Eleanor's Letter: Coming through the midlife darkness and into the light

I speak to midlife wellness guru Liz Earle about her own journey and mine... tips, tricks and some great events to help you through your own pinch points

Liz Earle and me at the studio recording the Queenager podcast all about coming through the dark times of midlife and coming out the other side. We are laughing that our books both have the same colour scheme and we’re wearing matching combat trousers..

Dear Queenagers

Hope you are having a wonderful August. The highlight of my week was swimming with my daughter at the Ladies Pond in the sunshine at noon yesterday (ha!) and….. drumroll… we saw the Kingfisher. Just like on the cover of Much More to Come (which thanks to all of you is now a Times Bestseller, in at Number 4!). I am so touched by all your emails etc about how much it has moved or helped you… would be brilliant if you could write a review on Amazon or Waterstones to spread the word).

I’ve been pinching myself about that all this week… it just feels like a dream. In March 2020, I was whacked from Times newspapers and slunk out of there feeling done, on the scrapheap, a failure; and now four years later my book is on the Times Bestseller list. Talk about a midlife collision followed by renewal. All I can say is that if you’d told my weeping self when I walked out of there what was to come I would NEVER have believed it. So it just shows a midlife renaissance is possible, we really can reinvent. It can feel like the absolute worst of times but come good again.

It's a theme I’ve been exploring in the latest episode of our new The Queenager podcast with my friend, and guru of midlife wellness Liz Earle. You have probably heard of her eponymous cleanser (bought by Boots and now nothing to do with her, must be so weird). I met Liz when I first launched NOON, we were introduced by a mutual friend. I founder her funny, warm and incredibly supportive. Back in my own dark time, she  invited me to Adweek (the biggest jamboree of the advertising world)  to be interviewed about NOON on her – massive – podcast. We horrified the (mainly male) audience by saying we didn’t want to be seen through a menopausal lens, that we are Queenagers, not walking hot flushes. That you wouldn’t say to a room full of middle age blokes: “Welcome to the Viagra years…” so why should we put midife women in a hot, sweaty menopause box rather than seeing us as all that we are.

Liz very kindly came to record in the studio with me (the pic is us there together) and was so honest – about her own health regime and her new much younger lover – but also about her own midlife darkness.

“With Queenagers there seems to be this cloak of invisibility that descends on midlife women. We are battling so many disadvantages – ageism, gender – when I look back on my own life I definitely have a sense that in my mid  40s/early 50s I lost myself, I became a lot of things to a lot of other people – wife, mother, friend, daughter, community support worker and where was I in all of that? I put on a lot of weight, I ate all the wrong things, I drank far too much… ”

Liz went through a classic NOON midlife collision: a painful divorce after 17 years of marriage, the selling of her company (with her name), Covid… she has five kids, one born in her late 40s so she knows about the mega juggle. But she is also proof that starting a new chapter is possible. After selling her company she returned to her original calling, health journalism and set up Liz Earle Wellbeing and has just written an excellent book bestselling book,  A Better Second Half which synthesizes everything she knows about midilife female health.

Since we recorded the podcast about 6 weeks ago I have started (mostly) following her morning routine. It goes like this: get up and immediately put your head in natural light (I poke mine outside my bathroom window as I live in the attic). . I used to wake up and blindly look at my phone. Going outside feels much better and it also resets our circadian rhythms so we sleep better. Next I scrape my tongue to remove the white gunk which accrues there overnight. To begin with this felt weird, now I find it both fascinating and essential.. then I drink a pint of water and take some vitamins (the wellness company LYMA sent me some of their supplements to try which are super expensive but do make me feel indefinably sharper..). Next I do 50 deep squats and 30 press ups against the wall and then I meditate for 20 minutes or so (the meditation is my thing not Liz’s, although she is all for it).

This sounds like a lot but I don’t do the squats etc if I am doing pilates on the reformer. I’ve done this twice a week, first thing,  for the last 20 years; as a writer I spend too long at my desk typing, if I do pilates my back doesn’t hurt. If I stop, it seizes up. Liz says ‘use it or lose it’ in midlife; that this is the time to do weight bearing exercise (thus the squats and press ups) that way you don’t need a gym. I then swim every day at noon, rain or shine, winter or summer – I am smiling as I write this as I sometimes joke that these days I do so much ‘wellness’ I hardly have time to do anything else. But weirdly this self-care – anathema to the old busy-addicted Eleanor – makes me way more productive. I am more focussed, more in flow when I do sit down to write. I faff about less.  I get more done. I think it’s because I am now less distracted. More able to concentrate. That is the biggest difference daily meditation has made for me.

And although it sounds like a lot; this is the time when we need to put ourselves first. Putting a little time into our health everyday not only makes us feel better it has long-term benefits: midlife fitness is THE KEY to health in old age according to Liz who has crunched all the science. I do far more exercise now than I did when I was younger, but I see it as making up for all those years where I viewed my body a bit like a stick which conveyed my brain around. Now I feel much more truly in it and grateful to it. And, if we want to stay mobile as we lead the 100 year life, we need to keep moving. I went for lunch last Sunday with old friends and their 90-year-old parents, both sprightly and living independently. They both skied till a few years ago, he was a pilot; they were a great advert for keeping active. As my mum puts it: “Just don’t let the old people in” – keep going with everything you love for as long as you can is the secret to a healthy old age.

I reckon – and Liz agrees - that the biggest bit of self care and self love we can give ourselves is time. In the everyday, - of course. But also by taking a chunk  of time out for ourselves at a retreat. If you fancy trying I, we’ve got an early bird offer on for our latest retreat. It’s called Noon Escapes to the Country and is being held at the splendiferous new retreat farmstead created by Laura Tenison (Founder of Jojo Maman Bebe and the first guest on the Queenager podcast). I’m going to be sending a special members-only offer out next week with extra discounts (a good reason to sign up to become a paid subscriber if you haven’t yet..). And a great way to meet your new tribe, and lots of new friends.

And speaking of the 100 year life, as crucial to our long-term happiness as health, is money. So  this Tuesday, August 20^th at 6.30pm we’re running a free webinar with Danni Hewson, ex BBC Money Correspondent and now Head of Content at AJ Bell Money Matters talking about understanding financial risk (crucial if we Queenagers are going to make the right decisions for our long term futures). If you are interested in knowing more about how to best manage your cash do sign up for their fab newsletter.

Oh and we’ll be running regional NOON Circles on September 9^th all over the UK – check out the Events page of the Noon website (noon.org.uk ) or click on the link for details.

Lots of love

Eleanor

Ps our Queenager Podcast is kindly sponsored by And Begin skincare. Their CMO Sophie Van Ettinger is a fellow Queenager and a refugee from the mainstream beauty industry; she became sick of its ageism and wanted to work on a new brand which was actively pro-ageing and pro-Queenager. We found them some inspirational Queenagers from the Noon community to tell their stories of new chapters for the brand’s launch last year so we know they mean it. Sophie says: “And Begin is on a mission to help you reveal your best skin yet with personalised prescription age-renewing skincare. Discover dermatologist-designed multitasking formulations made with clinically proven ingredients, dosed at your ideal levels. Simplify your skincare routine and amplify your results.”

If you would like to try it go to their website and use the promo code QUEENAGERPOD and you will receive your first bottle for a bargain £4.99 it is normally £29.99.