Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

What Do You Call Women Who Aren’t Old Yet?

Many of Us Were Just Not Cut Out for Conventional Labels

Ahead of dawn light I punched my pillow before flipping it to savor the feel of the cool side against my cheek. I willed my mind to chill as my body fought the urge to fidget. Thoughts, however, kept tumbling.

The past two weeks surfaced some disquieting realizations. This usually means (heavy sigh) a bit of ‘growing’ awaits. Try as I might, I could not shake nagging questions about where I fit these days. The realizations began when a few oldish women in a virtual group I belong to starting crowing about a newly minted grandmother in the crowd. This escalated to an unwelcome group text brag-athon about grandchildren. Curiously, at the same time, I learned about a Childless Collective Summit soon to take place online.

Square Peg Syndrome

This new event, organized by a woman 20 years my junior, first came up in a Zoom call. It then appeared in several posts on Instagram (a social media platform I’ve never fully embraced beyond posting one-off nature, food or cocktail shots).

There, in perfect hashtaggy Instagram fashion, I found 15 to 20 creatively formatted smiling shots of women I’d met through blogging — some by phone, others in person — the past 10 years. All…