Happy weekend. And Happy 4th Birthday, NOON!
It’s been 4 years this week since we launched the NOON site and I started writing these newsletters. I can remember building the site and setting up our Instagram account. I was the first follower (ha).
The questions I had at NOON’s launch
They were days of such anxiety and excitement. Would anyone else share this vision of women supporting each other and changing the story about what’s possible from age 50? Would anyone join…or care? Or would the response be deafening silence?
I remember walking around snowy north London during the pandemic with a friend. Even though she’d helped me set up NOON, she was shaking her head. “Hmm, it’s pretty saturated out there with menopause stuff. How are you going to cut through?” she asked.
Those words filled me with dread. But I had a strong sense, like a kind of faith, that if I had suddenly felt entirely lost and alone (by dint of being made redundant at 49) then surely others were feeling similarly rudderless.
All around me friends were reeling from divorce, bereavement, redundancy, caring for elderly parents or teens with mental health issues, or various forms of financial and domestic abuse.
If I couldn’t find what I was looking for to help me reinvent and work out what the next 50 years of my life might look like, then I reckoned others were too. And in addition to that, we all felt we weren’t seen.
It couldn’t just be me asking, What next?
It seemed to me that unlike other periods of life, at this juncture there was no map, no signposts for what we might do next. It was a huge gap. And a huge opportunity.
The more I did research and talked to other midlife women, the more necessary it seemed for us to have a platform speaking directly to our needs.
I knew mainstream media wasn’t really interested in us – which is nuts considering Queenagers hold so many financial cards (we’re behind 90% of all household consumer spending decisions, out-spending millennials by 250%).
We are a growing force
The demographics are startling too: Age is a growth market. In 2025, more than half the work force is over age 50. In the UK we are likely to live well into our 90s. The world hasn’t caught up in its thinking about that.
The old-style population triangle of fewer old people and more young people has become a square, with as many 80- and 90-year-olds in developed countries as there are babies. We’re living longer and having fewer children in all countries, except for sub-Saharan Africa.
Yet the narrative about what 50+ looks like, particularly for women, has been stuck in the gendered-ageist Dark Ages.
4 moments on NOON’s 4th birthday
For our 4th birthday, I started thinking about 4 things that have helped get us here.
- A realisation: My first sense that I might be on to something came when I wrote about being whacked in The Telegraph. “I’m 49 and on the scrap heap” screamed the headline. Yeah, scary – putting my story out there when inside I felt devastated, like I’d experienced a death. It felt like the end of everything that my life had been. But thousands of people got in touch saying it had happened to them too and thanking me for being so honest about how awful it felt. I was not alone!
- A vote of confidence: NOON got off the ground because of the belief and financial support of my angel investor and co-founder Claire Gillis (who believed in me even when I wasn’t sure I believed in myself). “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” she asked, and I articulated this: a website and community for midlife women that didn’t make us feel bad about bingo wings or cankles but embraced us as we are and helped us create a great future with lots of joy.
- A shared journey: We’ve had so many amazing experiences and events, but there was an early one that exemplifies what all of us are to each other. During our first retreat at Broughton Hall, we walked the stone labyrinth. A spiral of stones which takes you into the centre and then out again. Did you know: Walking labyrinths is an ancient practice? It’s used as active meditation to quiet the mind. (In the Middle Ages, nearly 25% of cathedrals had them.) I realised how that practice is a strong metaphor for NOON. Some of us are a little ahead, some just beginning the journey into the midlife chrysalis, but all of us are on the same path, able to give succour and inspiration to each other. Over the four years of NOON I have watched this happen. That mutual support and demonstration of how there really is much more to come through our lived experiences, modelled to each other, is the great richness of the retreats and Circles.
- Your stories: NOON Circles began when I invited anyone who was reading the Queenager newsletter to come and join me in my mum’s consulting room in Soho. I wasn’t sure if anyone would turn up, so I invited my friend the brilliant Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and my sister Annie, a therapist – so I wouldn’t be Billy-No-Mates eating snacks alone on that Tuesday evening. But some of you did show up. And it grew…and grew and outgrew the flat and has now mushroomed into 12 Circles around the UK and one in Santa Barbara – with15 more in the pipeline. I love the Circles! It is such a privilege to hear your stories; you humble me with your courage and joy every time. I know how brave you have to be to come, especially initially; to walk into that room and often express something about your life, or your desires, that you have never spoken out loud before. It is the crossing of a rubicon, powerful in its capacity to manifest change.
