Eleanor's letter: Fear isn't the problem - it's the point

‘Thank you all again for a great few days and an outrageous morning. I probably had more fun than is reasonable on a workday. Our group’s willingness to just give it a bloody go today was so so good. If you’d have told me we’d be doing that [skiing in powder] this morning a few days ago, I’d not have believed you. You can all feel incredibly proud of yourselves. It was very humbling for me as you all completely shattered my assumptions about what would be possible with a group like yours. All the very best to you and the rest of the Queenagers.’

That really made my week!

Everything we’re trying to do at NOON is about telling a different story about what is possible for women at midlife – that this is the age of opportunity, of becoming. We’re not done yet, that there is SO Much MORE To Come.

We’re challenging the assumptions that society makes about us women at this point. That’s why I love these NOON trips – they embody all those ambitions and that verve in real time and demonstrate all of these key principles to those we come across.

Enjoying a ski trip…without skiing

Of course, doing something that scares you doesn’t have to be flinging your body down a mountain: It can be simply booking the trip in the first place. That’s pretty brave. One of the Queenagers had come all the way from Bermuda (she’s been part of our Online Circle).

She’d wanted to try skiing and had done a bit before. In the end, her breakthrough was realising she could still access all of that beauty and really be in it without having to become a champion skier. Her “epiphany” was that she “didn’t have to ski to enjoy being in the mountains”.

She and a couple others spent one of the days exploring the Jungfrau, riding the lifts, cable cars and trains, admiring the stunning views, riding the Eiger Express gondola past the famous glacier (sitting on heated seats!), admiring the splendour of the Roof of Europe. They also got to watch the local curling club, met a lovely Korean lady in a gorgeous traditional chima and even watched a guy sled down the mountain with his dog running beside him.

Along with the other ladies, our Bermudan made the trip her own – and is proof that you don’t have to have your feet clipped onto two planks to have a transformative ‘ski’ experience.

Feeling the magic of the mountains

The inventor of skiing was a vicar in Murren (the next valley over). He talked about how being in the mountains made him feel closer to God. There is something magic, moving and dare I say spiritual about looking down on the clouds, dwarfed by the majesty of the mighty peaks.

Embracing our ‘need for speed’

Some of the women, including our wonderful NOON Editorial Director Jennifer Howze, were beginners. While Jen has skied a few times before, she told us, “I really do get a visceral fear when I stand at the top and look down the run, even on the bunny slope. My instructor Greg told me, ‘You think you’re a hurricane, but you’re actually more of a turtle’. It was hilarious…and it encouraged me to pluck up the nerve, point my skis downhill and feel that thrill of gliding fast over the snow. It was so positive physically and mentally.”

Finding joy in getting stronger

Trish, our lovely NOON Circle host in Bristol, had been written off at school as “unsporty, the last to be picked for teams” because she was short-sighted – and that sense had stayed with her for much of her life.

Now in her retirement, she is realising that is just untrue – she skis beautifully. She also walked miles with me in Morocco and says she is in the best shape of her life. (Also, in the Queenager Ski Trip Awards – a fun closing ceremony we did, complete with Swiss chocolate as prizes – she won the title of Cool Guardian Angel for how wonderfully supportive and encouraging she was with all of us, while also sharing delightful stories of her rebellious side during après ski.)

Trisha said, “Looking at my mother who is ageing and getting frailer, I realise that the key to health span is taking more exercise, pushing myself and finding such joy in realising I can do it.”

Trisha is right. Trusting ourselves, particularly our bodies, to do something new in midlife opens up the possibility of living in a new way, breaking through a barrier into a new kind of potential. It’s a sense of ‘Wow, if I can surprise myself by doing THAT, what else could I do?” It’s like a real-life version of those dreams where you open a door in your home to find a whole new floor. Such potential!

What was particularly wonderful about the trip was that we all overcame something. Whether that was a Queenager who travelled via multiple trains and planes by herself for the first time ever (she is getting divorced after 40 years). Or another who managed to expose her body with its surgery scars, having spent years hiding them, in the hotel spa’s nude sauna. (It was very Swiss. The sign on the door said, ‘No Swimsuits, Nude Zone’. We had to ditch our swimsuits in the dressing room in favour of strategically held towels.)

‘Good’ fear takes different forms

Part of the midlife challenge is to push our boundaries a bit, if we are to live well and grow again after pain, difficulty, tragedy.

One Queenager, who had lost several people close to her, confessed that as we swished downhill through the silent forest, surrounded by fir trees piled with snow, she felt she was skiing with them. “It felt so good to feel they were here too,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

And indeed by doing something we thought we couldn’t, we start to live better. We access the power in ourselves to do all sorts of things we never have before.

And here’s a VERY important point: That can also mean saying NO.

We can go our own way

One woman, who admitted she had always been a people pleaser, announced one morning when it was snowing hard that she was NOT going to ski. “I don’t fancy it,” she said. Another, standing in full gear at the top of the slope with our group, announced, “No, I’m not going down that way today.”  She opted to warm up on a shorter, easier slope before our other instructor Greg guided two of them down a manageable blue run – which they loved.

That too is brave: Saying no instead of going with the crowd.

It’s a muscle many of us haven’t always exercised as much as we would have liked. Maintaining boundaries of what works for us rather than for everyone else is a key aspect of Queenager-dom and a big part of becoming the women we always wanted to be.

I’m back home now, and that sense of having opened up a spacious new part of myself, a realm of possibility, is still invigoratingly alive. I can feel it in my body and my mind.

That’s what we always strive for at NOON, facilitating that kind of shift. It’s not just something we do here in the NOON team. It’s a co-created by so many brilliant Queenagers in the same boat. We allow and inspire ourselves and others to find the courage to do things we thought we couldn’t.

And we don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes we can’t do it alone.

But together we can.