MIDSTREAM

Taking the plunge.

When Washington’s 50th birthday approached, there was one clear thing she wanted: to go swimming in 50 bodies of water before the big birthday. The author of Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America (2021) dubbed it the 50 Dunks Project and wasted no time getting in the water. Across rivers, lakes, creeks, and oceans, the project quickly revealed itself to be about more than just swimming. “At fifty, I was still midstream in the big transition of finding out who I wanted to be in the next era of my life,” she writes. In water alternatively warm, cool, and downright frigid, she makes her first strokes toward that question. Having given large pieces of herself to motherhood, caregiving, and a marriage filled with more obligation than affection, the swims are an early step toward making space for what she calls her “self-self.” Not the mother-self or the self who answers to endless obligations, but the version of herself that is allowed to prioritize joy, spontaneity, and pleasure in her middle age. “I realized that what I needed most was to seize the day, any day, to find what pleasure I could take from life,” she writes, amid the dissolving ties of her relationship and the bickering of children. She writes candidly of her anger, pain, and menopause, and she explores her identity in aging with curiosity and tenderness. Her writing flows smoothly—and often with humor, as when she notes, “I want to swim like I did as a kid, not like Katie Ledecky.” The lives of middle-aged women are still not given enough space in literature or movies—or even their own lives. In this book, Washington crafts a winning narrative of a woman reaching her prime, guided by a road map for joy.

A poignant portrait of a woman stepping into her power in middle age.