It Can't Just Be Me - Surviving midlife redundancy with Eleanor Mills

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

In this episode of It Can’t Just Be Me, Anna Richardson sits down with award-winning editor, writer, and broadcaster Eleanor Mills. They discuss Eleanor’s shock and devastation at losing her job in her late 40s, how she coped with her world being turned upside down and went on to transform her experience into an exciting new adventure. Eleanor discusses her book Much More to Come and shares the inspiring story behind her business, Noon, a vibrant community designed for midlife women to empower one another and fully embrace their “Queenage” years.If you are struggling with any of the topics discussed on It Can’t Just Be Me you can find some useful links for help and advice here: https://audioalways.lnk.to/ItcantjustbemeIGIn the coming weeks, Anna and a panel of experts will be answering YOUR dilemmas! If you have an 'It Can't Just Be Me' you would like discussed then get in touch with Anna by emailing [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Whether renting, renewing a mortgage, or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash It Pays to Know. A message from the Government of Canada. Hello, I'm Anna Richardson and welcome to It Can't Just Be Me. If you've listened before, hello. And if you're joining me for the very first time, it's great to have you here.

This is the podcast that helps you realise you're not the only one. It's a safe space where nothing is off limits as we try to help you understand that whatever you might be going through, it's really not just you. that whatever you might be going through, it's really not just you. So each week I'm joined by a different celebrity guest who will talk through the challenges and hurdles they faced in their own lives in order to help you with yours. I want to know about it all, the weird, the wonderful, the crazy, because these conversations are nothing if not open and honest. So let's get started. I think it's fair to say that our next guest is a survivor. Just as COVID hit, she was made redundant from her job as a senior exec at the Sunday Times after 23 years in the job and a seat at the top table. Overnight and on the cusp of 50, she was out of

a job, had lost her status and was on the brink of despair. Just four years later, she's reinvented herself as an entrepreneur and author and I'm happy to say is thriving. But it hasn't been easy. Welcome, Eleanor Mills. Eleanor, how are you? I'm really good, thank you. It's good to see you so sort of happy and thriving and, you know, jolly and full of positive energy. Yes, it wasn't. Yeah, it definitely wasn't like that in the aftermath of what I call my whacking. Ah, well, I'm going to come on to your whacking and I want to come on to the whole thing about your reinvention, your rebirth, your coming out like the phoenix from the ashes. But before we go into the real deep dive into you, just first of all, just tell us,

what is your it can't just be me dilemma? It can't just be me, who has been made redundant and is staring down the barrel of 50 and feels like I've died and like I'm on the scrap heap, this is it. And of course, it's not just me. I mean, what I really discovered through what happened to me, and I think partly because I've been a columnist for a long time, so I knew that often what was happening to me tended to resonate with other people. And I wrote about it. And I first wrote about being made redundant and how awful I felt. I felt like I died, basically.

And I had thousands of people get in touch first wrote about being made redundant and how awful I felt I felt like I died basically and I had thousands of people get in touch because I think that there's a thing that when you are emotionally vulnerable particularly if you've been in the public eye and been seen as somebody quite successful and you go actually I'm feeling really awful and this really hurt there is a massive amount of what my friend called Decorate Can Head, who wrote a very moving book about her husband dying. And she said to me, when you take all your clothes off in public and run down the street, actually what it allows everybody else to do is to take their clothes off too. And so what you realise is that there are a lot of other

people who are in that pain, who are having having that it can't just be me moment and sometimes when you're brave enough to talk about it and to share how awful that feels suddenly you allow everybody else to do that too okay so what i'm going to do is just reverse back four years and i want to look at the eleanor mills then the renowned journalist the exec the successful woman just paint a picture of what your life was like then when you're at the Sunday Times well I describe it in the book that I've just written much more to come as wearing a kind of Game of Thrones power cloak I had this big heavy black cloak with lots of like fur and ermine and big gold chains and a lot of status I was a kind of big honcho in the journalism world I was chair of women in journalism I was

editorial director of the Sunday Times I was the editor of the Sunday Times magazine I was you know an award-winning editor interviewer you know all that all that I mean it's well you say all that but that's everything that really is like the top of the tree when it comes to ambition and career. Yeah, it really was. I mean, there was like one notch I could have gone further. I could have been the editor of the paper and I'd kind of slightly hoped that that would happen. And it didn't. But it's very weird when you've been in a profession for that long.

You know, I joined the Sunday Times when I was 27, before I'd had my kids or anything. And I had always, before that, I was the features editor on The Telegraph and I'd worked on The Observer before that. So I was a real journalistic wunderkinder. So I'd always had this kind of, you know, thing around me that I was this very successful kind of journalist.

