My post-50 joy

When author Charlotte Wood hit 50 something incredible happened – a surge of power and optimism backed with the wisdom of decades that is still with her six years later.

- CHARLOTTE WOOD

The morning I turned 50, some years ago now, a strange thing happened. I’d anticipated some neurotic spasm or other to visit me at the turn of this decade, as it had at 40. Back then, I’d fixated on my paltry novelist’s income as evidence of some failure to mature. I’d compared my circumstances to those of much wealthier friends, conveniently overlooking all the others I knew who lived tranquil, meaningful lives on even less money than we had. But once I realised that my fuss over what my bank balance ‘should’ have looked like ‘by now’ was actually just a commonplace bout of status anxiety on turning 40, I more or less snapped out of it and got on with life.

Still, 50 was different, wasn’t it? Women were supposed to freak out at this particular milestone. I might have scorned all those outdated, anti-feminist notions about women losing their relevance and appeal as they age, but that doesn’t mean I was immune to them. So as my 50th birthday approached, I braced myself for the inevitable psychic plummet.