Conversations with women (over 40): Maggie Smith, 47

"We think of what happens in midlife as a crisis, but I think it's the opposite, more of a recovery or a return... It's like a reappearing act."

This time last year there was a wave of books by women telling the not entirely pretty truth about marriage and divorce and how they got from A to B, and beyond. Books like

lyz

Lenz’s This American Ex-Wife, Leslie Jamison’s Splinters and

Maggie Smith

’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful. And the stories they were telling were the same ones I was hearing from most (not all) of you: marriage isn’t working for heterosexual women. And in midlife many of you had decided it was time to do something about it.

SO, I was excited to sit down with poet and writer

Maggie Smith

to talk about the impact of sudden success on her marriage, feeling like a service provider in her own home and her midlife reappearing act.