And I'd ridden that wave all the way through till kind of 59. And I was still running the most successful bit of the newspaper. And then suddenly out of a kind of clear blue sky, or that's most successful bit of the newspaper and then suddenly out of a kind of clear blue sky or that's certainly how it felt to me it was over I was told that my face didn't fit and that was it okay so I'm just going to actually just just take you back you said until I was 59 and you're 49 49 so um there you are very very successful journalist very very

respected right at the top of the tree you've got the seat at the table with the big boys at the Sunday Times and you the next step up for you would have been to have been the editor of the newspaper so what happened well they brought in a new editor which wasn't me a woman first woman to edit the paper so that was a bit gutting yeah well hold on I mean let's just pause on that for a second because were you secretly hoping that actually it might be me that gets to be the editor yeah hell yeah I'd always kind of thought that I was in with a shot um and then not only was I not going to get that job but I'd always hoped I might be the first female editor so that didn't happen and then about I know two months into the three months into the, well, three months into the new reign,

I was summoned into the office and I just thought I was going to show them my forward list. So this is it. I really want to get into that headset of, I get summoned into the office. We've got a new female editor, a bit pissed off because it's not me, but I feel very secure where I am. I get called into the office.

I'm going to show them what I'm working on and what's coming yeah literally all my plans for the next kind of six months that's hideous I just interviewed Sheryl Sandberg I got a kind of world world wide exclusive on the fact that she was getting remarried for International Women's Day you know it might I was making tons of money in the in the magazine I thought it was all cool so you're cocky confident it's like I've been here for 23 years I know what I'm doing I'm just one editor of the year you know it's all good wow so you go into the office talk me through I want detail talk me through it okay so basically I walk into the I will get to the office and um the and it's also one of those slightly weird ones where the calendar invite had dropped in like a bit late so I've been out to a lunch and I came

back and was suddenly like oh she want the boss wants to late. So I'd been out to a lunch and I came back and was suddenly like, oh, the boss wants to see you. So I'd like trotted up there with all my files. Get to the door, realise the head of HR is there too. Always a bad sign. And the new boss is looking a bit anxious, a bit nervy. And there's a box of tissues on the desk and the head of HR.

And I just immediately thought, oh crikey, it's that meeting. It's like in one day, you know, where at the head of HR. And I just immediately thought, oh crikey, it's that meeting. It's like in one day, you know, where at the end of that, there's suddenly there is the day of the year, which is your death day. And you think all the time that this is the day that they met and that that's why you're getting this day.

And actually it's the day that she's going to die. And you kind of get that a bit about your career. It's like every, you know, everyone knows that at some point, you know, most of us get whacked at some point or like all political careers end in failure and it but it's quite a thing when you've been somewhere for nearly quarter of a century and it's suddenly that day well also hold on i'm just trying to do the maths on this you've been there for nearly a quarter of a century yeah which is and you're only 53 no yeah i I was 49 then. You were 49 at the time so this is actually

the majority of your career. Yeah like most of your career. Like almost half my life not just you know I mean huge I've had both my children there, I met my husband you know everyone there had seen me through kind of two pregnancies going from being you know in my 20s to nearly being 50 I mean it's a really long time so as you say you've been with these people for longer actually than some of your friends yeah yeah yeah it was it was one of the real kind of bits of the bedrock of my life which was this identity and I think what's interesting is that we are in some ways the first generation of women to have really built our identity around careers in a way that much, which was much more traditional for men.

And I'd always been the main breadwinner in my family. I'd worked through both pregnancies. You know, I'm sure there were times when I put my job kind of ahead of my family, you know. But again, I think we're the first generation of women, exactly that, that we've gone, do you know what? We are going to try and juggle everything. I'm going to try and have my family, my marriage, my kids kids but my career is really important to me and that's who I am in some ways you know I was really I'd been I really had ink in my brain I've been a journalist I've been obsessed by the news cycles and the and the paper I loved the Sunday Times it gave me a kind

of great a great ride for a really long time it's like getting on a surfboard at like 26 and surfing it all the way to kind of and I've met so many people and you know interviewed everyone from the Dalai Lama to prime ministers and got to you know front row season history so many times so I don't regret it at all but in a way then it sounds like you had a really privileged um sort of stellar career with very little difficulty actually until, until that point. Yeah, I mean, I've done loads of different jobs in that time. I've been a columnist.

I've been editor of the Saturday Times. I'd edited the magazine. I was the editor of News Review, which is the main comment and features bit back in the day. I mean, these days, newspapers don't have anywhere near the impact. But when I joined the Sunday Times, it was the way that people got the news and their analysis and made sense of the world there was no social media newspapers were the gatekeepers you know I was running the news review which is the main comment after 9-11 you know and I remember commissioning Andrew Sullivan to write a big news review front about why do we hate America you know it was

really it's it's hard now to explain to younger people how immensely important newspapers were in those days. And I really had the front row seat. I was in the tent. I was in the huddle. It was very exciting. As you say, you had the power. Yeah, I really had the power. And you would hear kind of sentences that we'd written in News Review or in columns being repeated on the Today programme.

I mean, it was like creating the culture. A hundred percent. I mean, I know how impactful, you know, the Times and the Sunday Times is and was. So I can only imagine as a woman that's the same age as you and having come up through broadcasting, I know how impactful newspapers are. And how tough it was.

