The Stories We Learn About Being a Woman

We learn what it means to be a woman long before we have the language to question it.

We learn from the way our first period is talked about, hidden, or treated as an inconvenience. We learn from the expectations surrounding sex, relationships, and motherhood. We learn from the way women are expected to look, behave, and care for others. And we learn from what happens when we age, when our bodies change, and when the roles we've occupied for years begin to shift.

We absorb lessons from watching the women around us, noticing what gets celebrated and what gets dismissed, and figuring out what we need to do to be accepted.

Over time, those lessons become part of how we understand ourselves. They influence what we believe a woman should want, what she should tolerate, what she owes other people, and what makes her valuable in the eyes of society.

We don't necessarily explore these beliefs, we simply internalize and normalize them.

Our life transitions teach us more than we realize

Getting my first period was an awkward experience. I think there had been some mention of what to expect in a one-off sex-education class at school. But I learned more from my friends and Just Seventeen magazine. I still remember that I was wearing pale pink shorts when it happened and I bled through the fabric.

I didn’t tell my mother, but she found the shorts stuffed in the laundry basket. There was a very brief conversation about using sanitary pads, both of us extremely uncomfortable. I nodded along, desperate for it to be over, but I didn’t understand what to do with the pad and on my first attempt I thought the sticky side was supposed to be attached to my skin, not my underwear.

When I think back to that scared eleven year old alone in the bathroom, my heart aches that she had to figure it out alone.

How the adults around us respond to our earliest rites of passage pave the way for how we hold our own experience. For example, they can influence whether we think of menarche as something to be ashamed of, a “curse” to manage privately, or a remarkable change in our life that deserves acknowledgment.

And it's not just the early experiences that can leave us feeling unprepared or unseen. Even life transitions that are more traditionally celebrated can miss something important.

Consider a woman becoming a mother. The people around her may celebrate the baby while overlooking the fact that she, too, has undergone a fundamental change. She’s expected to adapt to a new role, often while not missing a beat in the continued caregiving of others.

Then there’s menopause. In recent years, we’ve shifted the taboo around it somewhat, more willing to discuss symptoms and treatment, But there’s much less recognition of the personal questions that can accompany this stage of life.

What does this change mean to me? How do I feel about growing older? What happens when the roles and expectations that have shaped my life no longer fit as they once did?

As Jane Hardwicke Collings says about rites of passage, these transitions teach us about the value our culture places on women's changing roles. And much of that learning happens without our conscious attention.

The beliefs we inherit don't stop with us

When we don't examine what we've learned, we can mistake inherited expectations for personal beliefs and choices.

We may believe we're naturally the person who keeps everyone together, puts our own needs aside, avoids making trouble, or carries on regardless of how we're feeling. We may have become so accustomed to being useful and accommodating that it's difficult to distinguish what we genuinely want from what we've learned will make us acceptable to others.

These patterns don't appear out of nowhere. They develop over years, reinforced by family, relationships, workplaces, and a wider over-culture that has plenty to say about how women should live.

We can easily pass those messages along to others without intending to. We repeat familiar advice and we reinforce the same standards. We respond to other women's choices through assumptions we haven’t always fully examined ourselves.

This isn't about blaming our mothers or the generations that came before us. They were informed and influenced by the expectations of their own time, just as we have been by ours.

But the fact that an expectation has been passed down doesn't mean we have to keep weaving it into our lives.

Why midlife can bring these lessons into view

Midlife doesn't look the same for every woman. Some of us may experience the end of a relationship or our children leaving home. Others may find that our career paths no longer feel right, or are even available to us. Menopause might change how we feel about our body. Or we might simply reach a point when the life we’ve created no longer feels like a life we’ve actively chosen.

Sometimes these changes arrive gradually. Sometimes one event makes it impossible to ignore something that has been building up in the background for years.

We might start asking questions we haven’t given ourselves permission to ask before.

Do I actually want this?

Am I doing this because it matters to me, or because it's what I've always done?

What would I choose if I weren't so concerned with disappointing someone, being judged, or getting it wrong?

These aren't always easy questions to answer. When you've spent years responding to expectations, knowing what you want for yourself can take time. Recognizing that an old way of living no longer fits doesn't automatically reveal what should replace it.

But the questions are crucial. They create the possibility of making decisions from a different place, with greater attention to what is actually true for you.

You don't have to reject everything you've inherited. Some of the beliefs you hold may genuinely reflect your values. But it’s helpful to recognize which ones you've chosen and which ones you've just never thought to question.

Giving a transition the attention it deserves

We don't always get the opportunity to acknowledge a major life change as we're going through it. Often, we're in the thick of it, busy managing its immediate consequences. We deal with the practicalities, respond to other people's needs, and get on with the never ending To Do List.

But a transition can change how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and the life we want to live. When there's no occasion to stop and recognize that change, we can move into a different stage of life without ever taking stock of what has happened or what it means to us.

This is one reason rites of passage matter.

A ceremony offers a deliberate opportunity to recognize a significant change in your life. It gives you time to consider your experience, examine what it means to you, and make conscious decisions about what you want now.

The ceremony doesn't tell you how to feel or prescribe who you should become. It is built around your experience, your questions, and the meaning you want to give this moment.

For women who have spent years celebrating other people's milestones, choosing to mark a transition of their own can be an important decision. It says that what is happening in your life deserves your attention, too.

You get to question the story

We all inherit ideas about what it means to be a woman. Those ideas influence us in ways we may not recognize until something changes and the old expectations no longer make sense.

Midlife can give us reason to look more closely. We may begin to question what we were taught to want, the roles we've accepted, and the assumptions we've carried for years.

We don't have to arrive at a complete understanding of ourselves to begin that work. We can start by noticing what's no longer true for us, asking what we actually want, and taking those answers seriously.

The life you've lived has shaped you. But it doesn't have to dictate every choice you make from here.

If you're experiencing a significant transition and want a deliberate way to acknowledge what is changing in your life, I create Customized Ceremonies for women in midlife. Each ceremony is designed around your experience and the questions, decisions, or changes that matter to you.