Embracing Our Third Chapter: Exploring Passions & Desires

By Dorian Martin, I Start Wondering Founder

“What do you mean by women in their third chapter and beyond?” 

That recent question from my high school friend Jana about the wording we often use on I Start Wondering started me thinking – what exactly does that mean? Her question invited me to realize that some women may not see the cyclical nature of life or haven’t faced the gulf that can suddenly emerge in our older years. 

Now, as I Start Wondering unveils our third chapter through a new logo and website, the world is increasingly immersed in even more turbulence that makes us question just about everything. As a result, I feel it’s a great time to invite women to really ponder what a “third chapter” means, where they are personally, and what they want from this time in life.

Life as a Story

One of the easiest ways to contemplate our lives is through considering it as a story. We’re the heroine who sets out on a quest full of challenges (here’s looking at you, college calculus class), failures and victories, as well as great loves and losses.

Our first chapter involves our earliest years in childhood and adolescence. We’re growing, developing and learning about the world from the adults around us. The second chapter is when the training wheels come off and we step into some of society’s traditional roles of employee, wife/partner, mother.

But what no one tells you is that there’s another chapter. It’s been known as a mid-life crisis and often depicted in the media as a male rite of passage when the husband drives away in a red Corvette with a young and hot nubile female in the passenger seat. And yes, for some women, this scenario does happen. 

But what about the woman who is left behind? Isn’t this the start of a new chapter for her? 

And this third chapter also can begin when you suddenly have an empty nest, or you retire from your career. It’s also emerging when your parents or your spouse dies, and you find yourself suddenly faced with your own mortality. Or the passion you always dreamed about – whether it’s writing a novel, studying French, or travelling the world – that you put on the shelf 30 years ago starts repeatedly calling your name. Or it’s when you realize that you’re not really sure what your likes or dislikes are because you’ve always deferred to the needs and desires of someone else.

A third chapter is a time when we can, if we choose, explore what we personally want and who we are, beyond what society norms tell us we should be.

Going from Here to There

Frankly, a third chapter is a luxury that our foremothers never had. 

As a whole, women’s life expectancy didn’t reach 50 until the early 1900s and they were more often than not financially dependent on their husbands. Historically, adult women were expected to marry, raise children, keep house, and then die. 

Yet over time, social movements periodically opened doors that helped women’s influence expand beyond the household.  For example, the 19^th Amendment -- which gave every U.S. white woman the right to vote -- didn’t become part of the U.S. Constitution until 1920, only four years before my mother was born. (Sadly, other American women who were Black, Hispanic, and Asian weren’t able to vote until social change galvanized to change discriminatory practices.) Around this same time, we started seeing more women stepping into governance and policymaking roles. 

Similarly, professional opportunities periodically arose (such as during World War II when many able-bodied men were serving in the military) that give women a place in the workforce and an outlet for their creativity beyond homemaking. Starting in the 1960s, the doors opened even wider, allowing more women to step into the workforce and by the mid-1970s. women finally were able to access credit in their own names.

But we also face the headwinds tied to prevalent societal stereotypes around aging. For example, the age of 65 – which can either be perceived, depending on your perspective, as the start of the great retirement adventure or “being put out to pasture” – is actually just a social construct that was first adopted in Germany in 1916. 

Beyond the Standard Aging Tropes 

Yet I believe there are also larger forces that we can tap into, if we choose to listen and follow our intuition. Take mythology, where women progress from “Maiden” and “Mother archetypes into the “Crone” archetype. 

While the mainstream’s kneejerk reaction is to define this phase of womanhood as “a wrinkled or stooped old woman” and the film industry has made a fortune through turning this image into the wicked witch or the evil queen/stepmother, that’s not the whole picture.  

If you look at the Oxford Dictionary’s second definition, aging takes on a whole new light: “an old woman regarded as having magic powers or wisdom.” And that makes sense because older women have space and time to follow their muse and are increasingly willing to call out fools or to ignore bad guidance. 

Psychology also offers insights into the gifts of embracing a third chapter. Carl Jung, the founder of Jungian psychology, categorized this time as “the afternoon of life.” He wrote, “…the afternoon of life is just as full of meaning as the morning; only its meaning and purpose are different.” In his view, this time of life is to look within as opposed to our earlier years, which are focused on outer achievement.

Astrology even provides a glimpse of the opportunities that this age can offer, thanks to Saturn Return. Astrologist Katie Sweetman describes this astrological period as a significant check-in moment on her website, Empowering Astrology: “It not only marks the time when Saturn returns to the place in the sky at the moment of birth, but it a symbolic transition and test of life.”

While this transit happens every 30 years, for our purposes, we’re going to specifically look at the second Saturn Return, which directly coincides with life third’s chapter. This astrological phase is a time of taking stock of what you’ve done as an adult up to this point, the surprises that life has brought, and a chance to reset your sails.

As Sweetman says, the second Saturn Return of age 58-60 is different for each person. “The second Saturn Return can be an ‘oh shoot’ moment when we realize that we’ve reached a critical checkpoint and have nothing to show for it. Or it can be a major stepping stone of achievement that takes us into the next 30 years of our lives.”

Writing Our Own Chapter

Today’s women have more opportunities (and more time) to embrace life as they age. 

Yet we will all face our third chapter in different ways. My own chapter showed itself between 2014-2016 when my parental caregiving role of 11 years was winding down as I slowly finished my dissertation. As those experiences ended, I was left facing the question, “What next?”

And I realized that not only was the path not visible, but I could not keep pushing myself physically, mentally, and emotionally like I did in my earlier years. I had to find some semblance of balance, which I had completely lost (or maybe never truly had).

That led to my taking a fallow year (which I wrote about in I Start Wondering) to begin to listen to what my heart wanted (instead of what my judgmental mind was saying). And that information let to the realization that it was time to write my own chapter—and that chapter needed to be authentically mine. 

As a result, I’ve spent a significant amount of time on internal contemplation and releasing the tangible and intangible ideas, behaviors, relationships and things that no longer serve me. I want to continue using this chapter to find home within myself and to truly appreciate the gift of life through personal sovereignty. 

The third chapter often involves traveling a pathless path, but it’s good to know that there are like-minded adventurous women – like every member of our I Start Wondering team -- who are embracing this in their own way. 

And there are many others, as well, who can serve as inspiration for you:

• Oscar-winning movie director Chloe Zhou (who made the award-winning film Hamnet) talks openly about the gifts of a midlife crisis.

•  Omnisade Burney-Scott describes her mid-life journey that led her to create the podcast, “Black Girls Guide to Surviving Menopause.”

• Heather Lee, recognized as the 2019 New South Wales Senior Australian of the Year, shares how she learned to stand on her own two feet after her husband’s death and became a champion racewalker.

  
  

Taking a page from Heather, we can all create a meaningful third chapter—but it requires taking that first step. That begs the age-young question:

What do you want to be when you grow up?