And I think that there's something interesting also for our generation of women now, looking back at some of the things that we put up with, because I think that there was such an amazing kind of joy and thrill in being allowed in the room. You know, I was in the room when the decisions were being made. It was the election. You know, we were going to make a call on who the paper was going to back or, you know, Brexit or, you know, I was there. I was in the belly of the beast. And so but the price of being there was definitely not being what they used to call missish you know you had to put

up with quite a lot of uh quite a lot of tough banter quite a lot of sexism and the price of entry was not complaining about that and when i think back now i don't think that was all great i certainly wouldn't want my daughters to be in some of the situations I was putting I mean I was just going to say actually and I can see that we're sort of spiraling spiraling off topic a bit but that's that's fine because that's where some of the glory is in conversation yeah that's a really good point looking back what kind of a person were you I think I was pretty tough I think I tried to be um kind and fair but I think I was also addicted to work I think that there were a lot of things in my own internal world that were quite out of whack because I was so kind of addicted to busyness achievement the kind of buzz of work and then did you put that

standard on other women and other people I don't think so I've always been you can ask anybody in the industry I've always been very supportive of juniors of other women I was chair of women in journalism I put a lot of my own time I didn't get paid for any of that I put a lot of time and effort into a huge mentoring scheme that we ran I've given so many journalists a head start and what's been lovely about my book coming out is that all of the people that I see as my like journalistic kids who I gave a start to back in the day have rallied around and gone you know please can I you know what will you write for us what can I do to help you support the book so I think that's a real yeah everyone always says you've got to be careful who you're,

you know, you've got to be nice to people on the way up because you never know who you're going to need on the way down. But I feel that I really have walked the walk on that front. I did a lot of good stuff for other women in journalism, gave a lot of people a good break. So going back to that moment, you walk through the door, you see the head of HR, you see your new boss, you see a box of tissues.

Yeah. What happened? I just immediately knew that that was it and I always knew you know if you work for a big corporation that that there comes a moment where you're in that meeting where it's basically a negotiation there's no way back at that point it's going to be about well you know what's the number that you're going to walk out with you're not going to be able to save your job so but I can remember having that really weird feeling of kind of disassociation like you do if you're in a car crash or something I can remember sitting in the office and looking out I write about this in the book just looking watching a tugboat very slowly going up the Thames against the tide and watching a seagull kind of swooping around the roof of Southwark Cathedral and my kind of brain had checked out I was in that kind of endless moment thing and what was weird is in the months afterwards my

brain kept returning to that moment like a kind of PTSD kind of thing what's a moment of trauma it was like a proper moment of trauma because it was like when somebody dies and that there is there is a time before and there's a time after and there's no going back. You know, there's that great bridge, the Bridge of Saint Louis, right? There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, you know, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

But there is that moment where you can't go back. It has become the past. And obviously I know that, you know, there's going to be legal restrictions around this. So just say what you can say. But why were you, inverted commas got rid of i didn't fit what do you mean she didn't want me part of her team um you know i think she'd been given some tough targets she'd come in she didn't she didn't want you know it's up to her you know it's in some ways it's it's fair cop you're given a big job. You choose your team.

Historically, I think she'd always worked for The Times. I'd worked for The Sunday Times. And there was quite a bit of, you know, we're going to, we want to run this book on this date. And so there'd been some kind of niggling between the two papers. So, you know, maybe I wasn't her favourite person. But it was literally like your face doesn't fit, you're out. I wasn't really given any explanation. God, that's incredibly difficult, which is why I can understand. I think that was the PTSD thing about it, because I've always been a very competitive person.

But I'm always also in the media. You think that if you're good at your job, that will be protected. That will be protection. And particularly at somewhere like News Corp, it's meant to be a meritocracy. So if you're performing, you reckon that you're safe. And I'd always thought that because I'd always delivered scoops. I mean, I went out on one of the biggest scoops of my career. So I wasn't got rid of because I was bad at my job.

And I think that that was very, very, very hard for my brain to compete. I just couldn't, I just couldn't get, I kind of like couldn't understand why I was doing a good job. I'm out. Why are you getting rid of me? Yeah. Just out of interest, have you spoken personally since have you had that sort of unpacking with this person or the team around going you know what why or do you like me or you know um i i've got to be careful about what i say but there have been

more senior people within news corp who've been incredibly kind to me good um and my book was published by harper collins and i'm quite proud to say that a couple of weeks ago i went back in for the launch of the book. And my friend, Deca Rakenhead, who's the Sunday Times' main interviewer, who I'd actually employed, she'd come to work for me on the magazine, interviewed me on the top floor of News UK with great pomp and ceremony. You know, with like all the kind of all my books laid out everywhere in the bags. And the head of News UK said to me that she wanted me to feel like I was being given a hug when I came back into the building. Absolutely right. So I kind of felt I kind of knew that it was it was a kind of more of a personal thing between me and this particular person.

Not that I hadn't done a good job for the broader company. But it did feel like being outcast from tribe. It was very weird. Exactly. And it being outcast from tribe it was very weird exactly and it feels personal it feels it was personal it was personal ultimately this is just a personal decision it was a personal decision she didn't like me oh god that's so difficult and especially from a woman so then so then but there and we you know we talked about this before we came on air i think that their world is full of different kinds of women. I mean, I'm a great believer in the Madeleine Albright quote that there's a special circle of hell reserved for women who don't help other women.

