Listening to other women's stories this year has given me confirmation, finally, that our expectations have been absurd. So many women I spoke with--objectively successful women--felt ashamed of their perceived failures.What if we're not failures? What if what we've done is good? At any rate, maybe it's good enough.

I'm not knocking choices, just saying that having so many of them with so little support has led to a great deal of shame. Being a full and equal partner both at work and at home, having a rich social life, contributing to society, staying in shape - doing all that is exponentially harder than doing any one thing. We asked for more, and did we ever get it. I firmly believe it's fairer. Easier? No.

The people I know who are happy realize they can't care about everything," says Deal. "You have to decide what you care about. If everything matters to you, you're going to go nuts.

One night in December 2018, the Tony-winning actress and singer TOnya Pinkins talked onstage about her experience of menopause adding: "Things are so much better than they were decades ago, but they can be bad and better at the same time." "Bad and better" is one way to think about our prospects at this stage of life too.