Wow, I’m really doing this.  I’m starting a blog.  People have been telling me to do this for years, but I haven’t, for some reason or another.  I was afraid of not having anything to say.  And then I was afraid of having too much to say.  And finally, I was afraid that what I had to say was stupid.

I think the only thing that was stupid was my reasoning.

Of course, I don’t think I was ready to start a blog until now.  In fact, I know I wasn’t ready.  I didn’t have my theme, or my cause.  I didn’t really have something to write about.  Something important to say.

What is my cause, you may ask?  My cause is creating a voice for a very special type of woman.  She’s sort of rare…but not really.  She just seems rare because she is often ignored or overlooked.  Who is she?  Well, quite simply, she’s me.

She’s never been married, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want someone in her life.  She’s pretty, but average, not someone you’d find on the cover of a magazine or walking down a cat walk.  Oh, and speaking of cats, she has two.  They are her fur babies, because she never had a child of her own.  Not that she didn’t want one…it just didn’t happen.

Have you ever noticed that if “it” didn’t happen by forty, people kind of assume “it” will never happen?  Forty is the cutoff date…apparently for everything.  If you are a woman and over forty and single and childless, you might as well just give up.  You’re done.  Finished.  Kaput.  Call it quits.  The show is over.  You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

Now obviously, this is all hooey.  In this day and age, anything is possible…even after the dreaded age of forty.  But, I have to admit, I bought into this line of thinking for a very long time.  I believed that my life was over and nothing good was ever going to happen to me again.  And being that I was forty, (and only forty), the rest of my life could be quite long.  What was I going to do with myself no longer having a chance in hell to find my very own Happily Ever After?

What am I doing with myself?  Well, for starters, I’m starting this blog.  I’m speaking up for the “snubbed” woman who has given up on her fairy tale dreams and started allowing people to re-label her as “Forgotten Spinster”.   I’m reminding that woman, and more so myself, that life is actually NOT over after forty…not even close to over!  I’m  revealing to the doubters that we are still worthy of achieving our dreams, whatever they may be – before, during and even beyond forty.

Now, I’m not an activist, or a feminist…or an allergist or a biologist for that matter.  I am just a forty-something woman still searching for her happy ending within a new type of fairy tale, the Forty Tale.  I’m not a princess, my cats don’t speak English, my hair is not shiny, and I prefer Sketchers to glass slippers.  But, I’m hopeful for the future and ready to start living again, despite my so-called shortcomings.  I’m now realizing that, contrary to what some believe, (and these people are out there), marriage, children and careers do not define who you are, or what stage of life you are in.  And just because you don’t necessarily have those three specific things in your life by a certain age, doesn’t mean you cease to exist.

So, despite where life takes me from here, I’m vowing to live it with love, humor, and bravery, wearing one pretty dress at a time.  My Happily Ever After starts now.

Will you join me on this journey?