And I think what I've been trying to say about my work in women in journalism is that I have always been, you know, I'm sure there are some people who would say I was a total cow. But I think generally it would be seen that I was somebody who really tried to lift up other women within the profession. Generally, it would be seen that I was somebody who really tried to lift up other women within the profession. I really have. And that there are there is a certain kind of queen bee mentality within media, within corporates. Real Margaret Thatcher syndrome, which kind of sees themselves as quite exceptional. So they define themselves as not like other women. And they're often the ones who are really sucking up to the boys or like stuff like talking about cricket and football and being all kind of, you know, macho and putting down other women. And I was never that kind of person. And I also always tried to use the platforms of power that I had within the Sunday Times to run the kind of articles that a male boss wouldn't have run. So if you ask Christina Lamb, MBE, she would say she she loved working for me because I sent her off to find out what had happened to the Chibok girls, say, in Nigeria.

I sent her to investigate the Yazidi women because I've always been a very strong feminist. And part of the reason I worked for the Sunday Times for so long was that I thought it was really important to get into the paper stories that if I hadn't been there would never have got in we raised two million pounds for the some of the poorest kids in britain out of an article that i ran the magazine about the kids in broadwater farmer state um dreading the holidays because um there was no school and they were cooped up in these flats and then we went up to blackpool and you know i have a real social conscience i come from a family of labor politicians i've always been a real champagne socialist and i care about that stuff and so i was often pushing against the kind of run of the tide at the paper because I was much more of a lefty. How quickly did you have to leave the office? Basically, I walked out of the new

boss's office back to my team and I was so shell shocked. I picked up my bag and I walked out of the office and that was actually the last day that I ever worked there. It was instant. Yeah. And the next day and then I was wrong later on saying that private eye were going to run a story. So it was out. And then the next day I went back in and I told my team and I said, I'm leaving. And, you know, you know, I love you all. And, you know, we and I told them myself that I was going. But that was the last time I ever worked there so that was pretty brutal I think that was probably contributed to that to the trauma because it was so it was so immediate it's like right you're out so let's talk about that trauma because then you're out you're at home oh it's horrible you do well it's

that weird thing particularly if you've been addicted to busyness which I really had I felt like one of those Indian deities with like 20 arms and I didn't have anything to do you know I was used to my phone like kind of pinging off the hook every time I came out of a meeting there'd be another 50 emails like queues of people wanting decisions on things and suddenly no one wanted to know anything I was like at home with my I mean it was COVID so I think in some ways that helped because everybody was slightly in that mode. Yeah, everyone was in limbo, certainly. And there was a sort of national trauma.

But how did you cope? Because this is only four years ago. It was really horrible. I was very anxious, is the reality. I was very tearful. In the immediate aftermath, I did quite a lot of sitting in bed, watching The Crown kind of on repeat and crying a lot. My kids joked this is in the book too that my kids joked they had a whole thing about what's the mum weather

like today you know we on like full deluge torrent drizzle but then your kids it's very difficult for the wider family isn't it because then the kids are hyper vigilant it's like mum is shocked and sad yeah and depressed and tearful so then your whole family becomes vigilant, don't they? No, I think it was difficult. And I'd always very much been the kind of breadwinner mum. I had this, one of my little ones, my big ones actually, one of her first phrases that she ever learnt to say was, hello, this is Eleanor Mills from the Sunday Times

because I would be on the phone a lot when I was with her. So it was very much part of their lives. and I always used to take them with me I did a lot of broadcast and stuff so I would take them with me to Sky kind of if I was doing the papers or you know so they'd been very much part of that life. So were they shocked as well? I think I think they were quite shocked and they were probably a bit like they were teenagers by then so they're probably you know quite interested in their own lives but no they were shocked um and it was a big it was a big kind of reorganization and reorientation for the whole family I mean actually I think one of the massive positives of it was that I really was at home a lot in the last four years and my my daughter's just finished university so but I was really

really there we had a very cozy family time during COVID we all spent a lot of time together um we did a lot of lying around kind of in heaps on the sofa watching gilmore girls and um you know making making cupcakes and stuff and i'm really really glad that i had that time with them before they went off into the world and became students i mean actually it was very very precious time um and i also i mean in the immediate aftermath I was very upset and I and then I had COVID very badly so I was lying in bed and I'm sure probably because of the shock so I was in bed with COVID for about three weeks and then very weak but it was during that time that I remembered something that Chris Evans the DJ had said to me about when he'd had his own like you know dark time he said

that what had really helped him was Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now yes and I remember lying in bed feeling dreadful with Covid and putting it on on an audio book and that was the day that I started meditating every day and I've since meditated for at least half an hour every morning when I wake up have you yeah and I have also and the other thing that I did was the thing that has always reliably brought me joy is swimming um swimming swimming but and i started swimming in the ladies pond on hampstead heath every day at 12 wow which i do all the way through the winter i did it all the way through the winter my husband did it has does it with me we go up there at 12 every day

