Eleanor's Letter: Who will build your home?

My holiday got me thinking about the importance of breaks ... and home

This time of year many of us are away on holiday, on our way back from holiday or perhaps already planning our next getaway. The great thing about a holiday is it allows us to take pause – a chance to rest and reflect, see clearly and renew.

I’m writing this on the plane. Stretched out below me are the dusty brown islands of Greece interspersed with dark blue sea. Hovering above the land and sea are clouds, dense and grey, lit with celestial light from on high. I’ve always loved the liminal space that flying in an aeroplane affords.

For these hours there is nowhere for me to go, nothing to do. It’s an enforced and expansive pause. A cramped space (particularly on Ryanair) just to be alone with one’s thoughts, staring out the window taking in the beauty and enormity of this blue, brown and green magical mass.

(I’d love to hear what YOU mull over in these in-between spaces of travel, in a plane, train, car, bus – or indeed anywhere where you find time to let your mind expand. Tell us in the comments section below.)

What travel taught me this summer

I’ve always loved to travel – it makes me feel alive a citizen of a wider world. This week was no exception. We were in Kalymnos. I learnt about the pirates who lived in houses carved into the island’s craggy rock. The island is so replete with cliffs and rocks that it’s become a destination for climbers. There are 4,000 routes on an island some 20 miles long.

This is one of the richest islands in Greece; famous for captains, adventurers and, um, sponge divers (who dive down to a depth of 80metres to collect natural sponges). Many Kalymnians left to build and paint high bridges in Australia. One elderly chap told me, “We do the most dangerous jobs there to earn money to build our daughters houses.”

Greek island of Kalymnos
A view of the coastline of Kalymnos

And this got me thinking.

That need to build each daughter a house, to provide, made me think this noble act – to work hard and build a beloved child a home – but also how these intentions can become so subverted.

Because what goes with such a tradition is absence, hardship and, in many ways, control. The men leave to travel and build and earn. The daughters stay and live in the houses constructed for them. I’m sure these daughters aren’t always free to live as they choose in those houses. They can be bound to a tight web of duty and tradition, with prescribed roles to fulfil. Honour to be satisfied. Marriages to be made not just for love but for duty. They are seen through a family lens, a father’s lens, a male lens.

This male lens exists for all of us and extends through our lives.

In my book Much More to Come I write about how older women are often seen to have a sell-by date, viewed only through our traditional roles and uses. We’re valued for youth and fecundity, our value linked to marriage and children and family – rather than all the amazing things that we are. It’s reductive and diminishing not just to older women (who are often seen as disposable, invisible, surplus to requirements) but also to women who are child free, who claim a life not defined reproduction.

Of course it’s possible to break out and forge your own path. But you’re swimming against the current of expectations and assumptions.

Putting our midlife situation in context

I was thinking about this as I read Natalie Haynes’s wonderful book Stone Blind, Medusa’s Story. It’s a book about not only Medusa but also how women in the ancient world and ever since have had their lives curtailed by men, by our usefulness to them, by our marital value. And about how sometimes women have just been “taken” – raped and pillaged.

Think about this: It’s only a century since women got the vote. Universities only started to admit women a decade or so before I got there. These days there are daily news stories about mortgages rates, but as late as the 1970s women in Britain often couldn’t get a mortgage without a man signing it. (Back to those houses provided by the men in our lives….) That’s how recent all of this change really is.

70s housewife in period kitchen
This woman couldn’t have gotten a mortgage on her own. Great dress, though

When I speak to businesses and organisation, I always say that this equality revolution we’re part of is only just beginning. We’ve gotten our foot in the door, but the world – particularly the working world – is still set up for men.

We Queenagers are at the vanguard of this change. If we start to value women for all they are, a few wrinkles or waxing fertility won’t matter. We will remove our sell by dates. This Queenager project is the next frontier in feminism: Changing the story about how we value women – essentially what we are FOR.

As a group we are already being noticed. At the upcoming Labour Party Conference, NOON is hosting an event with politicians, lawmakers and opinion leaders about Queenager voices, our talents, our spending power and our value. (How I wish the event was taking place somewhere that all of you could come!)

Understanding this, making the argument and changing the story doesn’t just help extend the runway for us. It makes are daughters (both our literal children and figuratively all young women) excited about getting older and wiser. They can see Queenager-hood is the prime time to forge lives we want. No more waiting on the island, living in a house someone else built.

By signing up to this newsletter and becoming a member of NOON you are changing this story!

Do you like our makeover?

You may notice that this newsletter looks different. That’s because we’ve been investing in our NOON platform. This newsletter is being sent straight from us, not via Substack. We took this decision because our community is growing so quickly. We realised we needed tools that allow us to expand, provide more services and be more responsive to what you want and need.

As part of this update, we’ve launched our Membership programme. Now, you can be a Subscriber to the newsletter or if you sign up as a NOON member – maybe free at first – you get access to the NOON Member Hub plus a slew of perks and benefits.

If you become a Monthly Member for only £6 a month (not much more than a coffee, these days) or an Annual Member with the best-value price of £50 per year, you can become an even more active part of the NOON community. You’ll be supporting our work, able to take part in the NOON Circles gatherings that take place all over the country, get discounts on our retreats and events and really be part of the Queenager revolution!

What’s coming up

We’ve also got some amazing things in store:

  • We’re rolling out Courses that help with those familiar Queenager pinchpoints including redundancy and money
  • We’re building a Forum where you’ll be able to connect directly with each other
  • We’re upgrading our Queenager Directory, where you’ll be able to advertise everything from services to holiday rentals to each other
  • …and more!

The idea is to bring everything together on the NOON website so there is no more switching between different systems, which some of you told us was confusing and/or irksome. You ask, we deliver!

I am so excited about all the plans we have in the works and I can’t wait to see more of you, more often!

Here’s to a great Autumn xxx

Eleanor


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Eleanor Mills

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