The Best Kept Secret Blog - Speaking Our Minds

When I was in university I had a roommate whose mother seemed totally nuts.

Or at least so we thought. She'd drop in on a whim, make uninvited comments about everything from our clothes to our love lives and just generally speak her mind.

One of the other girls in the house hit the nail on the head when she described this woman as having no edit mode.

At the time, we were 19 and 20 and when I look back, I think we were stuck in edit mode. It was all about finding the "right" boyfriend, choosing the "right" career and looking a certain way.

But as I've moved into midlife, I'm sliding the other way to the point where I find it increasingly difficult to even get into edit mode.

And it's not that I'm consciously exercising a new found liberation that makes me think I have license to tell it like it is. It's that I am losing my ability to suck up, do what I "should" or not be honest.

I think it's my hormones. I mean, if I'm having trouble these days remembering where I put the keys, how do you expect me to remember to bite my tongue?

I can cite several examples.

My friend A. spent a small fortune on a new purse while we were shopping recently. She requested that I tell her husband, should he ask, that it cost half of what she actually paid. I said no. I didn't want to lie for her. And besides, she had spent too much.

When R. asked me what I thought of the new guy she was seeing, I told her she could do better. Hmmm... I haven't heard from R. recently.

I've told my children their school work wasn't up to snuff, the hairdresser that he wasn't listening and that's why the colour was wrong, had the neighbour women in for coffee when the house was a mess and yelled at the dog.

For some of you, these may seem like ultra tame examples but for this midlife woman who seems to have spent her adult life channeling Mary Richards, I'm on a roll.

In fact, it scares me sometimes because I don't know what will come next. Telling the book club that this month's choice sucks? Telling my shopping buddy "Yes" when she asks if her pants make her look fat? Outing friends who have confided they are having affairs? I don't know. I just can't seem to keep my mouth shut.

I take some comfort in knowing that I'm probably not alone. In her book The Female Brain, doctor and author Louann Brizendine explains that the hormonal changes that accompany midlife are to blame. As she explains it:

"What had been important to women - connection, approval, children, and making sure the family stayed together - is no longer the first thing on their minds. And the changing chemistry of women's brains is responsible for the shifting reality of their lives."

So there you have it. I'm not a bad person. I'm just the victim of my gender.

And by the way, that colour is draining on you.