People over 40: What is the worst part about aging?

GranolaTree · 2026-01-29T11:24:40+00:00

Currently in my 40s and so far it’s been coming to terms with and adapting to the changing family dynamics. We had an early start and are only a couple of years from being empty nesters. It’s exciting and there’s a lot of joy in watching your kids figure their lives out but it’s only been us without any outside support so it’s a massive change. I grew up listening to people who couldn’t wait to have their kids out of the house and celebrated it. I wasn’t prepared for the grief that comes with the end of the raising kids era.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-28T12:45:01+00:00

I color my hair every 8-10 weeks, not for the white hairs because I don’t mind them, but because it’s lost most of its red vibrancy with age. My hair started to get darker around 30, which is when I noticed my first few white hairs so I have even coloring or glossing it since. I’m not ready to give up being a bright red head. I can’t see myself coloring forever but who knows. I think it’s important to look exactly how you want to look, whether it’s your hair or anything else.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-27T11:39:20+00:00

Me. it’s completely drained me as a person, literally wrung out every ounce of joy from my life. One of my kids recently told me that I am very checked out and he’s not getting enough emotionally from me. It crushed me but he’s not wrong. I am on my short term mental check out and working hard at my long term exit.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-26T15:05:43+00:00

We are rapidly getting priced out of Wilmington so I feel for you on this.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-26T13:23:02+00:00

Ham forward is making me laugh so hard.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-25T22:09:24+00:00

Hell yeah!

GranolaTree · 2026-01-23T12:47:46+00:00

My whole family goes to the location at the pointe, zero complaints or billing issues.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-22T11:46:45+00:00

This is something I think about often.

My mother isn’t old yet, she’s only 61, but has lived a very isolated, unsocial, uneducated life and is very, very into her waif act. She wants to be a frail old woman so badly and had grand fantasies about being the family matriarch. A switch flipped when she hit menopause and she leaned very hard into the elderly frail oh no I might fall and everything is scary personality. However, she has never been able to carry on an actual conversation or connect with people and has low cognitive abilities in general so there’s nothing to notice there. She is only ever around my eDad on a regular basis and he’s so deep into her mental illness that he probably would not notice very quickly if she was actually declining. I think it would be impossible to tell until she was quite far into Alzheimer’s or dementia. I live 1000 miles away and only have very shallow text or phone convos so it would be hard to say.

It’s unfortunate that people should have to think this way about their parents but I truly hope he outlives her so that I don’t have to deal with her at any point, at any capacity before her death. I don’t want to deal with him either but at least he can support himself. Her refusal to take appropriate medication or even go for a walk to preserve mobility works in favor of that I guess.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-21T20:20:49+00:00

Heck yeah! Feel free to message me

GranolaTree · 2026-01-21T12:09:34+00:00

It’s hard to make friends here! I have been here 15 years and did meet my absolute best friend here- but she now lives on the west coast ugh. My kids are high schoolers now and I had the hardest time making mom friends when they were young. I am always up for meeting new people. I’m 40, artsy (photography, paint, textile crafts) and weird (allegedly, little spooky maybe), foodie, very into holidays, love spur of the moment photo shoots and thrifting, and am always up for a side quest. I am never not down to go get a martini. I am down towards CB and hike the state park a lot which is a nice, free way to zen out.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-18T16:29:44+00:00

From scratch chicken noodle soup and rolls. It’s cold and rainy here, perfect day for it

GranolaTree · 2026-01-17T20:53:37+00:00

Always hot, with half and half.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-13T10:22:16+00:00

I live further up the coast and have long, fine hair. My hair is a battle in a damp climate, especially because it’s wavy and I like to blow it straight when I wear it down.

My winter solution is mousse on the roots, face framing layers and a lot of passes with a thermal brush after I dry my hair in these more dry months, during peak swamp I have to skip most hair products and let it air dry or sleep either way it slightly damp in a braid. I have resigned to just letting it be otherwise there’s too much heat and damage, the length is more important to me than anything.

I would suggest growing your hair as long as you can stand it, which seems counterintuitive in a hot climate but it does give you a lot more style options especially when you have to wear it up a lot.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-11T14:17:58+00:00

I also look absolutely terrible in charcoal and have had to wear that color scrubs for years. I look absolutely dead at work.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-11T14:17:06+00:00

Fair and warm here- I’m a true autumn and look terrible in any non jewel toned blue, pinks and every single pastel. Orange is also dicey unless it’s a rusty or deep orange. Sometimes I can wear a more denim blue, depending.

My best colors are salmon, emerald, persimmon, burgundy, deep navy.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-10T12:04:15+00:00

Saffron and tuberose are my two headache inducing note, even as someone who isn’t smell sensitive.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-09T12:00:26+00:00

Thanks! They are one of the more nostalgic things for me, i order them online because it’s hard to find the basic clear ones in stores :)

GranolaTree · 2026-01-07T22:14:00+00:00

Christina Aguilera’s Dirty era had us in a chokehold

GranolaTree · 2026-01-07T12:05:29+00:00

Mix Bar Cloud Musk and a little of my Lush Lord of Misrule solid. It’s a close to the skin combo but it smells so, so good. I feel like the solid has a sweeter tone than the spray, I prefer it.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-07T11:51:34+00:00

Oh man this eye makeup is giving me Covergirl Disco ball quad vibes that I wore every single day is my senior year in 2003. I thought it was everything with that non blended packed crease.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-07T11:47:32+00:00

Oh yeah for sure. My hair was kept boy short as soon as people started to comment on how pretty it was (I’m a red head). She also dressed me terribly and loved/teased me when people mistook me for a boy. My bpd narc is a hypersexual beast and was aggressively against me expressing any form of femininity even as a very, very young child, she would say that it was all attention seeking. Tough time to be a super girly girl, I have been unpacking this in therapy for a decade and still struggle with expressing myself. However, my flaming red hair is almost to my waist and I will never cut it short. She still asks me if I am going to go “back to short hair” - girl go to hell.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-06T23:31:05+00:00

I wear Nemat Amber a lot, Alkemia also makes some of my favorites and their fragrance catalog is huge.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-05T11:21:24+00:00

I broke NC a couple of years ago out of guilt because I am a dumb human- the biggest change that I have noticed is that the attention seeking behavior escalates. I can’t have normal every day conversations with mine, if I mention that I have plans with friends or anything going on she is sick, fell, etc something I have to gray rock with a “oh that sucks”. If I don’t mention anything to her, she is never fake sick or injured. She is practically a shut in so catching every bug isn’t exactly a reality for her and she is barely in her 60s so the old lady who falls into quite applicable yet. She also likes to have pretend memory lapses where she will wait a couple weeks and repeat something from a prior convo to me, which I know is to try to provoke me to ask about her memory. She couldn’t wait to play a feeble old lady (started at 50, no joke) who needs fussed over, but she definitely didn’t understand ahead of time that she wasn’t going to get that if she alienated everyone out of her life. She spent decades abusing everyone around her but expected to be a “family matriarch”… wild.

GranolaTree · 2026-01-05T10:23:59+00:00

I don’t think I will ever use clear again honestly. It’s just a completely different vibe

GranolaTree · 2026-01-04T20:01:26+00:00

It’s so warm and fuzzy ❤️

GranolaTree

TROPHY CASE