midlife mother Archives - Mothering in the Middle

Middle School Daughter Gives Midlife Mom a Beauty Makeover from the Inside Out

by Pamela Cytrynbaum

In a valiant effort to spruce me up, my daughter said it’s time for a field trip to the Holy Grail – where the worlds of middle school girls and their middle-aged mothers collide: The Mall

In a show of shockingly bad judgment, I unwittingly enlisted a few middle school girls to help me reinvent myself before the weekend when in theory I have accepted the first date I’ve been on in nearly two decades. I stand by my original contention that I am awesome as is. And yet, it is precisely because I am so awesome, so brave and open, that I have agreed to invite and withstand some rather withering tween criticism of my general comportment. […]

Roadtrip (The Journey of a Mother-of-the-Bride)

by Valerie Gillies

“The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch” – Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood

I’m heading out on a road trip tomorrow—a real, week-long one that will take me halfway across this country. Never have done anything like this before. But there’s the matter of this dress, and this young woman who needs to get her car to Houston, and her compulsive mom who has an obsession with putting things in order before she lets go of them. This is hard stuff, much more difficult than I could have imagined, yet somehow exhilarating. Like jumping of a cliff. […]