Hot Girl Summer, Middle-Aged Lady Version

And by hot I mean working less and not fighting my uterus.

Hello, hello, to all the new subscribers! Last week’s piece about exhaustion hit a big, burned-out nerve, apparently, which is awful (because too many of us relate) and great (knowing you’re not alone is good medicine). Hearing from so many of you here and on Instagram helped me have a VERY DIFFERENT WEEK last week and also make some decisions about how I’m structuring my time this summer and fall. I’ll talk about that in a minute.

First, a few announcements

If you’re in the Boston area TONIGHT, Wednesday, 6/14, I’ll be in conversation with my friend Emily Paulson to talk about her new book, Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing at Newtonville Books at 7 pm. You can RSVP here.

If you’re new to sobriety or need more community and structure, I’m teaching The Sober 90 this summer. We begin June 30. Learn more & register.

Two opportunities to join me for a retreat this year: July 21-23 at The Art of Living in Boone, NC, and October 20-22 at Kripalu in Western Mass.

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Alright. As I said, publishing last week’s piece on exhaustion was so cathartic, but reading your responses has been healing. Seriously. I feel far less alone, less crazy, less like I’m doing something wrong. This is a complicated conversation that’s systemic and cultural, as well as individual and emotional, and I’ll keep writing about it as we go, but today I want to share some of the more immediate decisions I’ve made about my time this summer (and beyond) as a result. Next week, I’ll be answering a reader question about comparison and jealousy because these two things—exhaustion and comparison/jealousy—are totally connected, in my view.

Here are my plans for a hot girl summer, middle-aged lady version.

1. Respecting my hormones (aka not treating myself like a machine)

TW: MUCH PERIOD TALK

I published the exhaustion piece last Monday, and by Tuesday morning, I felt SO MUCH FREAKING BETTER. I'm realizing part of this was hormonal, so that’s where I’ll start.

Up until about three years ago, my periods were non-events. Yes, I was one of those bitches who thought other girls/women were just being dramatic when they talked about PMS and mood swings and exhaustion and craaaaamps. My boobs got sore sometimes, but that’s about it. Then I turned forty. Now my periods are a fourteen-day event with more volatile weather than Florida in hurricane season. This shit is real, and I’m not even close to used to it yet! Every month it’s like, What’s the point of this life? or Why does the sound of your breathing make me want to murder? or How many work things can I cancel before I’m homeless? and then, four days after my period is over, the aliens leave my body, and I’m all, Life is great!

Just last month, I finally—finally!—put flashing red notices in my calendar for when I’d be pre-period / during period / post-period so I could try to plan accordingly. What this looks like practically is:

• 3-4 days before my period, I will have a superhuman rise in energy, akin to the “nesting” phase of pregnancy. Plan lots of stuff.

• The day before, I’ll feel like dying. Everything beyond driving the kid to and from school will be ninja-level hard. Do not plan anything.

• During the first 2-3 days of my period, it will feel like there’s a knife fight in my uterus. The pain will have me bent in half. Advil helps, but it’s still brutal, and because I know The Migraines are coming, I ration the Advil so I don’t destroy my kidneys. I will also bleed the equivalent of Lake Michigan, so there’s a lot of time spent in the bathroom/doing laundry.¹ Don’t plan things where you’ll be away from a bathroom for more than 45 minutes.

• During the last couple of days of my period, the bleeding will lessen considerably, but The Migraines will start, and The Migraines will continue for several days post-period. Doing anything that requires my eyes to be open hurts. I’ll be exhausted because The Migraines are the worst at night when I try to sleep, so I don’t sleep much. The only safe place is my bedroom, shades drawn. Sleep. So much sleep is needed. All plans will be foiled.

It’s taken me four years to figure this out, and only in the past couple of months have I started to respect and expect it. Respecting it means I don’t rail at myself for not being able to function like a machine, and expecting it means I take proactive steps to suffer less during the hard parts. I mentioned I just did this last month, and it actually worked! At the beginning of the month, when I looked ahead and saw the bright red warning for the post-period migraine days, I rescheduled two non-essential meetings, a podcast interview, and an orthodontist appointment; I also asked for help with rides for Alma. It helped!

I now have this month’s warnings on my calendar and am planning—as much as I can—accordingly. Obviously, sometimes, we can’t just cancel or reschedule stuff. Especially if we have kids, are single parents, or have caregiving or work responsibilities that aren’t flexible. But even in those cases, knowing what’s coming, planning for it, and being NICE TO OURSELVES through the struggly parts can make such a big difference.

