Why I’m proud to be a WOMAN OF A CERTAIN RAGE

She sold millions of chick-lit novels. But when menopause hit, FIONA WALKER tore off her rose-tinted glasses and wrote the unvarnished truth about the fury — and the freedom — of midlife

FBIFTY was a landmark birthday I approached with trepidation, along with oestrogen’s off switch. I’d made a personal pact that by the time I had a 5 in front of my age, I would have found my waist again, learned to love yoga, read all the Booker shortlisted novels and be balayage blonde.

While I achieved none of those things, I didn’t beat myself up for not meeting expectations. Instead, I woke up after half a century more certain of who I am than I’ve ever been.

Flawed, funny, a bit fat, unlikely ever to summon my inner marathon runner, but grateful for the wisdom to acknowledge that.

The ‘change of life’ had always sounded so final and fearful. Nothing prepared me for what a celebration it could be. There is an upside to menopause that needs sharing, a glorious renaissance born of walking through fire. We get braver, bolder and, dare I say it, happier after the a loyal following as Fiona sweat has dried. Walker, I didn’t want to confuse

Mine helped to change my readers expecting a big-cast career path. I’ve been a novelist romp. Woman Of A Certain Rage for 30 years and was once at the is closer to the bone than my vanguard of chick lit. Aged just usual high jinks, if no less laughter-filled, 22, tiring of escapist bonkbusters and tells the story of a featuring ball-breaking high-flyers wife and mother who, at 50, sets I couldn’t relate to, I wrote a out to recapture the adventurous novel about a self-conscious, lovelorn

freedom of her youth. 20-something coming of age.

Lately, the menopause has It was a bestseller and launched my career, my books going on to enjoyed a lot of press, and rightly sell close to 2 million copies. so. While our mothers’ generation gallantly glistened and said nothing, we’re sharing the experience and all its hot, bothered truths. Puberty’s evil older sister needs acknowledging, and by talking about it we normalise it, even when the inevitable ‘moanopause’ backlash kicks in. Ours is a tricky era for middleaged womanhood: cancel culture targets us; ‘Karen’ labels us; and Liz Hurley’s bikini selfies bodyshame us. But we’re a tough bunch and we’re old friends, so we can see this thing through.

I remember being in the kitchen at a party a few years ago, so hot my eyes were sweating, when my hostess gave me a wise look, threw open the doors — it was uT 19 novels later, my caché — along with my marketable youthfulness — had begun to fade.

Then I heard the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge telling an interviewer that she may bring back Fleabag when she is 50 and more interesting.

Half the women I know are already 50, I thought. Where are the books telling our story? Finding myself searching in vain for a novel that shone a light on a stage of life I knew only too well, it struck me that my generation of writers should share the same zeitgeist humour and honesty about middle age we once did about being young singletons.

I adopted the pen name Georgie Hall to do it. The change of life is about new beginnings after all, and having spent decades building midwinter, oh the bliss! — and whispered: ‘I’m there, too.’ This was the first time I’d heard it admitted by a friend, which seems madness now, but we’ve come a long way in a short time.

Google Search ‘menopause’ back then, and you’d find a mosaic of Les Dawson in drag lookalikes fanning their blue rinses, a comedy horror. Now there’s a wealth of information: celebrity HRT influencers Davina McCall, Meg Mathews and Mariella Frostrup are bravely myth-busting; podcasters such as Sam Baker and her glorious The Shift are giving us a voice; new online powerhouse Noon is promoting midlife as the start of something big — not the end of our womanly worth.

I’ve found that midlife I no longer feel a burning need to project the ‘everything’s perfect’ idyll — or, more realistically, perpetuate the ‘everything will be perfect when I’ve found time to sort it out’ myth.

By accepting that I will never be a cool-headed, wrinkle-free sample size with colour-arranged bookshelves, I love and value my messy life more. Victor Hugo, that great French scribe of revolution and bellringing, is quoted as saying: ‘Forty is the old age of youth; 50 is the youth of old age.’ Personally, I was permanently exhausted in my 40s, firmly wedged between demanding children and needy elderly parents like the last M&S egg-and-cress on display, drying out and wilting in the heat.

Given I spent half the decade twiddling the thermostat and wondering why I’d walked into a room, I should’ve known my hormones were on the run, but I had no time to dwell on it — not even at 3am when I lay awake overthinking everything.

Since turning 50, I’ve experienced a surge of positive energy that’s taken me by surprise.

My joie de vivre is getting its vava-voom back, and not just because I’ve binge-watched Call My Agent and signed up to learn French on Duolingo.

The truth is it’s heaven to no longer circle the calendar every 28th day; I don’t miss periods and PMT any more than I miss crop tops and thongs.

I’m also less of an enabler; instead of constantly picking up detritus after my family, I tell them to pick it up themselves. Or leave it dropped and move on.

I may still shout at Alexa when she doesn’t understand me — ‘I said play Joy Division not Roy Orbison!’ — and flap the fridge door more than once a day to cool down, but the fear and anger that has gripped me for a decade is passing. If this is the youth of old age, I’m in the ball pit and I’m not coming out.

In case this all sounds bingowing-swingingly selfish, I should add that I know it’s not the same for everyone, and my heart goes out to women who mourn their loss of fecundity.

For those who still long for conception when our periods stop, for those seeking love only to see men’s eyes pass over us to younger women, it’s a very real loss. And for all suffering the mind-fogging, body-ravaging hell of menopause’s worse symptoms, it’s nature at its cruellest.

But there’s strength in numbers: Wellbeing of Women estimate that around 13million women in the uK are currently peri or menopausal, which is about a third of us, so we’re in this together. And a growing proportion of us are genuinely celebrating passing the milestone.

It helped me to share this same epiphany with so many wise-eyed friends, Generation X being a talkative and rebellious lot.

WHILe the waxy Botoxed trout pout and wrinkled hands of preserved youth beckon women over 40 into ever more extreme measures to stay looking young, some of us are kicking off our high heels, releasing the scaffolding of shapewear and doing it our way.

We want adventure and new challenges, not pickling in collagen, fillers and tooth bleach.

No one denies being young is lovely — the infinite possibilities, the effortless energy, the forgiving body. But there’s glory in the wit and wisdom of maturity, too. Our life expectancy is now over 80 and the average age of menopause is 50, so we’ve got a lot of time to enjoy this new-found freedom.

As for my own 50-something epiphany, the lightbulb moment that led to a career reboot and an alter ego called Georgie Hall, I hope it’s the start of something new for women my age. My early writing success may have become a benchmark I struggled to hold on to, along with that carefree, unlined face which still graces my first book jackets, but my life experience is infinitely richer.

We need fictional heroines with hot flushes and adventurous souls just like ours. Call it old-bird lit if you like, but it’s time chick lit spread her wings.

Woman of a Certain Rage by Georgie Hall is published by Head of Zeus, £18.99. To order a copy for £17.09, go to mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 020 3308 9193. Free UK delivery on orders over £20. Promotional price is valid until September 23, 2021.

I don’t miss PMT any more than crop tops and thongs