The Queenager: Eleanor’s Letter (May 26th 2024)

Dear Queenagers

Happy Bank Holiday Sunday! Sorry this is a bit late – I am at Broughton Hall hosting our Noon Power and Purpose Retreat! It is pretty busy hosting 38 lovely Queenagers so today I am sharing a post by my dear friend Avivah Wittenberg Cox who is up here with us and has written this about her experience so far… I will be back with my own account next week!

Xxxxxx

Eleanor

Queenagers Forest Bathing & Re-Inventing

Back in Broughton

I’m waking up this morning in the queen-like folds of a four-poster bed in a gold trimmed bedroom at Broughton Hall, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous retreat centre in Yorkshire, UK. The bathroom is bigger than my first apartment. The sky is blue, the lawn alive with frolicking bunnies, and I’m here with 35 other ‘Queenagers’ who have answered the call from Eleanor Mills and her wonderful assemblage of midlife wonder women, NOON.

I first fell in love with Eleanor reading about the name of the network she launched three years ago. I thought ‘Noon’ was a perfect metaphor to describe this midpoint time of life. And the more I learned of the woman behind it, the more there was to love. She’s one of those force-of-nature types, whose immense, immersive energy irresistibly sucks you in and along behind her. Partly because you love the mission she’s been on since she was unceremoniously booted from her big journalism job at 50: waking midlife women (Queenagers) to their power and potential. And partly because her charming charisma is (unusually) matched by her kindness and unstintingly natural generosity.

She’s a perfect example of 3^rd Quarter Life re-invention. And I look at our two stories as interesting parallels. At 50, she had a major professional transition; I a personal one. She got fired, I got divorced. She turned round and reconstructed a career more aligned with her values and multiple skills. I went hunting for a relationship more in tune with my inner aspirations. I published my first book at 47, Why Women Mean Business, and Eleanor’s about to publish her first book at 54 (more below). We both feed into my theory that women reach adulthood at 50. It takes us a long time to shed the expectations of others and learn to listen – and recognise – our own voices.

That’s what these NOON retreats try and do, just as it was the mission of PWNGlobal, the women’s network I founded over a quarter century ago. Eleanor has the same big picture understanding of how the micro midlife “maelstrom” impacts the macro economy and society. Her personal is fuelling her political. (Listening to her eidetic visions of retribution on an old nemesis, ‘a perfect representative of the old-guard patriarchy’ was worth the trip up.) But 30 years in journalism gifts her the political nous to push for progress, especially as elections in the UK are now scheduled. I feel an inter-generational baton being handed on.

NOON’s first Broughton Hall retreat was in October 2021, tentatively emerging from the non-convening isolation of the pandemic (I wrote about it here in FORBES). It was a pilot of Eleanor’s dreams of rejuvenating retreats for women used to caring for everyone but themselves. It brought together 15 women at various stages of what Eleanor delicately refers to as the ‘midlife clusterfuck,’ the millefeuille of change and transition that swoops on us at this time of life. Kids leaving, sometimes spouses too, parents fading and/or dying, menopause, work challenges, and the beginning of your own discovery that your body has limits, your spirit is thirsty, and there is a small, deep inner voice (that sometimes you can barely hear) demanding that something’s gotta give.

Around the roaring flames of the Fire Temple on the first evening, accompanied by a veritable orchestra of bird song, each woman outlined her own measure of the moment. And the self-preserving instinct that had them click the link, book the train and claim five days to pause.

Much has changed since we were here last. Eleanor has written her first book, coming out this summer, when she’ll be 54. Appropriately, it’s called Much More To Come. She read us an excerpt after dinner and her writing is alive with pain, purpose and passion. And large dollops of hilarity. She’s built an avid substackfollowing of thousands, fleshed out her NOON team and the network’s various offerings, and started a corporate consulting arm to make Queenager’s voices more audible and influential in corporate quarters. We’re in good hands.

Eleanor Mills & Book in Broughton Hall (pre-oder here)

Wendy, a woman I met on the first retreat, is back for the second, transformed. The lost, exhausted and uncertain shadow of a woman I met three years back has become a relaxed, laughing and confident change agent. Complete with a new degree, happy clients and a clearly articulated purpose. It’s something to behold. She radiates health and energy, and the transformation is profound. It’s not how she looks that’s changed, but more what she emanates, how she holds herself, how her gaze and hand now outstretch to greet the world.

Both these women remind me of a snippet from one of my favourite Mary Oliver poems, The Journey:

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

We’ve been forest bathing, a meditative contemplation of a spring woodland bathed in morning sun. There’s even a Forest Bathing institute, and Broughton Hall boasts a graduate, the gorgeously greying Liz Dawes, who gently guides stressed out, speeded up Londoners to slow down and smell the roses. Or at least contemplate the many-coloured splendour of the nascent forest, notice the ceaseless movement at its heart, and caress the velvety leaves and prickly ferns beneath our usually blindly treading feet.

Instructed to ‘look for what was moving,’ my gaze was captured by a very tiny, shimmery black bug carefully making her way up a blade of grass. The path she’d chosen arced up and over, and she laboriously made her way vertically up to its peak. But when she got there, like so many of us, she could suddenly see it was a road to nowhere. The grass bent into thin air. And blimey, if this little flash of an insect didn’t do what so many of us could and should. She turned around, unfazed, and made her way back down the path she’d trodden, and found another way through.

Then we got an introduction to ‘eidetics,’ a coaching and therapy tool that uses visual imagery and memory recall to tap into unconscious inner wisdom. It’s hard to explain, but I watched a roomful of women access some symbolic images, unexpected insights, and powerful emotions. Including Eleanor’s violent slicing off of heads – and past anger. Personal development with a band of smart older women… what’s not to like?

Sunday Morning Blogging

Did I mention the food? It’s all lovely, healthy, very ‘Zoe’ sort of stuff. Helped by being served on elegant china in a long, wood-panelled dining room. As one of the women said, one of the joys of these retreats, for women who do most of the cooking at home (I’m one of them), is simply a break from the routine of cooking, and the joy of being served lovely, nourishing food three times a day. I love to cook. But I equally love not to cook. To do the former well, it really helps to have occasional doses of the latter.

Also, Broughton Hall is ‘dry,’ with no alcohol. I decided, after a recent podcast conversation with Martin Frolander, CEO of Junoverse, to try a month without any booze. He was quoting this horrific WHO report that has basically recommended zero levels of alcohol. Not even the familiar 5 or 6 units per week for women. Now, they’ve come out all guns a-blazing against any alcohol at all. I do love wine with dinner. But, in the spirit of exploring how to age well through one’s 60s, I’m trying a month without alcohol, coffee or sugar. I’m curious to see what the impact might be. So far, the major thing I’ve noticed is that I get up about two hours earlier than my usual 8 or 9 hour slothful addiction to sleep. It’s a lot easier to resist a tipple when no one around you is imbibing. And you can just roll into the spa for a swim instead.

Note to self: I don’t do this retreat stuff enough. Neither have most of the ladies who’ve come along to this one. But like so many other things at this age, we’re learning!