To dread turning 50.

@JungDisciple, I haven’t read it, but I have read articles like the ones you’ve linked and they certainly reflected my experience.

My parents have a better time than me! Anywhere they want to go, they just say ''lisbon for a weekend'' and off they go. Or bridge. Or a walk. Or a meal. Or a play. They had me young. I had my kids older. They have each other and I"m single. So I see how growing older can be. But I know I will have to carve out something different.

Physically everything's downhill from 30! 50's no big deal. The aging parents and illness is a big deal, but there's no sense hooking that onto turning 50.

I'm 51 and still doing the school run (youngest is 9 eldest 27) but being older is more a state of mind than how you are physically . I still go out clubbing ( selective club nights) & keep fit . I don't feel any older than my 30/40 year old friends.

Better than the alternative

@destinysdaughter that must have been really depressing for sure. Glad things turned around for you

I know, all of the traditional positive cheer about being 50 is that you have newfound freedom to enjoy with a partner. I will STILL be stuck at home with youngish DC. Even in two years time, I wouldn't be able to go away for a night and leave them on their own, they wouldn't be quite old enough. Maybe at 51. If I have anywhere to go :-|

I’m 53. A few months before I turned 50 I was so depressed I felt suicidal. Been made redundant from a good job in London, moved back home to a dull provincial town as mum had had a severe stroke and was in a nursing home, dad had dementia and was going blind, so I moved back to look after him. I was so stressed and lonely, I fantasised about hanging mysrlf on my 50th birthday as I couldn’t envisage my life getting any better. I felt like a failure and that I’d lost everything . However I’ve now got a life again, been in a good relationship, got more friends and feel much more positive about the future. If I can get through this, so can you.

I know it’s hard, 50 is a real milestone especially with the menopause but it’s doable and you can come out the other side!

And I have a 12 year old and 7 year old so nowhere near out of the child rearing years!

good article and some extra links

I know how you feel OP. It is a shock to be turning 50. I do think the run up to any big birthday is worse than the actual event though. Once it’s all done and dusted you can then look at living life to the fullest in the new decade.

this is the book I almost bought Maybe I will order it, you recommend it hedda?

@heddaGarbled, that's interesting. I almost bought a book at the airport with a title like that. I will google.

Hmph. I am almost 54 and having plenty of good times. Since turning 50 I have shagged a couple of toyboys, restarted my writing career, made a whole load of new (and mainly younger) friends. I don't feel like a 'little old lady' in the least. I have a 14-year-old DS who is so far not hitting the horrible stage of adolescence, and am pulling together a new business line for myself.

The only bad things are aches and pains and lack of money, but I had those at 35 or so as well.

Haha. I turn 50, next year and my oldest will only be 15. Need to keep hold of my mum shoes for a few years, yet.

I can laugh at this now but when my xh had the DC last year I nearly put myself on to a jewellery course. It all looked fascinating. You get your piece of silver and mould it, engrave it etc., I had it nearly booked and paid for before the designer revealed that the course was for couples designing their own rings for their wedding. Can you imagine what fresh hell that would have been for a nearly 50 trying to pamper herself, thrown in the lone singleton amongst the loved up couples! you gorra larf. After my misunderstanding I noticed that he changed the blurb on his website to make it clear. Wouldn't want any ageing singletons showing up, killing the vibe

For me, 40 was the hardest. I can't get away from feeling that the 40 years are that horrid moment when you are no longer young but not ready to be middle aged. Yet anyone under 25 looks upon you with horror and are in no doubt that you are, in fact, middle aged.

By 50, you have turned a corner. No one is in any doubt that at 50, you are middle aged, and somehow it is easier to embrace. Maybe it is because you are suddenly free of encumbrances. I went through the menopause at 50. It is fantastic not bleeding every month, I am glad that the perimenopause (which for me, was long and trying) is over. I still have one child at home, but he is nearly 16 and no longer tied to my apron strings. Maybe, there might be more money to do things, there is certainly more freedom to do them.

I did a few special things in the year I turned 50, planned treats for me, and really enjoyed doing them. I have met a few retired people and seen how much enjoyment they are getting from life. My own peers are beginning to talk about what they will do in retirement, fantasizing that they might start retirement a few years early (I doubt they will, but it is fun thinking about it). There is a growing sense that if we don't get on enjoying life, time will run out for us. That is a positive, when you think about it.

Google the happiness U curve. You’re actually at the bottom of the hill (valley?) at the moment and will start to climb up the other side soon.

Good idea @Qod, it's important to look after one's self. What you got planned? I would struggle to bring together enough people for a party but I've always wanted to do a jewellery design course. Silvermithing. Not like plastic beads :-p

I am recently over 50 and I dreaded it. Passing thirty and forty was no big deal. But 50 sounds so old. So I know what you mean OP.

I hate the menopause, I feel tired and irritated. I hate that on the Christmas thread I have moved in to the gifts for older ladies section 'perhaps a scarf or some nice hand lotion or take her to a garden centre for afternoon tea.'

Well OP - over the weekend we had a Halloween party and I hosted as Frida Kahlo. Last night out was to a gig with a couple of friends and I may own one floaty scarf but its Alexander McQueen.

It ain't so bad OP.

I am single too, no DC, so yeah, it's just odd. And I know what you mean about people at work.

50 next year and busily booking up 1 magic/major event once a month for the whole year

ps I don't know whether OP is married or not but I think it's easier to be blase about what life still has to offer when you're coupled up.

It is harder when you're older. Not impossible. I know that. But increasingly I've been finding that when I join new things, book club, yoga, whatever, it's just kind of the done thing to nicely exclude/ignore the oldest members of the group. If there is any socialising done, the oldest people often aren't asked. I can put myself forward a little but I'm not a rhino!

I've just turned 48 and I'm aware that 50 is coming. I may sound cracked but I have a plan to survive it. A schedule, a reading list. I'm ''studying'' if that's the right word Wayne Dyer, Gabrielle Bernstein, I"m studying (for real) philosophy for living (in the classical sense) I'm thinking about the shape of my life and really trying to find more time for what feeds my soul. I'm single and have been for 11 years and I'm also accepting that if it didn't happen for me before it's very unlikely to now, even though I feel open to love and loving, so I'm facing fifty alone, my old age alone. My parents like a pp's are in their late 70s but they go away together a lot, play bridge, eat out, go for walks. Go to plays. Their families were bigger and they still have a lot of siblings and their spouses to meet up with. I have one brother who is single as well. But I plan to be brave enough to do what I want, and bold enough to take a risk and resilient enough to fail sometimes but live in and out of my comfort zone. Looking forward to my 50s but still a little bit scared. For practical reasons. I already feel overlooked and sidelined by younger people at work. I'm literally invisible to them. Women who I like and would like to be friendly with because I hear them chat and my instinct is to join in, they see me as an older generation.

I read James Hollid Phd finding meaning in the second half of life and I have ordered a Richard Rohr book that an mner recommended called Falling upwards. I also want to read a few funny books on the subject, enough 'deepness' I think India Knight, Jane Schilling and Nora Ephron have all written (apparently) funny books on the subject of turning fifty.

Well, I had a miserable time turning fifty earlier this year and got quite depressed. Probably didn't help that I got no gifts and just two cards and not even a comment on FB (to be fair, my birthday isn't public on there, but people do know when my birthday is and as it was a big one....).

But, that was a few months ago and I'm fine now.