so i kind of actually i and so what i think I started to do was to build the building blocks of a new life which was a new kind of Eleanor um not so stressed not immediately waking up listening to the today program reading four newspapers on my tablet you know before I'd even had a cup of tea um I I am a much more measured and calm person inside so again i'm going to come back to that because i think there's something about when you've been shocked and traumatized there is a way of rebuilding yourself isn't there where you have to provide structure as touch points in your life and it sounds as though you've gone okay swim yeah i do it every day at 12 meditate yep off the back of eckhart toller's book yeah power of now because because the point about the power of now and actually it comes from tick net harlan and buddhist thinking is that in this moment now

nothing is bad yes you know i am i am okay in this moment now i am safe in my body in this moment now i'm safe in my house you know everything is all right so that is a way of disconnecting yourself from regret or anxiety and I was definitely in a state where I was being absolutely tormented by you know kind of regrets and if onlys and terror about what the future was going to be if I wasn't that person because I really knew that the old version of myself was no longer there so it was like well who am I going to be if I'm not this person with the huge Game of Thrones cloak but what became apparent to me really quite quickly was that taking off the Game of Thrones cloak although it had come with all the status actually it was jolly

heavy and quite kind of constricting and very, really limited actually who I could be. And having taken it off, I was a bit like, you know, like Darth Vader when they take off the mask and, you know, or like the kind of weird, I felt a bit like the weird alien in, you know, in the alien films or something. But there was also this kind of possibility of becoming someone new without the cloak. And so that even quite early on began

to feel quite exciting it was like without this I can feel lighter I can feel more nimble I can feel more essentially myself I don't have to always be second guessing what I'm trying to do against what the organization wants rather than what my instinct wants and so I think what it did was it led me onto a journey into a deep sense of kind of intuitive knowing really tuning into my both my body and to my real kind of heart's truth what I call in my book my truthiest truths about kind of who I was and what I wanted to do and I think that it's I also now see with my Noon community that that is so true for so many women at this point. So again, what, because you mentioned your Noon community

and you do wear several hats, but what did you do next? Okay, so I went off to Jamaica with my friend Deca. She was actually going, meant to be going on a kind of romantic holiday and I tagged along as the kind of third wheel. And we had to come back very quickly because of COVID,

because the whole world shut down. Of course, of course. But that was, but while I was there, I had, I was really in a state of anxiety then. So I can remember lying in a hammock and feeling so full of anxiety

that I didn't think that the ropes of the hammock could possibly hold me up. That was kind kind of so it was such a weird thing because to be in this very beautiful paradisical place and yet to be in a kind of hell in one's own mind but I remember swimming out that day around a boat in the bay and a kind of woman an American woman put her head over the side and she invited um me up for a for a drink so I was sitting on this boat drinking a beer kind of you know 11 in the morning all normal rules were not applying and uh and she told me about her life and she had had a terrible divorce um she'd actually had a psychotic breakdown and then

she'd re-met up with an old friend of hers from school and they were traveling around the Caribbean on this boat that they bought they pulled their savings and they were traveling around the Caribbean on this boat that they bought. They pulled their savings and they bought this boat. And she was just amazing because she was probably 58. And she said for the first time in her life, she felt that she was living in an existence that was resonant on the outside with who she felt she was on the inside. And that she had never been happier and that she was having this amazing adventure. And that she had never been happier and that she was having this amazing adventure.

And that really lit a spark for me about the possibility of reinvention in midlife and shifting into actually your best decade yet. You know, your prime. And it was the first time that I thought, OK, well, maybe this doesn't have to be a disaster. Maybe there's some kind of golden light at the end of the tunnel. And this could actually be a kind of positive thing. And it was on that day that for the first time, I articulated this idea that I'd had of creating a supportive community for women of 50-ish who were going through a massive life change. And that I'd kind of been on some retreats, and I knew the power of transformational retreats. And I decided that I wanted to try and kind of bring that into being. And I also knew as a media executive that there was precious little out there directed at older women. Only things like good housekeeping, which certainly didn't shine with me or women in home.

The very names show that they're not for the kind of women that we are. And so I also could see with my kind of medias I've been somebody who's surfed the zeitgeist for the last 25 years it's what kept me my job for such a long time I could see that there was an opportunity to create a new media brand which was directed at modern midlife women who I decided to call queen ages because I thought that we desperately needed a rebrand I didn't want to be seen through a menopausal lens you know I didn't want to be seen as kind of old and past it and I thought you know we're like teenagers but we're queens

we're midlife queens so this is when you set up noon right yeah so I set up I and I articulated this vision to um somebody who um became uh my first investor and gave me the money to set up the website and we set up noon.org.uk and it's called noon because in the hundred year life 50 is only halfway through it's only lunchtime yeah and i decided that i was going to try and be the change that i wanted to see in the world and my now my real purpose and passion is to try and create a more positive story about what's possible for women 50 plus and I think what I want is for all women coming up behind us to look forward to being 50 is that's when it all gets good when we come into our prime and to tell a really different story about the stages of women's lives and to draw a map a new map of what this

