Life is coming.

[hannah]

My next short-term fic project - 5000 to 20000 words, you know, short-term - will focus on a post-menopausal woman late in her life. To those reading this space who've gone through that process, is there anything of note I should be aware of or make sure to include? It's not a subject where I can extrapolate from personal experience, and most of the stuff I've yet found is fairly sanitized and clinical. Informative, yes, and also clinical. It's not quite what I'm after in terms of getting a hold on emotional thrust.

I'd like to take a stab at long-term love and the work required for that to work in the day-to-day. Knowing what at least one of the main characters has gone through, having lived all those days, would be a big help.

And now that I've asked the internet: time to see what the library's got.

Comments

[linaelyn]

I think you might have a bunch of us who are in the late 50s early 60s for info, but... 80 is another thing entirely. I'm watching a few of my older friends deal with the issues of 78~85, and their experience is a good deal outside my own. Not being able to trust your brain to lift your left foot over that curb, even though the right foot managed it just fine, a microsecond ago. My aunt described it as "unlearning how to walk" and it's... one's brain starts to forget things that one takes totally for granted, until they can't be anymore.

Not sure if that's at all helpful, but your post made me think, certainly.

[hannah]

Reminding me to think of how the main character's starting to recognize what she used to take for granted - something I can extrapolate from a knee injury - is tremendously helpful. Asking myself, how does she see the world now that she's changed so much along with it?