Spicy, Hot, Grief
Surviving My First Year as a Gen X Widow
In September 2018 my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Since that time, both my parents, my aunt, my father-in-law and my husband died. My brother got divorced, I moved from one Manhattan neighborhood to another, bought all new furniture, and quit my job.
I am using the power of my grief and loss as a catalyst for growth as I move forward. I am rediscovering old parts of myself and realizing that while I feel the same on the inside, (sexy and badass) I look different on the outside (i.e. normal signs of aging).
A year ago, January 2022, I wasn’t ready to deal with my grief head on, but there was something about dressing up in lingerie and sexy costumes that felt empowering. I started taking photos of myself with my iPhone and had amassed a collection of over 1,500 images and videos.
By September 2022 I was ready to tackle my feelings of deep sadness. I simultaneously started my Instagram account (IG for short) and signed up for a widow’s retreat with a grief coach who also lost her husband to cancer.
When I saw this coach was offering a new program about thriving through entrepreneurship, I took the leap and had a 30 minute call with her to discuss my “vision”.
It wasn’t really anything at the time; my IG account was 2 weeks old with 5 posts and 14 followers. I knew it was more than a “milf account” funneling men to an OnlyFans page where I would charge for more explicit content (Not my thing, but no judgment on those who do it).
As I continued to post, I started writing about my life and experiences as a widow and single mom. My followers (currently 2,267) are 87% men who like to look at my body, but I don’t care. I’m not a mommy blogger or grief counselor. I find myself in a category that doesn’t really exist on IG.
Sure, there are lots of accounts about women and midlife reinvention (focus on healthy aging, fashion, anti-aging beauty products and menopause). There are lots of mommy bloggers and a few sex positive, and pleasure focused accounts like Mama Gena (love her book Pussy Reclamation).
There is a wonderful grief community of widows (some now grief coaches themselves), but I don’t really fit in with them either. Neither the widows or the mommy bloggers connect with my “sensual” content, and the sex positive people don’t understand my grief.
Adding to my feelings of not fitting in is the fact that I am 55 years old with a 10 year old son. Mommy bloggers tend to be in their 30’s and most women my age have kids in HS or college.
Another reason for my disconnect with mommy bloggers is because my son is on the autism spectrum. Raising a child with special needs is a very different experience from raising neurotypical kids.
When my husband was alive, I was part of a special needs mom’s group, but after our Mother’s Day brunch last year, I realized I don’t fit in there anymore. They are all married women, and my experience has been married people don’t like to hang out with widows. To be honest, it was hard for me to hear them talk about their husbands too.
I also feel alienated by my openness about my sexuality. It’s rare to see a woman over 40 in the media expressing any kind of sensuality, and I embrace my “milfdom”.
At heart, I think I am an activist for women’s rights, and feel called to advocate for women in midlife (and beyond) to be seen as not just wives, mothers, daughters, and employees. We still like lingerie! We are still sexy, want sex, and are highly desirable.
This is not just my opinion, it’s my lived experience. I’ve tried every dating app (at least twice) and I taught myself how to play the “match with me” game. I started out awkward and unsure, but I learned quickly.
My most recent Tinder account had over 7k likes, more than half from men in their 20’s and 30’s. I’m pretty much done with that now, but I had quite a few adventures last year, all with men at least 10 years younger. I think I’ll save the details for future publication, wink wink.
There is a lot of resistance in the media to using lingerie models over 35. I made a reel about it on IG and a couple of the lingerie brands I call out even “liked” it. I have a feeling they just saw I tagged them and clicked on the “like” little heart.
I made a comment thanking the lingerie company ThirdLove for the “like” and asking if they would start using older models since the upper end of their target customers (millennials) are entering their 40’s. They “liked” my comment, but did not respond to my question.
Gen X women like me didn’t grow up with the internet and access to information about our sexuality. No one talked about female self pleasure; sex ed in school was about procreation. Male orgasm is needed to make babies, female orgasm is not.
From what I’ve heard, sex ed hasn’t evolved in the 40+ years since I was a teenager, but technology has made this information more accessible to women. I think it’s being embraced by women in their 20's and 30's, but women my age, not so much. I’m going to change that.