point can look like which isn't like your old wrinkled over the hill you know that terrible thing in our culture that men are seen to age like fine wine you know getting better with age silver foxes whereas women are seen as like aging like peaches one wrinkle and we're in the bin you know decided that had to stop well let's talk about that because how difficult, I know the answer to this, but how difficult is it for midlife women and how much does your work resonate with them? Because I can certainly identify with being, you know,

at 53 feeling a bit lost and I don't know what's coming next and I'm worried about, you know, my career. I'm worried about where I'm living or my relationship or the fact I haven't got kids, all this kind of thing so how how hard is it for midlife women I think it's really hard I mean the first thing that I did as a kind of you know proper old hat was we did a huge piece of research I got funding to do the biggest piece of research yet into women 45 to 60 for a big management consultants and we did a proper kind of study, 2000 women, benchmarks against population, focus groups, whatever. And what we discovered on that was that over half, between half and 60 percent of the women felt invisible in the culture and not represented at all.

And that also 50 percent of them had been through at least five massive life events by the time they were 50 so divorce bereavement redundancy um elderly parents coming to bits needing looking after um teenage kids kind of failing to thrive we've got an epidemic of anxiety in gen z their own health issues a bit of menopause some abuse kind of you know domestic physical abuse all those kind of things but and what we saw was that often they all hit together in what we call a midlife collision or a midlife clusterfuck, if I'm allowed to say that. Yeah, absolutely. And the most interesting thing to me was that the women who'd been through the most, who'd had the biggest collisions, ended up the happiest. Actually, there was this wonderful kind of proof of that David Blanche flower happiness U-curve.

So there's a global study which shows that the peak unhappiness is 47. And then we get happier again as we age. And we really saw that in the women and that the women who had been through the most and shed the most and then got their lives set up exactly as they wanted them to be were then the happiest. And I thought, this is something we need to hear in the culture. Well, but that's the point, isn't it? Is how do you set your life back up into being the thing that you want it to be? I mean, is that why you wrote your new book, Much More To Come?

Yeah, so I've written this book called Much More To Come, which I'm quite proud to say has just become a Times bestseller. Congratulations. And so it's quite pleasing for me. And the irony. Having been, yeah, you know, having been whacked from the Times to now be a Times bestseller congratulations and so it's quite pleasing for me also the irony having been yeah you know having been whacked from the times to now be a times bestseller last saturday so that was very uh that was last weekend that was very pleasing um so everyone's had a little bit of schadenfreude um but yeah so the book is all about that becoming and what to do when you

find yourself beached at kind of 50 thinking crikeykey, I'm on the scrap heap, I'm dead, you know, is this it? And our motto at Noon is you're never too old and it's never too late to become the woman you want to be. Not done yet. And the book is full of incredibly inspiring stories of women who have reinvented and also lots of women who inspired me over the last four years to think that I could and there and but what was really interesting is I started writing a very heartfelt newsletter called the queenager um when I first set up noon which went out every Sunday probably

because I'd been a Sunday columnist so that kind of you're so used to doing it on yeah yeah and but it was a very different kind of writing to the writing that I did when I was at the Sunday Times because it was really allowed to be what I truly thought it was truthiest truth it wasn't like you know through that kind of male lens of what the editors at the Sunday Times were going to want it was really my truth and it resonated so much with the audience became a substat bestseller. It became something that the women would kind of pass around and I could feel that it was making waves. And then I started running what I called noon circles. I invited everyone to come to this. My mum has a flat in Soho and she doesn't live there all the time. So I just said to people, if you're on my newsletter, come. You know,

there'll be drinks and pizza, seven o'clock on a you know monday evening just come and to begin with i thought i thought this is completely mad and no one's going to come and of course it's become this incredibly warm and amazing supportive huge community huge community and we now have circles all the way around the country and growing all the time and we run retreats and trips and events and you know online kind of we run a book club. And, you know, it's been it's been amazing. I mean, this is a massive reinvention of you, Eleanor. So how are you?

I mean, you touched on it earlier, but how are you different now? So I think the reason that I resonated with these ladies is because I really have walked the walk. with these ladies is because I really have walked the walk you know when when they when somebody turns up at one of my circles and they're broken because they've just been made redundant or their husband's walked out or their parents died or they've got a terrible issue with a child it's kind of I really know what it feels like to be in that position I know how difficult it is to change I know how awful you feel and how and the how and the kind of lack of lack of hope that you have so really what's required I think what the noon community does is it holds the hope it says we've all sat where you are and now we're somewhere happier so

I think they trust me because I really have been on that journey and what's made the difference for me on that journey I think is I talk and I talk to the women a lot about following the pebbles of your joy. So for me, the things which have always made me feel happy, the swimming and reading, you know, books have always been my happy place. So I don't think it's an accident that my renaissance has come through swimming and books, you know, and the front of the book is the pond. It's a kingfish, the kingfisher that I began to see at the pond. So I think that when you begin, if you've had a really awful time and then you begin to absolutely intentionally think about what it is that actually makes you happy and then try and base as much of your new life around the things that reliably work for you, then that's quite for you then that's quite a good that's quite a good basis um and and so that's what i say to the women and what's really interesting is how often

women of 50 have actually completely forgotten what it is that makes them happy i think that's very true they've been so used to putting everybody else's needs and requirements ahead of their own yeah that they've actually completely forgotten what it is that they ever liked to do. And so I also talk a lot at Noon about going back to those things that you set out in life wanting to do. You know, what was it when you were 20-something, Anna? You know, what was it that you really wanted to do? What was your life going to be about? And I think for so many of us, kind of life gets in the way.

