I was very honoured to be invited to a photo shoot for Woman’s Own recently to celebrate the rise of the ‘Swoftie’, single women over fifty. The magazine is out this week (12 April issue) and I’m, so thrilled with the outcome. According to new research there are more of us in the UK than ever before and at the photoshoot I was joined two of these very inspiring ‘Swoftie’ women.
52 year old Dawn Pollard was a former air stewardess who loved travelling the world with her job, but the constant time apart put too much strain on her marriage and sadly it ended in divorce. She was in her late forties when that happened and decided to embark on a new career in property development and has never been happier. She believes that during her marriage she put off doing things because they didn’t have the time.
Do you dedicate any time to yourself or are you constantly in overdrive as a ‘wife’, ‘mother’, ‘employee’, ‘daughter’, ‘sister’ with no time for yourself?
54 year old Karen Rhoder felt that she needed to inject some fun into her life and find herself again after she experienced the breakdown to two consecutive long term relationships. She decided to try something completely different and embarked on the Age With Attitude course, which involves a spot of ‘firewalking!’ Karen is now a much stronger person as a result of experiences like these and says she has realised how important it is to keep and open mind and try new experiences.
Are you perhaps holding yourself back from trying new experiences because of fear or lack of confidence?
And finally there was my story. I ended my marriage because it had fizzled out, even though I tried very hard to make it work, but there was no going back. I was in my early forties when that happened and I shared custody of my two children with my ex-husband. When they were staying with him it gave me time to think about my life and I realised something was missing from my career. So I took a leap of faith at 45 and left my consultancy job to retain as a coach in neuro-linguistic programming, teaching people how to maximise their potential in life. Starting out was tough by the long hours paid off and I now run a very successful company.
At 47, I fulfilled another long-standing ambition – to write. My first self-help book Change Your Life With NLP has sold over 25,000 copies and my second book Still 25 Inside £12.99, Rodale), aimed at women in their 40s and 50s is due out next month.
If you ask most women of my age how they feel, they’ll tell you that they still think of themselves as young. Why should we feel our lives are on the scrap heap just because we’ve hit 50? My life is so much more fulfilling now than it was when I was young. I hope that by sharing these experiences, we will help inspire other women to believe in themselves and know that absolutely anything is possible.
The Official Age With Attitude Blog 