I was at a bookstore looking for books on exercise & health, trying to gain knowledge on how to better support my body as I get older. The same situps I did at age 20 seem to have little or no effect on my abs at 40. Looking for good quality information was hard to find, as the magazines just wanted to sell me things to "fix" my body.

As a young girls I remember a Judy Blume book of pubescence. It dealt with the issue becoming a teen and the body changes to expect. My friends passed it among ourselves as if some kind of handbook for becoming a woman, all of us just holding our breath and waiting for the day when our breasts would blossom, we could shave our legs and our cycle would start. We were thinking when our cycle started it would be a magic day that would completely change our lives. Will we feel different when it happens? Who'll be the first of my friends to get it? Why did my mother call it a curse? Sure things did change, but maybe not as drastically as we thought.

 Looking back, there were two things my friends and I were looking for in the book. The first was strictly information. What changes were to happen, etc. The second was "how did she feel"? What was the experience like for her emotionally. I could get information from my mother, but to her it was an older woman's opinion. I wanted the experience of someone my own age, going through it at the time, sharing her fears and joys. I needed to relate.

 That is what I was looking for in the bookstore. Information and support from other women my age. Instead,
I found magazine after magazine telling me that I was falling apart and only surgery, pills and lotions could fix me. Somehow this new stage of life was a disfigurement that needed to be "cured". I feel I know less now than I did before I started seeking information.

What's the big secret? Why can't someone just say point blank "These are the changes happening, here is how women feel going through it." I don't necessarily want a fix to my few gray hairs, or my beginning crow's feet. And I certainly don't like being told that they are items that I need to "correct" to feel good about myself. I know that is not true. I do feel good about myself, but on a bad day, I do second guess myself.

What would make me feel good is to empower myself with information, to know that these are normal changes of life, and everyone in the same stage is going through it and are wondering the same things.