But what I want to bring back into the culture is this sense that actually at 50, you can kind of, it's like a spiral. You're actually kind of back at the beginning of this next phase of your life. Because in the 100 year life, the longevity dividend that our generation's got is this extra bit of life between 50 and 75, where we're actually still pretty compos mentis. We're pretty fit. You know, luckily, touch wood, we can look after ourselves. between 50 and 75 where we're actually still pretty compos mentis we're pretty fit you know luckily touch wood we can look after ourselves but we have got this opportunity which the women before us didn't have and so i think we need to really use that well and we used need to use it to make a difference and what we also saw in our research was this huge shift into purpose for the

women yes there's a sense of you know i've had i've had a lot of life under the bridge i've probably got you know i've got some good stuff still to come much more to come but you know you want to use it wisely and also that sense of if not now when i'm not getting any younger if i'm gonna write that book climb that mountain go back to study we've had women kind of go back and become doctors at 50 because also we're going to have to work till we're 70 so we need to make this next kind of couple of decades kind of count for us and i see so many women and particularly interestingly um 30 of my queen ages or 30 of university educated women in the uk don't have children 30 that's nearly a third and yet so many of them are made to look like outliers so we're this is again you know very inclusive exactly we're very inclusive. So this is again, you know, very inclusive.

We're very inclusive about always talking about, you know, never assuming that the queen ages and mothers because the third aren't. So I'm very I've been very clear about that all the way along. And we're also very intersectional. We have a lot of Asian women and black women in our community. And I have on my advisory board. So this is a this is an all-women phenomenon. Before we move on, you have talked before about how liberating it is to let go of our fuckability.

I love that. Talk to me about that. Well, I wrote... Crikey. So my book was serialised in the Daily Mail and they picked up... There's this concept that I really believe in about feeling stout. And I embrace this idea of this notion of being stout. And what I mean by being stout for me is being fully planted kind of on both of my feet on the ground and feeling happy

to take up space in the world and quite kind of solid in who I am in my opinions in the fact that my voice and my body has a right to take up space in the world and actually I think that's quite a revolutionary concept because women are told to take up less space we need to get thinner until you get to size zero or size zero say that I'm nothing celebrities size zero I mean why do we want to take up less space in the world so I'm I'm all about the stout revolution which is like kind of owning your stoutness and kind of you know reveling in it I think and I think that that's an actually really powerful concept so that doesn't mean to say that you're not sexy I actually think and I see from we did we've done a lot of stuff about sex

in my queen age community. A lot of the women say they're having better sex in their 50s and 60s than they've ever had before. And I think that's true. I've been married for nearly 30 years. But I think there's something about the accumulated intimacy and a sense of a really kind of like spiritual level connection, which actually makes sex get massively improved i think as you as you get older so i think you know that's all rubbish so it's not about the the unfuckability thing is not about not being a sexual kind of autumn queen as they the more woo-woo kind of stuff has it about actually this is when we come into our power as women it's not about that at all but it's saying i do not need to kind of fit the kind of fit into the

specifications of the male lens i don't need to worry about my cankles or my bingo wings my uh my my success as a person and as a woman is not contingent on whether i have a thigh gap um i had this i had a really wonderful revelation i was at a women's festival and we were all told to kind of caress it was kind of non-non-genital touching i mean you're mrs naked attraction so i can't shock you on this one but so it was a it was a workshop about sacred self-pleasure and it was um really interesting because a lot of the women there had been you know quite abused and a lot of them also talked about sex as an entirely performative yes that they did for men you know you and i've both written a lot of them also talked about sex as an entirely performative yes that they did for men you know you and i've both written a lot about porn yeah and i think that that's really

true for younger women i mean but a lot of the old women too were saying that they'd never actually touched worked out which bits of their bodies they actually felt kind of you know aroused by and this wasn't touching genitals and we were it was very weird to be in a kind of yurt with 40 women all kind of stroking themselves and finding out which bits of their bodies they kind of they found kind of arousing but there was something about that ownership of one's own body and one's own right to sensual pleasure I mean I think we should give all teenagers kind of you know lessons in that and also particularly women saying that you have a right to things feeling good it's not a performative thing you're not doing lots of sexual acts which are actually rather painful and horrid just because the person that you're with wants you

to do that it's like you have a right to your own sexual pleasure so I think that there's a lot of that in in what I talk about stoutness or kind of getting beyond the kind of fuckability thing it's about saying I do not have to conform to a glossy magazine daily male view of what makes a woman attractive. And I think I've had two kids. I've had a marriage of 30 years. I've been extremely successful and I have fat thighs. Great. You know, so what?

I'm good with that. I'm stout. OK, let's take a quick break here. But don't go anywhere, Eleanor Mills, because in a moment, I'm going to ask you to pick a question from my box of truth. Now, I've got a bit of a thing about the fact that we're losing the art of conversation.

