the slimmest band of gold

claiming yourself

Hi friends,

If you’re new here, hi! I’m so glad you’ve found our community of (early) midlifers asking, “What now?” We’re much more than that, of course. Our corner of Substack is for deep thinkers and feelers. It’s for the readers as well as the (life) writers. It’s for the (prematurely) perimenopausal. The carers. The parents of tween and teens, rattling roughshod over the peaks and troughs of others’ hormonal ups and downs as well as our own.

This week, your votes have been counted and verified, and I can now reveal that the top choice for tonight’s What Now? Group Chat is…

This week, a newish friend got married and sent me a picture of her be-ringed left hand. “Give me the plainest, simplest ring you have, please!” she’d added to the message, before telling me about the jewellery mishaps of the past that informed her choice. The ring in the photo was both plain and simple. It was also, of course, beautiful. Seeing it has prompted me to share a story of my own that might serve as something to get tonight’s Group Chat going.

You can join tonight at 8pm from the app or the desktop and you’ll get a ping at 8pm when it launches.

the slimmest band of gold

Nothing much differentiated the spring of 2024 from the couple that preceded it. This was a good thing. It meant it wasn’t the kind of spring I’d go onto recall with the shivers (see the hotly claustrophobic COVID spring of 2020 or the emotionally fraught one of 2018 when I was in a mental health crisis of my own while simultaneously containing my mother’s and my elder daughter’s). Perhaps this lull created the perfect conditions, then.

My word for 2023 had been “tend”. Not only in the sense of tending to something or someone, but because it encompassed a sense of preference. A tending towards. A sense of responding to inclination and intuition rather than obligation. A feeling of having made a conscious choice. I tend to… I’d enjoyed that word.

dried honesty

On a whim, I chose “honesty” for 2024, thinking about the dried bunches of it I have around the house. Honestly, though, I couldn’t have understood last January what it would come to mean to me. I think I first imagined it in terms of being an honest person as far as others were concerned. That felt lofty. Aspirational. Aligned. But to be honest with myself? That interpretation hadn’t really crossed my mind. Certainly, I wasn’t imagining that honesty in articulating my own wants and needs might hurt others or feel painful to me, too.

It doesn’t matter, really, what it is that I wanted or needed, but for so long I think I’d gotten so used to the internal voice telling me “no” in response to all kinds of things that I no longer really heard it. There’s a balance to be struck, of course, but in recognising this, I wondered what might serve to remind me that I at least had a choice in whether or not I listened to it.

A ring.

I bought the slimmest, plainest gold band I could find. When it arrived, I took off the chunky, bejewelled rings that — thirteen years earlier — had taken up residence on my left hand. I put the new one on and confirmed it didn’t look right on its own. It was like but not like a wedding ring; like but not like an eternity ring. I put the other two back on as well. That was better.

The three of them now rub along together on my ring finger quite happily, that new addition serving as a visual and tactile prompt when I need reminding that it’s OK to want and need to put myself first. Yes, I am a mother, a wife, a carer. An employee, a freelancer. But I am also a woman. Buying it myself felt important. It wasn’t inherited like my engagement ring was. It wasn’t bought for me like my wedding ring was.

I know we can be guilty of heaping meaning onto objects, but perhaps you understand why we do this. And maybe you have a similar object that reminds you to put yourself first? Or a mantra? Or a practice that helps you? Let’s chat about this tonight and all the attendant worries, concerns,l and complicated feelings of guilt, shame and — yes — liberation that leaning into this mindset can provoke. Even if it’s just for brief pockets of time…

See you tonight, 8pm, for an hour of chat.

Lindsay x