My Unbecoming: The First Mile of My Midlife Rebuild

This article is a personal one because it’s my origin story behind this blog and the reason I became a certified Menopause Coach in midlife, a time when many women choose slow down, but I chose to rebuild. This is the rough first mile toward my new life after escaping a toxic marriage and abusive divorce, and the events that unfolded on that first mile that tried to take me out before I even got started.

After selling my home in closing, I drove to a small town and purchased the adorable vintage RV I found on FB marketplace. It would serve as a temporary home while I recalibrated. The RV was charming and ordinary, but it was love at first sight for a reason I couldn’t explain. The woman I bought it from had lived in it for a year after escaping her own marriage, and when she handed me the keys, it felt less like a transaction and more like a baton pass.

I loved the idea that my camper is the kind of home that still holds the stories of other women in her walls.

I towed my new home with the dented red truck I got in the divorce. I named her Lucille after Lucille Ball. She was dented because my drunken spouse wrecked her driving home from a honkey tonk (and denied it) one week before he was required to hand it over to me. It was a fitting reminder of the years he dented my soul.

I had never towed anything before, but off I went with my entire future in the shape of a travel trailer rolling along behind my dented truck wondering, am I in the right gear? do I have tail lights? is this even legal? EEK how do I make this thing stop?! And mostly, holy shit am I really doing this?

One mile down the road, POW! a tire on the RV blew.

It wasn’t a polite little pop, oh no, it was violent explosion. Rubber shredding. Cars swerving. Lucille fishtailing between lanes just enough to let me know this could go very wrong, very fast. My hands were locked around the steering wheel and my heart pounded like it was trying to escape my body.

And I remember thinking, seriously? We’re doing this fucking right NOW?? On the first mile?! Is this some kind of a sign?!

I had already survived personal and financial betrayal, emotional abuse, and the slow erosion of self that happens when you live too long in a marriage with a narcissist who makes you believe you are too much, but also not enough, depending on the day and how much he’s had to drink. And because I was too much and not enough, I “forced him” at age 54 to get a 30-something woman pregnant and clean out my personal and business bank accounts which forced me to close my business which forced me to live with zero money until the house sold.

“You caused this”, he told me, although he couldn’t explain how or why, mostly because he was always drunk. Then he burned down my shop in a drunken rage so I couldn’t start over (“that will teach you” he yelled) and away went my equipment, inventory, my future and my identify up in smoke. Poof.

Hey, would you look at that, the rage just surfaced again! Hello darkness, my old friend…

I digress, let’s go back to the blowout. By that time, I had already crawled out of things I should never have had to crawl out of. So the idea that my first physical mile toward freedom came with a small disaster felt like a cruel joke from the trailer towing gods.

Once I managed to wrangle control of Lucille and ease onto the shoulder is when it hit me.

There was no one in the passenger seat to fix this. That realization was a gut-punch.

Maybe you know that feeling. It’s not always a sobbing breakdown in a Target parking lot, sometimes it’s just a quiet, cold realization: the scaffolding that helped to support me is gone (scaffolding you later come to hate with the fire of a thousand suns).

Thankfully, a truck driver pulled over to help (as they do when we are stranded on the side of the road, bless them). It was the type of kindness that makes you want to cry because you don’t know how to receive it without further unraveling. He changed the tire using the questionable spare tire while I stood there trying to pretend I was fine. Like a woman with her life together. Like my hands weren’t still shaking and I wasn’t about to barf at his feet.

Tire on, I climbed back into Lucille and continued on my terrifying but exhilarating journey. Because that’s what women like us do, we keep driving when we’re terrified. We keep driving even when we’re suddenly alone. We keep driving even when we have no idea where we’re going yet.

I gripped that steering wheel like it was the only thing holding my life together.

Eventually, I turned off the highway and onto gravel roads that turned into dirt roads with potholes that each seemed to ask me, are you sure you want to do this? But toward the forest I continued, to a very small campsite near a national park I had loved as a child.

I would rebuild there with happy memories in wild nature.

The Hard Part About Rebuilding: Proving Yourself

There was one humiliating part about rebuilding that I never saw coming and no one warns you about.

The part that shakes you is realizing how much of your years of being a responsible, reliable adult woman doesn’t count for anything.

For a dozen years, I held everything together: I paid the bills, the mortgage and the auto loans, made sure the insurance didn’t expire and the dogs were vaccinated. I scheduled the taxes and the tune-ups and the weekend getaways to places I didn’t want to go. I ran my own global business while also carrying the emotional weight of being married to a narcissist who needed constant validation like it was my second full-time (unpaid) job.

But the mechanical things, the technical things, the intimidating things like chopping firewood and fixing the well pump and replacing the hot water heater and replacing the car battery had always defaulted to him. I’m not incapable of doing such things, but I had been assigned a different lane without realizing it. And that’s where I stayed.