I've got no problem with you and conversation, but I think in general, we're slightly losing the intimacy and the art of talking to each other. So I'm going to offer you a box of cards where there's personal questions on there. All you've got to do is randomly pick one. Okay. The only rule is you've got to answer honestly.

Okay, that's all right. Are you up for that? Yeah, yeah, I'm up for that. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.

A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Got a mortgage? Chances are you're thinking about your payments right now. Need help? Ask your bank about relief measures that may be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know.

A message from the Government of Canada. welcome back to it can't just be me and i'm here with author and entrepreneur and all-round queen ager eleanor mills and it's time for one of my favorite bits of the show i'm gonna hear you giggling in the background the it can't just be me box of truth you've already picked the question the only rule is you've just got to answer honestly so what have you picked in what ways might you be a difficult person to work with or for you see the weird thing is about the box of truth is it sometimes reflects back what we've been talking yeah yeah it really is because we were asking about that earlier so i think i'm quite impatient um and i expect things to be done quickly.

My brain works very quickly. Yes. So I think when I did, you know, Myers, Gibbs, whatever, Swibbs, whatever, those kind of things before, I was always told that as a leader, I was kind of always in the next kind of I was already on the next continent when nobody else. So your brain is very, very fast. Yeah, my brain is very fast and I get it very quickly. Yes. else so your brain's very very fast yeah my brain's very fast and I get it very quickly yes so I have as a leader I have to really take pains to take people with me and not just go oh I'm over here now yes catch up okay what's going on what's she doing now so I think in that way I'm can be

I can be difficult I think I am quite I think I'm I'm really I'm really encouraging of people who work with me and I really want them to well that's not difficult that sounds wonderful well I think but I mean my editorial director came up to have a meeting with me last week and I was like right we're going to the pond so I think it's probably kind of you know the Eleanor way or the or the highway but I think I attract people who are who of, you know, who are similar. But that sounds like leadership that you're saying, do you know what? I'm going to have this conversation, but I want to do it down there. And you're coming with me.

You know, it's going to be fun. Yeah, I think so. I mean, Sheryl Sandberg, I remember when I interviewed her and I've met her a few times. I'm a fan of Sheryl's. She said to me, the mark of a leader is to ask yourself how many difficult conversations have you had today? She said, that's what you're there to do if you're like, you know, running a business or you're...

And so I think about that. I think that that's... And so I think it's important to grasp the nettle, not let things slip. I think... Is there a way to do that well? I think you just have to do it well but then we've come beautifully full circle to when you were let go of because was that done well no i think you have

to i think you have to explain i think you have to be truthful to people i think you have to say you know why you're you know what why you think what you do and not beat around the bush and be and be straight so what would you have liked to have heard on that day um well i wasn't given any explanation at all um i mean i think subsequently you know i knew i kind of knew that you know maybe we'd had a bit of personal beef and she didn't like me very much but i i would have preferred it if she just said you know sorry you know you and i just don't know, I know you're good at your job, but I don't like you. You know, this isn't personal. It's not about you being a bad journalist, but I just don't want to work with you. Actually, that would have been that would have been better.

And at least I would have gone, OK, fair cop. Can't love everyone. Eleanor, we love you. I think the people listening will absolutely love you. Thank you so much for taking the time out. I know that you've got a really busy schedule. Your book is out. You're doing a bit of a tour. You're doing a lot of promo at the moment. So thank you for taking the time to come here. But just before you go, you have so much life experience. You have tried everything going from ecstatic dancing to intimate touching to not an ayahuasca trip. Magic mushroom. A magic mushroom trip. I did, yeah. You tried everything. But what one piece of advice would you give to people listening that's really helped you?

I think the most helpful thing that anyone said to me when I was having a really bad time was a Qigong teacher who came to me and said, and I was crying at the end of his session, and he said to me and said, and I was crying at the end of his session, and he said to me, change is difficult. And that sounds really trite, but actually, it gave me permission to be having a hard time. And I think that often when one's in the kind of real, like, you know, the valleys of the valleys of change, kind of sitting there hanging on the hook in the dark that it's that being given permission for it to be tough is actually really helpful because it allowed me to reframe it and go okay change change is difficult I'm doing something really hard I'm allowed to be finding this difficult and the worst thing that you can say to someone when they're in

that situation is like oh cheer up love it'll all be great it'll come out in the wash because that's not how you're feeling so I think change is difficult was really was really profound for me and so that's what I would say to anyone else who's in that situation so change is difficult and say yes to joy that's it for today but I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of It Can't Just Be Me but in the meantime I also want to hear from you because very soon we'll be releasing extra episodes every week where I'll be joined by experts and answering your dilemmas so please if there's something you want to talk about whether it's big or small funny or serious get in touch with us. You can email us or send a voice note to hello at itcan'tjustbeme.co.uk. And if you want to see more of the show, remember you can find us on

Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Just search for It Can't Just Be Me, because whatever you're dealing with, it really isn't just you. Whether renting, renewing a mortgage, or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain,

one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th.