Middle age. It's basically an insult. Or, at least, never a compliment. Doesn't it just make you want to whisper 'desperate' at the beginning and 'women' at the end?
Me and my lot started to believe sheer willpower could hold it at bay. But that's quite deranged. So why not look the bastard in the eye and reinvent it as a place where there lives unique wisdom, powerful attitude, true promise.... and laughter. Where's the laughter out here? Where's the edge? It's sure as hell not in Good Housekeeping.
Welcome to Midulthood, a generation defining tribe where we are not our mothers, where - for once - it doesn't matter if there are kids or not. Where it's okay to be not at all okay. Where we swear because we're grown-ups and share because we're human. Where we blow a hole through the anxiety that rules us and makes life look twisted out of shape at three in the morning. Because who actually sleeps?
There is a ruthless, endemic cultural under-estimation of women aged 35-55. Just as we grew up, just as we started to truly coincide with ourselves, we realised that we'd become civilisation's ignored middle child. As the Baby Boomers evolved into distinguished, we dissolved towards extinguished. As the Millennials captured the entire collective imagination with their big talk and tiny attention span, so the Midult women - formerly known as Generation X'ers -became the forgotten tribe.
A much maligned age bracket, it's as though society decided that we just cried when Kurt Cobain died, got stoned and went to bed only to emerge as Aga buying, peri-menopausal wallpaper for the bigger generations that bookend us.
The joke-hunting boys have Lads Bible, the sincere girls have Lenny Letter. Midult women had no home. So we built one.
'Do what you know' they say. So we architected a playground: The Midult, a place where we can connect, unlock some joy, deal with the worry and banish the shame that mid-life can bring. None of this appallingly degrading mutton-dress-as-lamb Midorexia nonsense that is trying to become a trend. Just a wry look at real life, real wisdom and real information framed in fun.
It's time to join the Midult evolution, to unlock the power and potential of the healthiest, wealthiest and most digitally literate generation of grown up women in history. Because we're not about to check out. And the fun part is; they'll never see us coming...