Family
Family issues for women in midlife are distinct from the earlier challenges. Parenting teens brings a host of concerns, ranging from wrangling your almost-adult into doing chores to more serious problems like eating disorders and self-harming. And we often care for older family members as well. You’ll find stories and advice here that relate to the real problems we experience now.
Picture: ITV/Shutterstock
Love Island, porn and Generation XXX
ITV's Love Island glorifies a culture of sex without feelings. But there is a very dark side to all this and it's time we addressed it writes Eleanor Mills.
My mum, the hopeless alcoholic
It's hard enough when your mother dies -- but what if you have always had to look after her? That is a whole other story.
How I gave up school gate politics
The actress Salima Saxton lost her way on the children's playground...until she ditched the Instagram mum lifestyle.
Adopting in midlife: It wasn't what I thought
Margaret Reynolds thought embarking on parenting in midlife would be a personal journey. It was so much more than that...
'I was the victim of financial abuse'
Louise was getting her life together after her divorce. Then her new partner needed a loan....
VIDEO: Catherine Mayer on bereavement and re-embracing life
Journalist Catherine Mayer and Anne Mayer Bird, her mother and co-author, discuss the loss of their husbands and bereavement with Eleanor Mills
Catherine Mayer on the physicality of grief
Catherine Mayer’s beloved husband Andy died at the beginning of the pandemic, only weeks after her stepfather. Since then she and her mother have been sharing their bereavement journey together, culminating in writing Good Grief, a book which is searing about loss but optimistic on how to re-embrace life. Here is an edited extract of a brand-new chapter about how grief affects body as well as soul.
Poems for midlife
Allie Esiri's collection A Poet for Every Day of the Year features poems for life's big and little moments. We excerpt ones for empty nest, hope, love and more
I became a mother of twins in my 50s
Linnet Cotterill decided she wanted children and embarked on a journey of egg-freezing, genetic testing, using donor eggs and finally becoming a mother...
Four generations of Oxford women
The women in Eleanor Mills's have been going to Oxford for 4 generations. It's important, but not for the obvious reasons, she reveals.
