Are you still dressing the woman you were?

When I was in my late 30's I worked in retail sales for a major Australian fashion brand. You learn a lot about women when you work with them in a fashion retail environment. Although the store itself is a public space, the changeroom is intimate. A place where our deepest insecurities come out to play.

It was difficult to witness women bullying themselves. The level of detail. No body part was spared the intrusive and thorough critical commentary. One by one, each criticism would draw a map around their bodies.

One of the biggest laments I heard from customers as they analysed themselves in the change room mirror was, 'I used to be a size 8 then menopause happened'. 'It's terrible' 'It's awful'. 'I used to be your size', they would announce in a way that almost felt accusatory.

Around a similar time, I had a conversation with two of my girlfriends, both of whom are older than me. We were talking about fashion when the topic turned to their changing bodies. 'Just you wait' one of them said, as she pointed at me, eyes narrowing.

I felt the same accusatory tone.

Her words felt foreboding. As though my body would transform overnight. I would go to sleep as me and wake up as someone else.

She wasn't entirely wrong.

In Spring of 2021, I returned to work at my own vintage boutique after the final Covid lockdown ended.

Once the date of release had been announced, I became alarmed. I had put on weight. 'Just the Covid kilos everyone is talking about', I thought to myself. I then made the rather impulsive decision to resume my running regime after a long hiatus, going from 0-100, and resulting in a fractured foot.

I was now a couple of kilos heavier and hobbling around in a moon boot.

I reassured myself that things would settle down and 'go back to normal' now that life seemed to be up and running again.

But things didn't go back to normal.

It took me many months to realise, or perhaps acknowledge, that perimenopause had landed on my doorstep.

I flashed back to my friend's pointed finger and narrowing eyes. 'Just you wait'.

I felt like I was failing. Failing at staying the same.

I felt bloated, my clothes didn't fit properly, I was self conscious and it all seemed to happen overnight. Like I had gone to sleep and woken up as someone else.

I looked back on old photos of myself, as if tyring to pinpoint the exact moment it happened. I began researching diet plans and exercise regimes, anything to get back to where I was. But I wasn't there anymore. I had changed.

Why was it so painful?

Denial and resistance had me hopelessly searching the internet for a cure to my new reality, my new body, my new self. But that soon gave way and I met the loss face to face.

Saying goodbye to the younger version of myself was more painful than I like to admit. The blissfully ignorant version, who listened to customers and friends lament about their menopause experience, had sauntered off into the horizon in her skinny jeans. The very jeans that were still folded in my drawer.

The slender, young version of myself I was taught to maintain.

Who was I if I was not her?

It took time, but the loss I felt began to ebb and in its place flowed a beautiful curiosity.

My wardrobe has always been a place for me to play, to reinvent, to express myself. In this moment, it became my way of healing.

I asked the new me what she wanted to wear, how she wanted to feel, how she wanted to express herself.

I dropped my resistance and listened.

Powerful.

Elegant.

Sexy.

Beautiful.

I realised that there was no reason I could not be these things, feel these things, express these things.

That being young and slender is not a prerequisite to being powerful, to being beautiful. That I didn't have to squeeze myself back into who I was.

I had to become who I am now.

Who would you become if you allowed yourself to stop squeezing, stop searching, stop trying to go back?

How would it feel to let your body relax and breathe? To let it be?

How would it feel to let go of the shame and slip into the stylish comfort of an elastic waistband?

I'd love to know - what is your midlife style struggle? The one you haven't quite managed to say out loud?

Julie x