From Puberty to Pregnancy to Menopause: The Brutal Truth They Don’t Tell You About Being a Woman

OK.  I am just going to say it.  Being born a woman is bloody awful.  Men, feel free to write your own for your sex.

First, the good years.  You are born, you become a little girl.  You are loved, you are safe.  You get to play with dolls and play.  You make friends when you go to primary school.  All is good and happy in the world.

Then.  Puberty hits.  

For some of us, it hits early.  Breasts start growing (at ten in my case).  What does that mean?  Well firstly, your childhood is over.  Each and every one of us remembers the time when grown men started looking at us and talking to us in ways that we could not understand.  For me, again, ten years old.  Because: breasts.

I still remember a family member saying "Oh you will have all the boys after you now!" I did not want that.  I was a child.  I did not understand it.

Then the hormones start.  You have no clue who you are yet, your body is changing in ways you are not ready for.  You realise that the world is not the safe place you thought it was and that you actually do need protecting.  That safe world you lived in no longer exists.

Plus of course, periods.  Every single month.  For decades.  If you are lucky, you get regular periods.  If not, you get fibroids (me again), endometriosis.  Pain, pain and more pain.  But of course you are a woman so the pain you describe to doctors and consultants is mostly ignored, until finally, years later, sometime actually listens and you get a diagnosis.

Don't want to get pregnant?  Let me introduce to IUDs!!!  Wonderful little things that apparently you do not need pain relief/anesthetic for (plot twist, you really, really do).  Getting one in remains the worse pain that I have ever felt.

Do want to get pregnant?  Get ready for nine months of throwing up, your body changing until you don't recognise it, hair falling out, gestational diabetes, pain and more pain.  Plus of course, going into labour!  Oh the joys!

But of course, even our bodies know that women are screwed so it pumps us full of hormones so we forget just how awful the whole thing was.

Then you have the mother years.  That have not changed since the beginning of bloody time.  We are expected to know all about the child and how to care for it instinctively, from birth plus do majority of childcare, household chores, cooking, laundry, usually also while working because "woman".

Then.  We reach our mid forties.  Sweet sanctuary!!  Our periods stop when we hit menopause.  Let's have a party, we are free!!!! 

But no.  That would be too easy.

Instead, we get the equivalent of the second fucking coming of puberty.  Tears, rage, tears, rage, on repeat.  Plus hot sweats and wondering who you are even are anymore.  Again.

So at this point, what do we have to look forward to next?  Death.  That's it.  Woman's life is over.

Wonderful.  Thanks almighty creator.

As you may be able to tell, I am starting the throws of menopause and I am pissed off.

When Every Hobby Becomes a Side Hustle (And Why That's a Problem)

 There was a time when hobbies were wonderfully pointless.

You baked because you enjoyed baking. You knitted because it kept your hands busy. You painted terrible landscapes that would never leave your spare room. You wrote stories that nobody else would ever read (not projecting at all......).

And that was enough.

Somewhere along the way, though, we decided that simply enjoying something wasn't enough. Every hobby became a business opportunity waiting to happen.

Like baking? Start selling cakes.  Good at photography? Open an Instagram account and charge for shoots.  Enjoy reading? Become a book influencer.  Good at organising? Become a professional decluttering expert.

It feels as though we've reached a point where every pastime is immediately followed by the question, "But how can you make money from it?"

I'm not against people turning their passions into careers. In fact, I admire those who have managed to do it successfully. If you genuinely love what you do and people are willing to pay for it, that's fantastic.

What bothers me is the expectation that you should.  Not everything has to earn its keep.

We've become so obsessed with productivity that we struggle to justify doing anything purely because it makes us happy. If we're spending two hours knitting, someone will inevitably suggest opening an Etsy shop. If we're learning the guitar, someone will ask when we're playing paid gigs. If we enjoy writing, people assume we're trying to become bestselling authors.

Sometimes we're just... writing.

Social media hasn't helped.

Scroll through any platform for long enough and you'll be told that your weekends are wasted if you're not building multiple income streams. Every spare evening apparently needs to be monetised. Every interest should become content. Every talent should become a business.

It's exhausting.

The irony is that turning a hobby into work often changes your relationship with it completely.

When money enters the equation, deadlines follow.  Clients have opinions.  Algorithms demand consistency.

Suddenly the thing that once helped you unwind becomes another item on your to-do list and the joy quietly slips out the back door.

That's not failure. It's simply the reality that work is still work, even when it starts as a passion.  

There's also an odd guilt that creeps in if you're not trying to make your hobbies profitable.  You almost feel as though you're wasting your potential.

"You could sell those."  "You should start a YouTube channel." "You'd make loads doing that."

Maybe.

But maybe I'd rather just enjoy it.

We don't question people who watch television for three hours on a Sunday afternoon, yet we seem uncomfortable with someone spending the same amount of time making pottery that never gets sold.

One is accepted as relaxing.  The other somehow requires a business plan.  There's something quietly rebellious about having a hobby that exists for nobody else.

No audience.  No followers.  No subscribers.  No customers.  Just you.

Not everything needs to be measured by income or productivity. Some things are valuable simply because they make life a little richer.

The same goes for learning something new. We don't have to become experts. We don't need to be the best in the room. We don't need certificates or sponsorship deals or thousands of likes.

We can be gloriously average at something and still enjoy every minute of it.

In fact, there's a certain freedom in being bad at something.  No pressure.  No expectations.  Just progress for the sake of progress.  Maybe that's something we've forgotten.

Life isn't meant to be one endless performance review.

We're allowed to spend time on things that don't improve our CV, grow our bank balance or impress strangers on the internet.

Sometimes the return on investment is simply feeling calmer, happier or more creative than we did yesterday.

That should be enough.  Sometimes it's perfectly okay for something to exist simply because it brings you joy.

In a world that wants to monetise every minute of your free time, protecting a hobby just for yourself might be one of the most valuable things you can do.