Eleanor's Letter: Pain, over-doing it and what the Queenager revolution is all about

In which I learn a lesson about pacing myself!

Photo by RAJA G N on Unsplash

Dear Queenagers,

Hope you are enjoying this beautiful Sunday - I swam gently this morning and my heart soared when I saw not one but two herons gliding over the water. The heron has become a totem for me over my last few years of transition; a sign of how much my outlook on life has shifted and changed. I never used to care about birds very much, I was pretty contemptuous of twitchers. Now I’m the weird lady pointing out the Coot ducklings to newbies and explaining that it is a heron not a stork… and scowling at the gulls who I suspect are going to eat the fluffy ducklings.

I am swimming slowly because I have buggered my shoulder. I won’t bore you with the details because there is nothing so dreary as other people’s ailments. My mum who is 80 says she refuses to discuss her aches and pains as “that is how the old people get in”. But suffice to say I am not swimming at my usual pace; my daughter (back from uni to do her exams online) said she could swim round me in circles I was going so sedately. So yes I am trying to be still and kind to myself and do less!

But what the boring shoulder has shown me is that I have to get better at the art of pacing myself. I truly over did it last week. Lots of you lovely people who read these letters often remark on how much I pack in. Mostly I have lots of energy. Well last week on my Manchester sojourn I reached the end of it. That’ll teach me to pack into 24 hours a panel in front of royalty at the CMI, a big political interview, a three hour train journey (involving a sprint across London and up stairs and onto the train), moderating an evening in Manchester involving four different panels, then getting up at 6am to write 3000 words on edition for the Telegraph in a terrible hotel chair and then taking my daughter out for her birthday and heaving a heavy bag with computer books and outfit changes back to London. The result was excruciating pain down my right arm. A trip to the osteopath and physio, quite a few tears of exhaustion and frustration and a stern note to myself to employ more self care and to learn to pace my engagements a bit better before my book comes out in August!

I am sharing this with you because sometimes when I talk to my mates who read this, they go wow, it all sounds so upbeat and like it is going so well. Well I am so happy that the whole Queenager project really is gathering momentum, but like everyone I have my limits and my bad days and get exhausted. And this week I have been forced to stop and stay still and recuperate. So have been taking it very easy over the last few days and resting up before our big set of Regional NOON Circles tomorrow (monday) and the NOON Purpose and Power Retreat - there will be 36 of us up at Broughton Sanctuary - which starts on Friday. So exciting!

So rather than writing a long letter to you all today I am sharing some thoughts I have been putting together about NOON and Queenagers in advance of the Circles tomorrow, which I thought might be interesting to you all in terms of our ethos, values and what the Circles hope to achieve.(If you would like to come it is not too late, they are for Paid Subscribers £6 a month or £50 a year) sign up on the red button to become a subscriber and then follow the links here to find one near you: Yorkshire, Kent, Bristol, Devon, Surrey and Cheltenham and London of course. And a virtual one for all you lovely Queenagers abroad or not near these locations on May 29th.

1.     At the heart of our NOON values is that the NOON Circle is a truly safe and supportive space. What happens in the circle stays in the circle. Our brand values are:

-        supportive (we want to be there for you and welcome you to the Queenager community),

-        fun (Say yes to joy!)

-        curious (open to learn, understand and change),

-        brave (facing the issues that hold us back and speaking our truth),

-        not done yet (we believe there is still Much More to Come – that you are never too old and it is never too late to become the woman you always wanted to be. That is what my book is all about; would be amazing if you would pre-order, you won’t pay till August but it makes a huge difference in terms of who stocks it etc. Here is a link ThANKYOU!).

2.    I know it can be intimidating to step into a new space with women you don’t know for the first time but we are as warm, friendly and welcoming as possible. I greet everyone with a hug. Remember coming along really can change your life; I have seen so many new friendships flourish, connections made and lives change. For instance Jackie who is now my MD came along to a NOON retreat, knowing no-one, feeling lost and not knowing what to do next with her life after a bereavement and a relocation. And now she has a whole new world (and I have a great right hand woman…) and it is a testament to the power of the NOON Circle that so many Queenagers who have been now want to pass that on themeselves.. it is a bit like a 70s feminist conscious raising circle. We are there to support each other into this new midlife phase around which there are no sign-posts… we are creating a whole new way of being older women. We are pioneers (more of that below).

4.     I want everyone to feel they are part of the wider NOON community and that we are all Circling together on the same subject so I am proposing that although the circles are convening all over the UK, we will all kick off together with me on the Zoom sharing a conversation starter and welcome at 7pm… as a jumping off point and then you can all continue in your own places.

