Hi there
Happy Easter, or Passover, or spring sprungen – whichever festival you are celebrating today, hopefully with copious amounts of chocolate and a long sunny walk amongst the cherry and apple blossom.
- What The White Lotus gets right about female friendship in midlife
- What is a Queenager?
- NOON overseas trip takeaways: “We are never alone in facing challenges”
In my patch of North London, the trees are so green they are screaming, “Hooray, life returns!” Which I suppose is why today for Christians is all about resurrection, the return of life after death (winter). That’s a good metaphor for spring (which is why the founding fathers of Christianity put all these church festivals on the dates of existing pagan celebrations).
Me and my ‘older shoulder’
You would laugh if you could see me typing this: I have a wobbly old stool perched on my desk so I can type standing up. My right shoulder hurts – like someone is stabbing me in the back when I sit at my computer. I’ve resorted to this make-shift standing desk. Oh the delights of being 54!
I know I write a lot about the 100-year-life, about the changes in demographics which mean that many of us born in the 1960s and 1970s are likely to live into our 90s and beyond. Lifespans have DOUBLED in the last 100 years, but of course how much of a boon that is depends massively on our “health span”.
We all hope we’re going to be stomping up hills and paddleboarding in our 80s and 90s (my granny could still do a headstand at 96; she terrified me by competing in her 90s with my then 4- and 6-year-old daughters in an obstacle race round the garden. As she sat in a chair under her magnolia tree recovering afterwards, she went a bit pale and I thought I had killed her!)
I’m on the health-test round robin
This week my own health has been preoccupying me. Nothing serious (I hope) – just all those pesky midlife tests we all get summoned to. I’ve had my breasts squished between glass plates in the 5-yearly joy that is a mammogram (I wonder if men had to put their bits in those machines a softer process would have fasttracked!). I’ve been for a battery of blood tests – my local practice are obsessed by type 2 diabetes and cholesterol. And as the offspring in an extremely ‘mole’-y family, I’ve been for my regular check-up on my moles (all fine – phew).
I also went to the gynaecologist (don’t worry, I won’t burden you with details) but it all mounts up to a lot of trekking in and out of hospitals to keep myself on the road. And none of those has done anything for what my osteopath calls “50-year-old shoulder”.
I’m not really complaining. In fact, I have been pleasantly surprised by the way my local NHS GP practice has been organising all of this. Post-Covid it was almost impossible to get an appointment. But from my experience, the NHS seems to be getting its act together. Maybe Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting’s promises of efficiency and cutting the backlogs are finally coming true.
Prevention is certainly better than cure and I understand how important it is to act on early warnings of all the conditions I mention above – and many more besides.
Sharing health stories at NOON Circles
It has all made me meditate on my own mortality. Not just because today is Easter, but because there are so many of you who come to NOON Circles, retreats and events who have had bad health news. Indeed, one of the areas where I am so glad NOON exists is when a woman comes to the Circle, says, “I just got diagnosed with breast cancer” and 5 other women there immediately give her a hug and tell them their stories of surviving and thriving. That support is invaluable!
I’ve been talking to some of you who have been ill and digested some of your wisdom into this newsletter. What came across super clearly was the shock of suddenly discovering we aren’t as healthy as we thought.
Read these moving first-person stories from the NOON community … and if you’d like to share yours with the community, email it to me at eleanor@noon.org.uk.
Queenager story 1: ‘Suddenly I wasn’t sure if I would make it to 65’
One Queenager told me: “In my early 60s, I felt like I did in my 40s. I was in a new relationship, we were in love, we were making plans to go walking in mountains and I began to get breathless walking up hills.”
She went to have tests and was diagnosed with a nasty kind of ovarian cancer. “There was 6 weeks when I wasn’t sure how aggressive it was. I’d always thought I’d be stomping along the beach and doing the garden in my 90s – suddenly I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it to 65…It was a massive, terrible shock.”
The health news also caused trouble with her lovely new boyfriend. “His girlfriend before me had died suddenly of a brain tumour. Our lovely, light-hearted, joy-filled relationship – which had truly been the sweetest romance of my life – was hit with angst. It brought it all back for him. All our plans to travel and climb together were suddenly on hold. We were only a year and a half in and were tiptoeing around each other.”
A jump-start to doing ‘sadmin’
Fortunately, the cancer, as it turned out “wasn’t the really aggressive sort. But when I thought that might be, it jump-started me into doing all the ‘sadmin’. I planned my funeral. I got my financial affairs in order. I sorted out a file of passwords and bank details for my executors. I wrote letters to my children about everything I wanted them to know.”
When this Queenager got better news, she decided to give the letters to the children anyway. “In some ways, that feeling that I might be at my end gave me provided total clarity about what is important. It made me realise who I wanted to see and crucially who I didn’t, and what I wanted to do with the time I had left. I made sure that every day I would go and look at the sea; I told the people I love exactly how I feel about them.”
Queenager story 2: ‘I had to ask for help’
Another Queenager told me that having very serious surgery to remove a tumour was a gift. She had had been “incredibly independent and stubborn all my life – I live alone without a partner or kids.”