Women supporting women – that’s at the core of the NOON project. Check out some of the highlights of the past 4 years in this video.
The 4 pillars of NOON
As NOON as evolved and grown, I’ve begun to understand the needs we fulfill, what we need to do and where we need to go. We now articulate these areas as the 4 pillars of NOON:
- Joy – Being together in Circles, Book Club, retreats, events, holidays, cinema trips…and by mutually modelling what is possible in our lives)
- Support – Expert advice from our network of experts and our incredible advisory board through the pesky pinchpoints of midlife. We’ve recently been doing this around divorce and with a Sleep webinar this month (find out more and sign up here), and this will continue to grow
- What Next? – Inspiration for the next 50 years. This includes reskilling, becoming or evolving as an entrepreneur, getting a new job with our NOON Jobs Board, thinking about your personal legacy, finding purpose, having fun, taking deep dives into some of the emotional baggage or exploring limiting beliefs which can hold us back
- Stuff – Queenager Directory, our merchandise, recommendations for inventions or services by Queenagers, for Queenagers
What’s coming up
Over the next few weeks and months you will see the NOON site morph to reflect these 4 clear pillars.
(Special thanks to Fiona Lambert who gave me an afternoon where we worked all this through. Her insights were invaluable, I’ve learnt that in the middle of the swim, it can be hard to see the contours!)
We’ll also be launching some online courses (linked to personal branding and my book Much More to Come – all about learning to sing the song of yourself). All of this will enrich what you get as a Paid Member of NOON. So watch this space.
Looking forward to next 4, and 40, years
Sometimes when I think about what we have all co-created together I have to pinch myself.
As a Founder, you have to have a vision and the first few years are all about making that dream a reality. It’s like you’ve willed it into being and then it’s like, Wow, it actually exists! But I’ve learnt that even the big things begin with a small step, a leap of faith.
Thank you for trusting NOON with your most secret dreams. We are here to unlock them. Just as all of you have helped me unlock mine. Each step of the way, the love and enthusiasm of all of you has made NOON possible.
As we hit this 4-year landmark, I want to say THANK YOU.
And let’s not forget…
A massive thanks to to our amazing NOON team who make all this possible: Jennifer Howze, our wonderful Editorial Director who has been with me since the beginning; Karen Stenning, who organises Circles and Events (whom I met on my first retreat after I left my old job, when I was in a right state. We have been friends ever since); Jocelyn Cripps (our brilliant Subscriptions and Marketing expert); Amy Yeo (who does socials, helps with membership queries and keeps thing humming): Lois (who answers membership queries), Sarwech and Mel (who make the tech work). And a special mention to Alison Page, Jackie Naghten, Diane Kenwood and Megan Peyton who have all been part of the journey.
Plus a huge thanks to my Advisory Board, all the brilliant women who have lent their expertise and reputations to help me launch this. Thank you all!
So really, it’s Happy 4th Birthday to all of us!
Lots of love and here’s to much more fun in the future
– Eleanor
Preparing for a funeral
P.S. When you read this, I will be in Devon, as this is the weekend we are burying my mother-in-law.
My husband chose the first day of spring: There will be sunshine and daffodils and singing and tears and family coming together to remember and love her. My daughters have come from Paris and Manchester, we’ll be eating a Victoria sponge with lemon icing and raspberry jam (Grandma’s request) and listening to Fields of Gold (again her request). (You can listen to it with us here.)
We’ll bury her in an orchard next to her first cousin and best friend and with all her dogs (corgies and Yorkshire terriers). She will rest on top of one of those Devon Hills, which is so steep and round it looks like a child’s drawing – with Exmoor one way and Dartmoor the other and the sea to the south. It’s a pretty damn good spot.
Over the last few days we’ve been trying to find the right poem to read. I love Had I the Heavens Embroidered Cloths by WB Yeats and his wonderful poem, When You Are Old, which begins, When you are old and grey and full of sleep.
But my husband found this reading from the Buddhist monk Tich Nhat Hahn, which sums it all up. I share it here because it just says everything about those we love and how they continue to live inside us.
The reading from Buddhist monk Tich Nhat Hahn
“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, ‘A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.’ I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother.
I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.
I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet…wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.
From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.”
