Why I Just Joined the “We Do Not Care Club”

This morning, I discovered the “We Do not Care Club,” inadvertently started by Just Being Melani. It’s sort of an unofficial club for women who have entered the perimenopausal era of their lives. You know, the beginning of the time in life when “women of a certain age” discover how tired they are, and how tired of being tired they are.

I was pulled in by how many of the things she — and her hundreds of followers — doesn’t care about with which I agree. Especially, I admit, this one:

“We do not care if you are hungry. We did not lock the kitchen.”

Women are tired of caring about so much shit. It’s not that women are the only ones with shit in their lives. It’s just that it seems like we’re the ones who are wading through the deepest doo-doo, most of which we did not put there.

By the time we’ve hit perimenopause, usually by our late 30s or early 40s, we’re already tired. We’re tired of working full time, grocery shopping, cleaning house, cooking dinner, picking children up at the daycare or school, fighting with loved ones because of misunderstandings, changing our plans at the last minute because other people have different ideas, washing dishes, teenage backtalk, bitchy bosses or coworkers, and a plethora of other irritations.

This list is not necessarily mine; rather, it’s drawn from some of the comments I’ve read on Melani’s posts, on the internet in general, and from other women in the real world. We’re tired of working endlessly for women’s and civil rights for years, only to see them slipping away. We’re tired of being expected to look a certain way, wear certain clothing, put on a “front office” face, put on high heels because it’s expected of us.

We’re tired, and we don’t care anymore.

Now, please don’t think we don’t care about anything at all. We care. We care about what’s happening in the world. We care about everyone and everything we love. We just don’t care so much about what the world thinks about us anymore.

At least, we’re trying not to care.

Caring has been ingrained in us for so long, it’s hard to shift our perspective to pure acceptance of ourselves and stop caring about those many things we are expected to care about.

Yvette Walker wrote an opinion piece for the Kansas City Star in which she explained why she has not joined the thousands of women who have claimed membership in the “We Don’t Care” club. She writes, “It’s too important a time not to care. White supremacists just marched through Kansas City during Memorial Day Weekend. I have to care.”

I’m certain Melani and the other members of the Club aren’t saying they don’t care about these things. I’m sure they do care about them. Certainly, I do.

Tamsen Fadal declares in her story “What This Online “Club” Gets Exactly Right About Being Over 40” on Katie Couric Media that Melani’s posts are “… — just real. And it hit me right where I live. But the truth is, I’m 54 and I do care about some things: I care deeply about women in midlife. I care about breaking the silence around perimenopause and menopause. I care about making sure women know how to take charge of their health and use their voices to advocate for themselves.”

She goes on to write, “But I don’t care anymore about playing small. I don’t care about being palatable. And I most definitely don’t care about all the outdated rules that say women have to disappear as they age. Because that’s simply not going to happen.”

I’m with Tamsen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the women who already follow and support Melani do too.

We care.

We just don’t want to have to care about the shit anymore.