The health news meant, “I had to ask for help. I have wonderful friends and they all got together and formed a Survival Whatsapp group. One would call and check in. Two of the others ferried me and accompanied me to all my medical appointments. Another would take me to the pub and make me laugh, while one was brilliant at bringing me round food when I was too weak to eat or shop. I have always been very proud but I realised the sweetness of humility, of asking for help and receiving it.
She became a changed person physically as well. “I’ve also always been really fit, and suddenly I couldn’t carry 2 shopping bags up the stairs to my flat…. Just doing the exercises the surgeon recommended (which would once have taken me 5 minutes) could take all afternoon. But slowly I realised there was no point in chafing, this is where I am at. It can only get better and the only way is up. I’ve had to really adjust my mindset. But I have also realised how loved I am and how many people I have in my life who will show up for me if I ask.”
The financial impact of her situation is also bittersweet. “I’d been planning my money and eeking it out thinking I would live to my 90s. Now I know that that is unlikely, I’m splurging much more. I’m taking my kids and their partners on holiday. I might as well – I can’t take it with me. Now I’m in remission, which is great, but I know that I’ve probably got 10 years if I am lucky, rather than another 30…. That has really changed my perspective on cash.”
Queenager story 3: A nurse’s hospital check-list
For Sally Jackson, a former nurse, being admitted to the hospital where she had once worked was a particularly through-the-looking-glass moment. I went to visit her in her room high up on the 17th floor of the Royal Free Tower. We laughed and chatted and she told me about her time as a nurse and how she’d created a checklist for any Queenager being admitted to hospital. She said it had kept her going during some of the long, noisy nights – thinking about everything she wished she’d known or taken with her before she was admitted.
So during this period when we (or people we love) are beginning to experience more health problems, here are her suggestions.
Checklist for anyone embarking on a hospital stay:
- Eye mask – the young girl beside me had her light on all night
- Long charging cable – my regular phone charger wouldn’t reach the bed
- A soft jersey and a nice shawl or blanket – it can be very cold I was grateful for my blanket
- A store of downloaded audio books/ podcasts so they are ready to go. The WiFi in hospitals can be patchy
And what to do when you get there
- Know where your light switch is & check the position of your light before settling. I banged my head hard one evening trying to find it
- Try out the TV and the remote controls before you are groggy from drugs/chemo/surgery – it can be very frustrating!
- Play with the bed. They take a bit of mastering and do this while you are still feeling well enough
- On your admission, ask for breakdown of who wears what uniform? The stream of people who will come to see you may be disorientating. I found myself asking a very confused phlebotomist who was cleaning her trolley if she could please clean our toilet
- Get your guests to bring you your favourite foods – mine were Gail’s sandwiches and a cappuccino. Hospital food is invariably nasty and cold
That sounded very familiar to me…as we discussed in last month’s NOON Circles, midlife is about identity shifting, out of what we were, in to something new. For many of us that will also mean coming to terms with big changes to our health or our bodies, a new sense of our own mortality but also the love and support we can call on around us and a greater sense of what really matters.
“While I was ill I realised that the last person I needed to see was my mother,” said another Queenager. “My whole life she has been tricky and selfish, I always have to get my defences up, expectations down and steel myself when I see her. She can just be so nasty and undermining. The last few months during my chemo I needed all my strength for myself. And for the first time in my life I said – NO – I don’t want to see you, I need to look after myself. That was a major rubicon in my life. It was a shame it took a life-threatening illness to get there, but it was seriously empowering. I am never going back to how I was.”
The challenges we face and overcome are bittersweet – but amidst the pain and adjustment there is always some kind of a silver lining, or a huge learning about ourselves. I am so struck by how many of you have been through some difficult time or disease and have emerged stronger, shinier, wiser – what doesn’t kill us makes us better humans. And the more we can truly understand and sympathise and support each other through these bad times the better the outcomes.
So hooray for NOON and the community, support and network we are all co-creating. I’m proud to say I have just onboarded three new amazing Circle hosts for Bath, Cambridge and Windsor. If you are interested in attending do email me eleanor@noon.org.uk and we’ll get you on the list for when they launch in June.
And now a shout out for Amy Yeo, who many of you have come across at Noon. She has just left us to focus on her playwriting career. and we’re giving her a plug to help her get her new play to the Edinburgh Fringe. Well Behaved Women is a new comedy about three friends navigating their twenties in 1883. It is a play that foregrounds the every day women that are often forgotten in history and celebrates the universal and timeless power of women and female friendship.
“It is the culmination of everything I am as a writer and a person and I am so proud of what our all female team have achieved. This production is such a massive and vital stepping stone in all of our careers and there is no better launch pad in the arts. This opportunity is only possible because of generous donation of those who support us and our mission and we are so incredibly grateful for anything people can spare – all donations get us one step closer to our goal,” Amy says. Donate to her Crowdfunder page here.
Do enjoy this day of resurrection and new beginnings (and a well-earned pause…)
Much love
Eleanor xxx
PS We have just a couple more spaces for our retreat at Wasing in July. Why not treat yourself?
