sometimes a tiredness of "playing the game".

I'm not sure which way the cause and effect runs. Perhaps it's self-driven. Perhaps women in their 40s just want to slow down. But perhaps it's that we're no longer the up and comers but not yet the deferred to, 4th quarter leader.

Sometimes the response to this is to get bigger. Louder. Be heard.

More often, though, I observe that women in their 40s get smaller. More camouflaged amongst what's around them. More content to let others have their moment or their word or their way.

Does it serves us in the end though?

At 40 we have quiet wisdom. Lessons hard learnt but with a capability and longer term perspectives many of our 4th quarter leaders can't match.

Let's not create a self-fulfilling prophecy of shrinking.

As I make my peace with 40, I won't become invisible. I'll speak up at meetings, I'll dance at parties and I'll politely disagree.

I'll take up no more space than I should but no less than I have.