How the Marrakech Medina broke me and the creative midlife reckoning that followed.

The hormonal rollercoaster of being a woman of a certain age comes with the erosion of the foundations of who you think you are as a person. I was completely unprepared for that.

How is that possible? How many utterly cringeworthy videos about what to expect from puberty did we have to endure? Where’s the ‘how-to’ guide for the other massive hormonal shift half the world’s population goes through?

For me, it isn’t just about the physical symptoms, although they certainly are a thing. What is it with the itchy ears? And the waking up at 3am? I swear that’s where the idea of witches came from.

It was just a bunch of perimenopausal women grabbing a broom and doing a bit of housework in the dead of night.

The biggest issue for me, though, has been the erosion of my sense of self.

For an article just published on Mamamia, I write about how the midlife mess I navigated while on my dream holiday in Europe became the raw material for my latest novel, Sunday Reilly is All Out of F*cks to Give.

If you’re a woman of a certain age like me, I reckon you’ll relate.