A Simple Black Tank Suit

A Simple Black Tank Suit By Laura Culberg

About 15 years ago I was at the hotel pool in Palm Springs at yoga teacher training. There were dozens of tight little bodies, yoga bodies swarming around the vast patio which was home to several pools and hot tubs. I was sitting on a beach chair reading when a woman, somewhere between 50-60, walked by me. On her average, healthy body, she wore a very simple black tank suit. At the time, as a body-conscious, never good enough, 35-year-old yoga teacher, I thought to myself, “I want to look like that when I’m 50.” She had a normal body. She wasn’t that different from me. It wasn’t that I wanted to look like her when I’m her age, it was that I wanted to be like her. The woman in the simple black tank suit exuded confidence and she was unapologetic about her age, her body, and her place at the pool.

This woman in the simple black tank suit is a symbol of what Put Some Claws in Your Pause is all about. We have been taught to think of menopause as a time to mourn, the period in our lives when we stop being fertile. Many of us feel like something has died. But that woman in the black tank suit, my unconscious first muse for Put Some Claws in Your Pause, inspired me to think of the period of menopause as a reclamation of my righteousness.

Put Some Claws in Your Pause is an opportunity to step into Menopause with fierce grace. Who do you want to be in this brave new era? What do you envision for yourself that you’ve not pursued in years past? This is our time, your time to do life on purpose, to walk proudly, unapologetically and joyfully into this next phase of life.

I often think about that woman in the black tank suit in Palm Springs. It wasn't her outside beauty that invited me to notice her. It was the energy she carried, the self-acceptance she exuded. She was happy and whole in that simple black tank suit. That’s what I want to continue becoming. That’s the woman I want to embrace and celebrate.

Wisdom comes with age. I didn’t understand this until one day I just did. I thought in my thirties that I knew things. I knew how to buy a house. I knew how to start a business. I figured out how to buy another house. I had a baby. I travelled. I thought I was a grown up. And I was a grown up. But I was not wise. It was the struggles and the heartbreaks, the unexpected changes in my body and the painstaking decisions I had to make in my forties that brought me to a new edge. Something shifted, and I became wiser. At some point it happens to everyone. My simple black tank suit tells a story of wise women before me—women who stepped into the same wisdom that we are stepping into now.

I can hardly wait to get started on this journey. Kate and I have created a weekend of ritual release, celebration, acceptance, and connection. We’re not going to wear black bathing suits (except in the hot tub), but we are going to own our wisdom, experience our transition into menopause with a lens of celebration and affirmation. We’re going to have fun and be our true, middle-aged, bad-ass selves.