I’m guessing for a certain percentage of you, this is a big DUH, and good for you! For me, it’s new territory. I had so much GO all through my twenties and thirties; the amount of stuff I could accomplish while being drunk or hungover most of the time is truly astounding to forty-five-year-old me. I can’t just power through anymore without paying a too-big price, and I’m going to stop trying.

2. Clearing my work schedule as much as possible—AND NOT FILLING IT

Speaking of schedules, I’ve decided to make massive cuts to mine. In the past, I’ve said I wanted to do this—usually during a tired period—and what would happen is I’d cut something (a course, a project, an event), but then as soon as I’d feel the relief of spaciousness in my calendar I’d get excited about what new, exciting thing I could fill it with! And I’d do exactly that!

Example: I ended Tell Me Something True podcast last summer and started this Substack a month later.

While my main reason for ending TMST was to focus on writing, and this here is writing, I didn’t even give myself a second to breathe and consider what I might be taking on or what it might cost me. I’m glad I’m here; I really like doing it and don’t plan to stop. But I could have used a beat to be more intentional about it and consider what I was committing to and what it would cost me, time and energy-wise.

When I looked at my schedule for the summer and fall and asked what I could cut, I landed here:

• My upcoming book deadline. Can’t cut it (I don’t want to) but could ask for it to be moved out. I asked, and the extension was granted. It’s now due June 1, 2024, instead of December 1, 2023. I could cry just writing that. It has big implications for me financially, but I’m so relieved.

• No more courses this year. I’d planned to teach The Practice in the fall and perhaps The Bigger Yes this summer. But I’ve decided no. Do I like teaching? Yes. Do I also need the space to focus on the book? Yes. Could I use the income? Yes. Do I absolutely have to have it to survive? No.

• No media/podcast interviews this summer; everything can be booked for the fall. Unless, like, Oprah calls.

This means my weekly work hours are dedicated to three primary things: The Luckiest Club, book writing, and this: Substack. I’m also teaching retreats in July and September, but those are only weekend-long things. We’ll see what this amounts to hours-wise each week, but it’s a significant mental difference either way.

Other areas to pare down:

• Social media: bare minimum, plus I’ve hired help.

• Social media as a consumer. I just feel so much better about everything when I’m not scrolling a lot. More on this next week when I talk about comparison.

• Writing here. I’ve been aiming for two posts per week because that’s what I was doing leading up to the publication of Push Off from Here, and every week I am annoyed with myself because I struggle to do it, but I am coming to accept that I’m just not a prolific writer. I’m a slow writer, a write-a-lot-and-delete-writer, and a single-post-takes-me-12-hours writer. Maybe, one day, I will be more like Stephen King or Heather Cox Richardson or Anne Helen Peterson, and if that happens, okay! But I’m not that writer today, so I’m going to stop pretending like I am. One piece per week is just fine. It’s actually a lot, I think!

3. Resting for rest, not to produce more.

I don’t know how to rest very well. I blame my mom; she’s a terrible rester. But also, my brain likes to do things, especially work things, because I’m good at work and I like earning money, and I get a lot of positive feedback and accolades for my work product and work persona. But I’ve clearly hit a wall with this, and I don’t want to be the kind of person who doesn’t know how to rest or have fucking fun!

So to build on clearing my schedule, I’m making a vow not to fill that extra space with work, certainly, but also to not fill it with other forms of manic productivity. I don’t know exactly what this means or looks like, but I know it probably involves being off screens and outside more, using my hands more, losing track of time more, setting fewer alarms, and following my daughter’s lead more (e.g. saying “yes” literally whenever she wants to hang out with me because that ship is sailing away fast). Also: books. But I already had that covered.

I read this yesterday, and it hit.

These changes feel big to me. Last summer was a non-summer because the manuscript for POFH was due in August, and I was chained to my desk. I was resentful, but also—in a way that’s hard to admit—fine with it? Work is my default, my safe space, my go-to. I love what I do, so I like working a lot, but honestly, even when I’ve hated my jobs, I still worked my ass off. Work has always been a place where I feel in control and competent. I get a lot of my worth from my output. It’s kept me from feeling things I don’t want to feel and looking at things I don’t want to look at. So aside from the financial reality of clearing and shifting things, which are very real, this is going to push on some pretty well-installed buttons. But I’m ready for it, I think.

As always, I want to hear from you.

xo
Laura

You are reading Love Story, a weekly newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing (with a heavy dose of Taylor Swift) from Laura McKowen. I’m also on Instagram, and have written two books. I love engaging with you in the comments, which are open to paid subscribers, and you can subscribe here or give a gift subscription here.

1. I’m getting an IUD in two weeks to help with the geyser bleeding and other symptoms.