Paula's story
Eliza was sitting on her balcony high above the rock-strewn beach one sunny afternoon, a glass of cold champagne at her elbow and a good novel in her lap, gazing out onto the blue expanse of sea and sky: a recipe for blissful happiness. But she was not blissfully happy. She was wearing a bra that was tight where it should have been loose, and loose where it should have been tight. She was very warm on a cool and breezy day. Her hair refused to do what she told it to do.
That’s when something popped into her head. An idea. A scheme. Something that might make her feel better, and possibly help others like her to feel better.
That’s how the We No Longer Care Club began.
She’s fetched her laptop from her desk and settled in to write an email to her closest female friends. “Join me,” she wrote. “Tell me what you no longer care about now that we have hit the golden age of menopause. I’ll start.” And then she listed the ill-fitting bra, her whacko body temperature, her frizzled hair. “You just get to the point where you no longer care about a lot of stuff you used to, right?” she asked them. “So send me a list of things you no longer care about. And ask other women you know to send their own.”
The messages started pouring in. It was as if she had opened a floodgate of annoyances and grievances, and women were eager to jump in to the flow.
Chin hairs. Unpainted toenails. Leaving the house without makeup on. The bathroom scale. My neck. Those came from her friend Annie, who said she feels like she has been taking care of others — children, aging parents, pets — all her life. And she has stopped trying to please everyone. “I just do not care anymore,” she said. “And it makes me a nicer person.”
“I no longer care if I skip the family holiday dinner,” wrote Leslie. “Most of you have undiagnosed trauma that I honestly just don’t want to deal with right now. Also: I no longer care about arm fat. About separating laundry into neat little piles of lights and darks. And if I want to eat half a box of cookies for breakfast, that’s none of anyone’s business. I do not care.”
“I no longer care that I haven’t dusted the house in a month,” Caroline wrote. “I no longer care that the towels in my guest bathroom don’t match. I no longer care that I forgot to wear earrings … again.”
The idea isn’t to stop caring about everything, Eliza’s email to her friends said. We still care about our loved ones, about staying healthy, about being kind in this crazy world. It’s more about taking the pressure off yourself when it comes to things that truly don’t matter, like a spotless house or a perfectly cooked meal. It’s time to prioritize what we need to feel our best at this stage of life, she told them.
Eliza had struck a nerve. The years of perimenopause and menopause can bring physical and emotional upheaval: Mood swings, brain fog, fatigue, insomnia, hot flashes, weight gain. The women of the We No Longer Care Club delivered.
“I no longer care that you wanted something different for dinner than what I made,” Tina said. “I didn’t see you offer to cook dinner.”
Jan wrote: “I do not care that my husband thinks I’m crazy because I sleep under a down comforter with a fan blowing on me.”
From Lisabeth: “I no longer care that I am a horrible speller. I no longer care that I like my dogs more than I like most people. I no longer care about hiding my age.” She continued, “Now, I realize why my mother was such a bear some days when I was a teenager. She was caring too much, and trying to please all of those around her. It must have been exhausting. Well, I just do not care. And I can’t tell you how much relief that brings.”
There’s freedom in no longer striving to meet someone else’s expectations. By the time you reach menopause, that freedom feels like a well-earned prize. It’s not about letting yourself go; it’s about choosing your priorities and not allowing others to dictate them to you.
Here’s what I do care about, Eliza thought as she laughed over her friends’ replies. I care that my friends and I are aging with grace and dignity and humor, and that we are here for each other. Always.
And to hell with this bra.
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Sarah's story
And then it went pop 4 A true story, but a fairy-tale ending
(20.07.2025)
He had not been particularly handsome when he was young; already a little on the pudgy side, he was losing the hair on his crown. His lack of self-confidence detracted as well from his aura. But he found a book and read it, which taught him business skills, not according to the rules he had listened to with a deaf ear in his early days, at school and at church. He had not learned much at school, and as for church, he dismissed that now as balderdash. Unless, he reflected, it could be useful. The book had taught him that almost anything could be useful.
He profited from his readings. In his business deals he was crafty. And not over-scrupulous. With the money he made, he invested in new schemes and bought properties. He noticed that his aura had increased; other people, including women, began to sidle up to him. And his tastes became more refined. Not just any woman would do: he wanted them young, and definitely he wanted them blond. Still surprised at himself, he found he could get them now. Not always those of his own country, where women were better educated and thought themselves superior. No, some of those foreign countries had a good supply, and what was more, if they didn't speak English that well, it would be easier to keep them under thumb.
He got himself a wife, and was getting richer by the month. But he remained unsatisfied. Then he met a terrific guy. That was the way he put it: "a terrific guy." Only slightly older than himself, he had already created a paradise in the Virgin Islands. Or might one say, a virgin paradise in the islands. There the women were all blond, and young. Very young. Whom the man generously shared with his friends, in return for other favours.
With the permissive divorce laws of the modern age, he found it easy to replace his first wife with one younger and more beautiful, and then finally replace this one with a third. He had by now amassed such a fortune that he was sure he would be able to capture the first office in the nation, especially with the help of good pal in Europe, whose country was skilled in manipulating the social media. To his astonishment and rage, however, he was not elected. He tried to get the position by force, with the help of his followers, but the country was not yet ready for a coup; there was public outcry and an attempt at prosecution.
Money pays, however, as do political and other contacts, and he managed to avoid conviction, or at least, imprisonment. And he put the four years' respite to good use, so that the next time round, he won the election by a comfortable margin. By now he had a powerful internal ally in the church, in one particular church, along with his foreign friends. "You won't have to vote again," he promised his followers. And he was almost as good as his word.
He went straight to work. Not to studying the international and national situations, or to trying to situate the needs of the country. Rather, when he was not off relaxing with his favorite sport, he spent what was left of his time writing the decrees necessary to consolidate his power and please his friends, who all belonged to the upper 1%, as his followers all hoped one day to belong as well. He had his own social media, appropriately named "Truth", eminently useful in that his main arms were lies and insults, and as his body thickened his ego grew. He confided to the newspapers (those favorable to him, having managed to insure that the others, more critical, did not reach much of the public ear) that everyone loved him, thought him intelligent, said he was so handsome and believed him the greatest leader ever, so that even he himself began to believe in international consecration on a grand scale.
Foreign peoples did not like him as much as his local admirers did, and foreign leaders did not always cooperate with his schemes. Using his usual tactics, however, he managed to twist the truth to his own advantage. His old friend got into trouble with the law, and he severed his ties. He even said they should look into the guy's records.
His aura, or at least his self-esteem, blossomed. But one day came a scandal he could not turn aside. His old friend's records might be incriminating. His raving contradictions did little for his credibility, but he still had his new friends, who turned right around and asserted that the records, after all, did not exist. The scandal, however, would not go away. He raved daily and his red face grew redder, his rages began to make people suspect his declarations, even among his own followers. But even as the scandal expanded and his incoherent rages with them, so did his delusion of popularity and invincibility. His ego ballooned until it filled the universe.
Until one day, at last, it popped. Everything. His delusion, his self-esteem, his sanity, his reign of office, his wide following, it all went pfft! in the repercussions of the scandal that no-one could sweep away. Cleaning up the mess, however, took some time.
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