Eleanor's Letter: Happy Birthday Noon - we are three today! And Happy IWD 2024!

Do join us for a special Noon Birthday Online Circle, 6pm today, there will be cake!

Dear Queenagers,

It’s a big day for us at Noon today - it is our third birthday. It seems incredible that it is three years since we launched in the middle of the pandemic. I can remember our first post on Instagram when I was the first follower (followed by the team and my kids). It felt so daunting to set off in the dark, lit only by the light of a great internal sense of purpose and of meeting a need. I knew from a decade of being a newspaper columnist that if I was going through something the chances were that others were too. So when I was let go from my big job just before I turned 50 and then wrote about how awful that felt, I was inundated with others who had been through the same thing; and Noon was born.

I’d always intended Noon to be about creating community. My initial idea was to just run retreats (not a great business plan in the pandemic! thus the pivot to the platform). But bringing women together, at retreats if possible, is still core to the Queenager mission because I’d personally felt the power of taking some time out from normal life to consider where we are and what we want. Many of us Queenagers are running so fast we rarely get time to do that. When we finally stop we often realise that our lives are running on tracks set by others, that our true nature would take us in a different direction. At 50-ish we’ve probably got less time to come than we’ve already had, so it is incumbent upon us to make it count - to tune into our life’s purpose and legacy. If we’re going to manifest those dreams we had as younger women - then NOW is the time.

The pause that taking a few days out of our lives on retreat allows pays huge dividends in allowing us to see more clearly. For me this midlife shift into a new life as a campaigner and entrepreneur has been richer and more fulfilling than I could possibly have imagined. Sometimes what feels like the worst thing to happen can actually turn into the best; in the space that loss leaves, something new can grow if we have the support, imagination and courage to let it.

But I would never have done any of this if I hadn’t gone on that first retreat…

That’s why I’d urge you if you can to come and join us at the end of May at Broughton Sanctuary for our Noon Purpose and Power Retreat. It went on sale last week and is already over half full. (Do email me personally if you’d really like to come but it is beyond your means - if we fill all the slots we can offer some more accessible places! eleanor@inherspace.co.uk.)

Also, starting this afternoon at 6pm UK time we are going to be doing a monthly ONLINE Noon Circle as I know that many of you can’t get to the physical one in London because you are in other places (a third of subscribers are out of the UK) and I want to make it more inclusive. Today’s Online NOON Circle is open to all of you Paid Subscribers, link below the paywall, looking forward to seeing LOTs of you. If you haven’t been to a Circle before, don’t be nervous. I’ll be cutting the Noon Birthday cake and we’ll be sharing our stories of midlife shedding and expansion (only if you want to!). Too many women at this point seem to be accepting that their lives are narrowing, getting smaller - our Noon/Queenager motto is that there is Much More To Come (the title of my book which is coming out on August 1st!). Everything we do is about creating a sense of excitement, of opportunity, of there being good stuff ahead! And there really is and many of you have already made new friends and found support through NOON. So if that sounds like fun, come and join us at one of our events! And hopefully see lots of you later.

Oh and Happy International Women’s Day! (I’ve done five speaking events already this week - here’s a clip of my keynote to a room of Queenagers in the City last night as part of an AJ Bell evening-

with a load more to come… can’t help wishing half the population wasn’t relegated to one day… but at least it is a moment when the focus is on equality, the gender pay gap - and most important for Queenagers the Gender Pension Gap (men have TWICE as much in their pensions as women at this point).

See lots of you at 6pm I hope. Happy Birthday Noon and THANK ALL OF YOU so much for supporting us. It wouldn’t exist without you.

Love

Eleanor

ps Zoom Link for tonight’s Birthday Noon Circle below for Paid Subscribers (it’s only £6 a month, less than a cocktail….)

NOON BIRTHDAY CIRCLE ZOOM LINK - 6pm UK Time

Noon is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Noon's Birthday Circle Zoom Meeting

Time: Mar 8, 2024 06:00 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83064590423

Meeting ID: 830 6459 0423

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