Until…I was forced to step out of that lane, and suddenly, the world I moved through without effort started giving me the side eye and questioning my value.

Like the first week into my new life, I tried to open a new utility account like a grown-ass adult. I was told I had no credit history and no payment history. My name wasn’t primary on utilities, and we had joint auto loans and credit cards. So to get electricity in my name, a grown-ass (said twice now for emphasis), successful adult woman in midlife who ran a global business alone, I had to pay a $300 deposit because I couldn’t prove I existed and was worthy of getting electricity.

Every interaction with utility companies, banks, cell phone services and insurance agencies carried the same unspoken message: Prove yourself.

Because I didn’t exist in their eyes.

It was a deeply humiliating experience after having built a life and successful businesses, to be treated like I didn’t exist simply because my name wasn’t on the damn electric bill I paid for with my own damn money for over 10 damn years.

If this resonates, read this next, When Your Midlife Rebuild Isn’t Working for a perspective on how the stress of rebuilding affects your nervous system, your hormones and your self-confidence and learn what “panic rebuilding” looks like.

The Rebuild Started When the Rage Surfaced

That is where my rebuild actually started: when the rage hit. And it hit hard.

I didn’t start my rebuild the way the traditional wellness industry tells you to: with a vision board, manifesting on a beach, forcing a positive attitude, get a new haircut and wardrobe so you can “fake it” until you make it —those things do have a surface level purpose, but they’re insulting when you’re recovering from a shattered soul.

The rage of all I had been through was powerful and never subsided. All I wanted to do was sleep until the feelings stopped feeling. Even it it took weeks. The pain was unbearable.

Still, I had to learn to take charge of the things I could take charge of alone: I read my truck’s manual with a highlighter and a glass of wine by the fire pit. I bought a toolkit for my truck and one for my RV before I knew what any of the tools did. I learned to check oil, coolant, and wiper fluid, how to change a tire and how to jump a battery.

I learned how to chop wood for my fire pit (which meant learning where the snakes hide), change propane tanks, work the breaker panel, repair leaky faucets and seal leaking windows.

When I started this blog, I needed a small space for a desk so I dismantled the sofa bed in my RV and turned it into a cozy, small office space. The desk came in a million pieces, so I put my little tool kit to good use.

This is where I work on this blog. The fluffy in the chair is Dexter, my 11-yr old Maine Coon mix. 😻

There’s A “Helpless Woman Tax”

When I had to call a professional for a major repair, I could see a weird gleam in their eyes. It was the look of a hungry lion explaining plumbing or transmissions to a tasty gazelle. My ignorance was taken advantage of at every turn.

I had to pay “the helpless woman tax” at every turn until I started standing up for myself.

So I learned to disarm them by pretending to know what I was talking about (because I Googled it, duh). I would ask them to explain the parts needed, the cost, and the timeline. Then I asked for it in writing. Then I got a second opinion.

When you’re a single woman, especially in midlife and beyond, there’s a bullseye with a dollar sign in the center on your forehead.

And also? I learned that playing into the patriarchy game can work to a single gal’s advantage by saying “let me check with my husband first”. It gets a guaranteed reduction in price every time. Sad but true.

Rebuilding Means Discovering Your Strength

Rebuilding takes courage you didn’t know you have. You might want to make yourself small because you’re scared. Who are you to be making big decisions by yourself for yourself?

Do it scared and watch the world not end.

Open the account. Transfer the bill. Watch the You-Tube tutorial. Read the manual. Buy the toolkit. Learn the thing. Ask for help if the task is too big.

And also, change your story. Get a certification. Teach. Create. Explore. Rebuilding looks different for each of us so don’t let your age or your lack of knowledge be an excuse for anything. I’m now a 62-yr old post-menopausal woman with certifications in health and wellness, peri+menopause, nutrition, personal training/fitness for pre-peri-post menopausal women, and I taught myself how to create a blog. And I did it all in 2.5 years while also working a full-time, low-paying job at a health clinic so I could get live human experience and pay off my debt.

Yes, it was awful. But I wasn’t sleeping anyway, thank you not at all to my hormones, so I made the best use of my “wake window” which was about 20 hours per day.

Now I’m studying to become a chef because it’s not good enough to preach nutrition, I want to show women what nutrition looks and tastes like.

I tell you this not to boast, but to show you that if you are all you have during your rebuild, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed.

It means you are about to discover what you are capable of.

Before You Go

Thank you for sticking around to the end.

If this article spoke to you or answered questions you don’t have answers to, leave me a comment below, I respond to every comment. You might inspire other women who struggling with her rebuild.

One mile at a time, baby.

Melissa

P.S. By the way, that blown tire? It still sits on the spare rack on the back of my RV as a reminder of my first mile toward freedom that tried to break me.