What did your life look like when you were half your current age?

This thread (and allira's post) has made me realise yes different is the word. My goodness the things that have happened since then.

I was 37 and pregnant for the first time, very reluctantly but what a great surprise reluctant mums have. I imagined my life was over. No good times to look forward to. Just hard work. Ok the first five years were hard as Jnr refused to sleep. Once he was at school he became tired out as he was busy and brainy. I am lucky that we are not only close but like twins. He’s just booked his dad a birthday celebration at a villa in Spain where we all lived for many years. He changed my life forever in a good way.

What’s a 32 year old doing on Gransnet ? Just asking - ofcourse everyone is welcome.
When I was half my present age, I was happily married, or so I thought, with 3 young children.

I was 31, had just given birth to our third child.
We lived in a beautiful home in Shropshire, we didn’t know that yet another company move was on the cards!
Our network of friends was great, life was very good.
Leaving was very hard particularly for our daughter who was 11.

I was 37 and had three children, two daughters aged 12 and nine and my son was six. I’d just completed a conversion training course to swap from secondary to primary school teaching and was about to start a new job.

I was 35 with two daughters aged 11 and 6 years working part time as a secretary in a GP practice.

Coming up for 40. Divorced and married for the second time with a two year old daughter who had been very much a surprise! Working part time from home in marketing. It was a big change in my life as I’d been very much a career woman. Absolutely no regrets though.

I was 35 . Juggling my nursing shifts around family life as a single parent of a 12 and 10 year old with great support from my lovely Mum and Dad.

Forty one years ago I was the busy, happy mother of two children.
Several years ago one of my beloved adult children died tragically.
That's the big change in my life.

I was 39, 3 children eldest 17. I was working part time locally. Part of a close community now scattered to the four winds

I was living abroad with my family.
For a year -
it seemed like a very happy interlude and I was optimistic about the future and then , the abuse started again .
I'd had some physical abuse during the first
eight years .Nothing that left a cut or a bruise .
After a year -
fired by alcohol a constant daily onslaught of verbal abuse began .
I went to church after taking my children to school and I prayed and prayed for it to stop and indeed it did. After some years a more Machiavellian type of abuse began all over again .

Left with more time to think as my father has passed I now realise just how badly this has affected me .
I feel very strongly about domestic abuse and the statistics ( one in four women )
are shocking .

Working as a midwife/paediatric nurse on special care baby unit with three children 12,11 and 8. Hard work but I loved it!! I did have a fantastic husband.

I’m so sorry to hear that Aldom 💐

I was 35 had a great job as a service manager, retired at 63 on the state and final salary pension I was lucky my age was just right to receive those pensions.

Sadly I had a stroke at 63, but still living the life, no strokes holding me back

I was expecting fourth child in two weeks, totally unplanned, so very uneasy. My mum was still alive, and marriage reasonably happy, so it was really a happier time.

I was almost forty, about to sit my driving test (passed), working full time, with a husband just retired from the Army and about to start a civilian job, one child about to join the RAF, and one studying for her O levels. It was a new start for all of us and life was very good.

41. I was back at work full time and I had just got my first managerial job. My children were in secondary school and went round to a friend afterschool who I paid.

14 stone, size 16. Severe PND.

I was 38, pregnant with my 4th child. Our 3 boys seemed almost grown up and I felt confused about the future.
I had been to 9 funerals in the previous year including a tiny baby, my 14yr old son's best friend, and a dear friend who had cancer at 40.

My career as a potter and teacher was progressing well and the boys settled at school. DH enjoying his job.

My DD is 38 now and a busy photographer. Her 2 are coming here shortly to play and help me I hope.
We may bake a cake.

I was 35 with a baby, a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old. All lovely ages. I ran a playgroup with some other expat English-speaking mums which was very fulfilling. The other mums and I are still close friends and meet up regularly.

We were lucky to be comfortably off with normal, healthy children. All the grandparents were still alive although Opa was bedridden.

I was in my third year of teaching and studying for a Masters. Two children at secondary school and a busy social life. Don’t know how I fitted it all in. Friends had to book us weeks in advance for a Saturday night.

Esmay

I was living abroad with my family.
For a year -
it seemed like a very happy interlude and I was optimistic about the future and then , the abuse started again .
I'd had some physical abuse during the first
eight years .Nothing that left a cut or a bruise .
After a year -
fired by alcohol a constant daily onslaught of verbal abuse began .
I went to church after taking my children to school and I prayed and prayed for it to stop and indeed it did. After some years a more Machiavellian type of abuse began all over again .

Left with more time to think as my father has passed I now realise just how badly this has affected me .
I feel very strongly about domestic abuse and the statistics ( one in four women )
are shocking .

So sad to read this, as the daughter of an abusive father and a narcissistic mother I understand.

I really don’t think an abuser can change..

Living your life treading on eggshells waiting to see what may provoke the next round of abuse is very damaging.

At the age of 62 with both my parents thankfully deceased I still get up and start looking busy if my husband walks in and I have been sitting, it is ingrained in me, sitting idle was a really good excuse for a beating.

At 42, life was busy: two pre-teen boys; marriage a bit shaky; lost my mum early in the year. Doing two part-time jobs and helping husband to apply for a job two hundred miles away; he got it and until we sold our house and bought another, I was a part-time parent. On the other hand, I had lots of friends and was sad that I had to make a move to unknown pastures in the north.

I would be almost 44. My two children were at school; I had gone back to work so we were better off than previously.
I passed my driving test when I was 37 and had managed to buy my own car rather than share with husband. So life was definitely on the up from the dreadful poverty of earlier years.

I was coming up to 41, I had graduated at the age of 40 with a degree in education and started a new career teaching in further education, a job I loved and continued in until I was 61. My sons were 18 and 16.