A Shout-Out to the Woman Who Said It Out Loud
There’s a moment in cultural time when someone says the quiet part out loud — and suddenly millions of people recognize themselves.
For midlife women, that moment arrived courtesy of Melani Sanders, the accidental founder of the We Do Not Care Club — a viral, hilarious, deeply validating declaration of the things women in their 40s and beyond are quietly done performing for:
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Bras
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Chin hair
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Perfect outfits
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Other people’s opinions
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Pretending we’re comfortable when we’re not
That whole glorious genre traces back to Melani Sanders, who basically sat in her car one day and said the quiet part out loud.
And the collective went:
“Oh, thank God, it’s not just me.”
Her new book, The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook, leans into that exact relief — humor, permission, and the shared realization that midlife isn’t making us difficult or apathetic.
It’s making us honest.
Because somewhere in our 40s, a lot of us hit a very specific shift:
We don’t actually want to keep abandoning ourselves just to keep things smooth.
And that is exactly where my 40s landed.
How I Quietly (or NOT So Quietly) Joined
There were some… hints.
No definitive announcement quite like Melani’s.
Maybe a few “oh.”
Maybe a few “oh, no.”
No bra-burning — at this stage bras are less patriarchy and more social engineering. I will neither confirm nor deny temptation.
It was subtler than that.
More like my nervous system finally escalated a long-ignored ticket.
My 40s have been the years my body started staging small protest moves:
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My back locks up if I stay in one position too long
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My legs go numb over nothing, even after weight loss
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My sleep has become emotionally unavailable
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My muscles carry tension like they have inside information
So naturally, I tried to manage it better:
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Stretch more
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Magnesium more
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Be calmer, nicer, more flexible, more accommodating, more regulated, more everything
Which, in hindsight, was its own kind of shit show.
Because I’m no longer interested in self-improvement for its own sake.
I’m interested in accuracy and integrity.
I started noticing:
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How often I automatically tried to override discomfort — physical, emotional, social
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How many tiny adjustments I made in rooms where I was painfully aware I just didn’t fit
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How quickly I softened my words so others could feel more at ease
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How reflexively I carried other people’s tension like a community service project
And here’s the thing:
I didn’t decide to stop.
I just… couldn’t keep doing it the way I always had.
My tolerance had edges now.
Often quite jagged ones.
And I could feel them.
So no — my 40s weren’t the years I stopped caring.
They were the years my caring got curated. Precise.
I cared about:
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Whether my body felt supported
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Whether I actually wanted to be somewhere
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Whether my yes was real
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Whether my nervous system was bracing
I cared a lot less about:
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Seeming easygoing
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Explaining my needs or choices convincingly
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Smoothing awkwardness
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Pushing through “just this once”
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Putting one more person ahead of me who wasn’t part of my support circle
Opinions started sliding off me that used to stick.
Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes quietly.
More and more days, my surface feels so smooth that not much sticks at all.
Like my psyche switched to non-stick.
And I finally understood what women mean when they say midlife feels liberating.
It’s not that life gets easier.
My spine and sleep are not participating in that narrative.
It’s that self-abandonment starts to feel:
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Physically expensive
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Loud
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Irritating
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Inefficient
So yes — I think I joined the club.
Not loudly.
Not rebelliously.
Just in small, daily choices:
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The no I didn’t pad
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The rest I didn’t justify
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The boundary I didn’t explain twice
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The discomfort I didn’t override
If this is what “not caring” looks like, it feels a lot like self-respect.
And honestly, my nervous system seems deeply relieved about it.
I’m curious — for women over 40 reading this:
What became noticeably harder to tolerate in your 40s… and what did that reveal about what you actually need now?
