'You can call women my age a lot of things. But never call them this.'

I admit I was already feeling down. In bed with a flu, feeling gross, bone sore and weary. Brain fogged and sorry for myself.

And then I heard it.

A younger colleague from the Mamamia website described me as ‘mumsy’. Monique wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was telling a story about a post I wrote and how funny it was that I, a ‘mumsy’ type woman, would dream about myself as a young villain.

But oh, how it cut. How it cut deep.

Fellow guests on the podcast, Susan Carland and Mia Freedman – both in their 40s – picked up on Monique’s mistake immediately. You can hear their sharp intake of breath, their quick fury and instant fatwa on the word.  I heard their defence. I heard them call me “rock and roll” and I was thankful for it. But I couldn’t feel it. ‘Mumsy’ just kept getting stuck in my sinus infection and echoing around my mind.

Until I cried.

Stupid really. I mean, what's in a label? I am long past the stage in my life where I usually care what people think of me. I crave approval less than spinach. But I was sick. I was vulnerable. And 'mumsy'? 'Mumsy' is bad.

I know it's silly. I mean, I am a mum.  I look after my kids and I love them insanely. They are at the core of my universe.

I also care for my mum, my friends when I can fit them in, and I care about the younger girls in the office. But I don't feel defined by my kids or by my caring. I've never seen myself as someone who is frumpy, wholesome, slipper-wearing and fuddy duddy.

But I admit since my dad died, and the world got colder and harsher, I've taken to wearing big cardigans. My shoe heels are getting lower. My skirts longer. My tops looser. I'm not as self-obsessed as I once was and I go for days without glancing in the mirror.  But 'mumsy' means 'daggy'.  It means saggy. It means you've given up. It means you're wearing tracksuits.

Blokes don't get called 'dadsy'. 'Mumsy' means your sexual currency is gone. You are just a woman who bred who hasn't done much since.

In my head I still feel about 25. I like to dance. I like to drink. I like to party. I don't knit. I don't cook much. I hate cleaning.

While apologising, Monique told me some of the young women find my podcast pal Rebecca Huntley 'intimidating'. "I want to be intimidating," I wailed. "Maybe one of them thinks you're intimidating," suggested Monique sweetly.

Clearly, we need more words for our years in the middle. Those years spent more at home and less at concerts. The years of knuckling down, of barbecues, dinner parties, family holidays. 'Middle age' sounds like the woeful violence of that period of history. It's hardly evocative of an era where baby boomers are redefining what aging means and those of my generation still have young children, debt and a chip on their shoulder from not being free.

So how do we describe these middle years? Motherly? Grown up? Less fucked up? Smarted up? Wised-up? Mature?

Surely we need better transitions than 'MILF' to 'mumsy' in two years and five kilos.

(We'll discuss this on our Just Between Us podcast this week - we welcome your thoughts before we take to the microphones. Leave a comment below.)

I know many will think I should just be less touchy about labels and just embrace them as mere words. Or accept them as one part of who I am. After all, insults have different weights at different ages. When I was about 25 a friend of mine took to calling all his female friends a name incorporating 'lady'. My flatmates were 'sophisticated lady' and 'beautiful lady' and 'lovely lady'. I eagerly asked him my name 'You are complicated lady'. I was crushed. But now I see complicated as good, complex, interesting.

When we are young, we recoil from names that mean 'mean'. When we are older, we recoil from labels that age us.

Last week, I watched my 10-year-old son perform after a music holiday camp where they learnt "old fashioned retro songs". He got up on stage and drummed to Blink 182's Small Things.  It's a song I used to play on high rotation on Triple J. I whistled, I head banged. I was proud.

But no doubt it was in a mumsy kind of way.

I watched the stunningly sad documentary Amy, about the late singer Amy Winehouse, feeling wretched and motherly. At 25, I would have thought her tragically hip - dying young, staying pretty, so cool, so talented, so tattooed. Now, I wanted to pull her off the screen and into my arms and stop her from her path of self destruction, away from her dodgy dad, alcohol and drug abuse and shitty boyfriends. Amy Winehouse's life was so fraught she never made it to 'mumsy'.

At the end of the doco someone wisely mourns her passing with the words 'Life teaches you to live it, if you can just live it long enough'.

I nearly yelled "YES!" at the screen.  If that's being mumsy, I'll take it.

But I still hate it.

So if you have other words you prefer lay them on me.

Like this? Why not try ...

When do you hit the ‘prime of your life’? (You might be surprised).

Why all mums should take annual leave from their family.

Why we forgive our mums for smacking us, but not our dads.

Like Debrief Daily on Facebook