Starting Over (Even When It Feels Selfish): Why trying something new in midlife can feel uncomfortable and necessary by Jane Costella

There's a particular kind of madness that sets in when you become a mom, one which takes years to fully recognise. That you - the woman that existed beforehand – have quietly moved to the bottom of your own to-do list. Somewhere between packed lunches, parents' evenings, PTA volunteering and full time work, you filed yourself under deal with later. Except, ‘later’ turned out to be about 15 years. 

I'm an author, so I work from home, alone, in the company of fictional people who are more likely to do what I tell them than my teens are. 

I love my job and feel privileged to write stories for a living. As a lifelong bookworm, I am made for it in every way but one. I’m not the introvert authors are supposed to be if you believe the Hollywood version of this profession. I am sociable, at my best around other humans. And I miss people.

But for the first decade of my writing career, I bought into the idea that any scrap of spare time I had must be devoted to my three kids. I was tortured by Mom Guilt – that terrible affliction when you feel bad when you’re with the kids because you’re not working and worse when you’re at work because you’re not with the kids. 

For a long time, my life was lovely, full, exhausting, and almost entirely not about me.

Then, at 45, I was watching my youngest at a tennis lesson and said, apparently out loud, ‘I wish I’d learned to play that when I was a kid.’ The woman next to me asked: ‘What’s stopping you now?’

I dragged a girlfriend along to a ‘Rusty Rackets’ session that weekend. It turned out to be life-changing. Tennis was the missing piece in the jigsaw of my life that I’d been looking for.

I joined a club, then a team and quickly began to play in competitions. I went to Wimbledon to watch Roger Federer on Center Court, then to Spain for coaching, sunshine and rosé wine.

The sport gave me friendship, joy, fitness, competition and, above all, a version of myself I'd half-forgotten. 

I’ll admit I could never fully shake the feeling that someone was going to tap me on the shoulder at training and say: excuse me, aren't you supposed to be sacrificing yourself somewhere?  I felt like I was about to be caught out - having fun, being a person. The audacity.

But my kids were growing up; the eldest is now 21. I was flattering myself if I thought they needed me hovering around them all the time. Far better to have a mother who wasn't slowly disappearing into a laptop and a sense of duty.

I don’t claim to have it all figured out, but having been a working mom for twenty one years, I am now certain of one thing: I am not merely allowed to have found something that is mine. It was necessary. I needed to find this sport, to rediscover the woman who existed before the school forms and the guilt and the decades of everyone-else-first. 

So remember to put on your oxygen mask – in whatever form it takes - before assisting others. Even if, for a while, it feels terrifyingly, wonderfully selfish. Especially then. 

Jane Costello is a bestselling British novelist whose romantic comedies have sold over a million copies in the UK. Her novel You Me Everything, published under the pseudonym Catherine Isaac, has been translated into twenty-six languages. She lives in Liverpool, England, with her husband and three sons. Her latest novel, Forty Love is a fun, sexy rom-com about a woman who discovers it’s never too late to pick up a racket and take another shot at love. Jules has lived next door to the local tennis club for years without picking up a racket. As a full-time buyer for a national chain of lifestyle stores and a single, widowed mother of a teenager, she doesn’t have time for a hobby. And then, there is the matter of that run-in with her old school crush, Sam, who recently joined the club. In a surge of boldness, Jules decides to stop playing it safe and accepts an invitation to join the amateur tennis team. Soon enough, she has fully embraced the tennis life and finds herself loving the game and her teammates, but that’s not all. Her intense attraction to Sam is gaining an advantage over her. Now Jules is facing a whole new kind of match with her insecurities, her desires, and maybe—just maybe—a second shot at love. And boy, does it have some spin on it.

Purchase Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/Forty-Love-Novel-Jane-Costello/dp/B0FJDFF48G 

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