5.     What do we talk about? I have found is that often just asking a very open question around What Brought You To Noon? Or what is your experience of midlife? Or Have you been going through a midlife collision/cluster-fuck is enough to get the conversation going. Here are some key nuggets of our NOON Secrets of Midlife Women: Queenager Research which I find helpful in framing our conversations. This terminology is all in my book, these are some of our founding ideas and thoughts.

a)     By 50 over half of women have been through AT LEAST five big life events – divorce, bereavement, redundancy, caring for elderly parents, coping with teens with anxiety etc (there is an epidemic of mental illness in GenZ) abuse, bankruptcy, their own health issues, menopause…(we call this the Midlife Collission or Clusterfuck)  but the good news is that the MORE the women have been through the more likely they are to be happy in the end. We call this Queenagers being Forged in Fire.

b)     As you know we see menopause as PART of the midlife collision, not the be all and end all - it is NOT what defines us. We talk about Queenagers, not walking hot flushes. In our reearch we found 78 per cent of our community DON’T want to be seen through a menopausal lens, (they don’t want to be labelled as the MenoPosse…) Of course we want doctors to know about menopause and for it not to be a taboo and for the around 25% of women who have a tough time at menopause to get the treatment they need and not to get fired from their jobs. But the biological lens on women is often unhelpful to us, it is what feminism was trying to help us transcend; a focus on our biology feeds into gendered ageism and is terrifying younger women about what is coming. I think of menopause as being a bit like pregnancy, you get obsessed by it while it is going on but then it passes. A NOON Circle is not a menopause circle, I don’t want to be defined by my biology, that was one of the first tenets of feminism… I wouldn’t refer to my daughters as ‘menstrual’ or to a room of middle aged men as being in their ‘viagra years’ … we are Queenagers not walking hot flushes.

c)     The majority of Queenagers at this point have a strong sense that finally it is about me – I’ve been looking after everyone else for decades, it is finally my turn…we discuss what is is we want to spend our prime Queenager years doing? What was their dream which maybe life derailed? What do they feel excited about? If they could do anything and weren’t afraid, what would they do? What was their dream when they were young? You are never too old and it is never too late.

d)     Sometimes Queenagers feel so lost they have forgotten what they like… ask yourself what brings you joy.. do something just because it makes you happy every day. Particularly if you are in the midst of a big transition… remember when it comes to healing, nature is your friend.

e)     Noon is all about finding a new tribe… to make a change you need some new people aren’t invested in your old shape. Also many of the women find themselves dislocated from tribe, because they’ve left their profession or moved house, or got divorced, or have an empty nest, or are bereaved… NOON can be what you are looking for. That is the whole point of the in-real-life Circle to combat loneliness (which is HUGE in this demographic, recent research showed that midlife brits are the loneliest in Europe).

f)      Remember we try to be positive at NOON – it’s all about Queenager hood being the time when we BECOME the WOMEN WE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE… it isn’t too late and you aren’t too old. I like to frame it as we come through the pinchpoints of midlife into a new chapter. Shedding stuff and giving ourselves a prune as we go to get back to our true, green shoot essence. Our research showed that the women who have been through the most end up the happiest, they have designed a life that suits THEM NOW.

g)     Queenagers are a pioneering generation, there have NEVER been women like us before who have hit fifty with healthspan, agency, who have worked all the way through who have some financial resources. It is there in the 2019 census – when for the first time women over 40 out-earned women under 40. Queenagerhood is new – that’s why we need a support group and why it is confusing.

h)       In the hundred year life – 50 is only half way through. This midlife point is a bonus bit that generations before us never got to live. We are creating a new map for what it could look like. We Queenagers aren’t done, we coming into our prime. We want to change the way society looks at and talks about older women (currently the research shows that over half ofus feel invisible in the culture). We want a new story which is more positive and fit for purpose. We want young women to look forward to being 50plus as when it all gets good. That is the Queenager Way and the Queenager revolution which I am calling for in my book Much More to Come (published by Harper Collins August 1^st). If we can get to 1000 copies pre-ordered then it should be a Sunday Times Bestseller and it will then get picked up by supermarkets etc. Here are the links Much More to Come (lnk.to)

i)      Something I find helpful is to remind the Queenagers that often what they think of as their personal lack is actually systemic. We live in a society that doesn’t value older women: females in our culture are valued for being fecund and fanciable.. that is patriarchy. There are very few positive tropes around older women, we are witches, hags, wicked stepmothers (except for us being grandmothers… and remember that 30 per cent of our community or women are not mothers, 40 percent of those by choice).

j)      We Don’t make assumptions that all the Queenagers have kids; 30 per cent of this demographic are child-free; 40 per cent by choice. I know the only images we see of older women in the culture are often of grandmothers, that’s because we are up against mega systemic gendered ageism, it’s the part of feminism which is really not sorted yet. It’s why so many women are being made redundant. We are trying to change this. Important: this is absolutely NOT about hating men, we love men but we are pointing out the power dynamic which has disempowered and subjugated women for thousands of years. We are part of an on-going unfolding cultural revolution which started 100 years ago when women got the vote but which is still very much a work in progress. Queenagers are the tip of a spear of change, it is on our watch that we got better maternity leave, flexible working, paternity leave… but there is still LOADS to do. And the Queenager piece is part of that

I hope that is helpful in understanding the NOON Queenager project (Noon.org.uk is the mothership, the website the platform where there are loads of stories of transformation and information) this Queenager newsletter is my weekly letter to the NOON community. If you want to be part of our events, then become a Paid Subscriber… that makes you a member of NOON and you can come to our circles)