Ageing in Colour: The ageing revolution starts here!
What ageing looks like now + The Postcard Project: Meet 12 women flipping the script on ageing.
Welcome to Ageing in Colour, a special edition of Road Trip to Younger magazine, dedicated to the women boldly redefining life after 50.
This issue was inspired by a hundred or more women who generously shared their stories of the many ways in which they are turning ageing upside down.
Not for them, the slowly narrowing roads of later years. Far from it, many of them are just revving up.
I’m thrilled to now be able to bring you some of these stories, and chronicle them in a way we can all enjoy, as postcards from the road, so to speak. In this issue, you’ll meet 12 wonderful women as Part 1 of an ongoing Postcard Project series you’ll find in upcoming issues.
I’ll also be sharing my take on the what the stories tell us about a broader picture of what ageing REALLY looks like now. Of course this is no random sample of the population. But there’s a lot to take out from this Substack sample of kickass 50+ women. In their stories we can see valuable clues to the potential of future directions of ageing, and the opportunity for us—all of us—to drive away from the outdated paradigm of ageing being a period of decline.
I hope this special Ageing in Colour edition opens new doors in your mind to riding this wonderful wave yourself, in your own life. From reading these stories, I’m starting to see that the only limit is our imagination and how big we can dream.
A big thank you to all those who have shared their stories to date, and for allowing me to chronicle them here.
And still, the stories keep coming. Who would want to stop them?
Let’s unleash the rainbow! 🌈🌈🌈
You’re invited to be part of the Postcard Project, an ongoing initiative to change perceptions of ageing and inspire others to write their own script. Add your voice and share your story about how you’re flipping the script on ageing, here.
THE POSTCARD PROJECT: PART ONE
So here it is, the first instalment in an ongoing series of postcards, as part of The Postcard Project. Here we profile 12 amazing women doing ageing their way, or their terms, offering us a picture of what ageing really looks like now.
Our aim with The Postcard Project is to drive a reinvention of ageing, support each other and send outdated narratives and perceptions packing. The more stories we share, the more we drive positive change.
For this round of postcards, all our storytellers can be found on Substack. You’ll notice I’ve included clickable links to the relevant Substack publications so we can network and connect with each other.
I’d love you to be part of this! Add your story here, and feel free to pass on to others too!
Join the Ageing in Colour movement
Share this post and spread the word. Stories are powerful engines of change.
Subscribe to Road Trip to Younger magazine and never miss a thing.
Add your own story here.
Over the last five weeks and counting,
I’ve been the unwitting, yet ever-grateful recipient of hundreds of stories, from women in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
What began as a gentle callout on Substack, turned into a groundswell of voices, cheering each other on. It felt like a festival. The enthusiasm, electric.
The nature of my callout was simple. I was hoping to connect with women 50+ who were “turning ageing upside down” in some way. I’d optimistically hoped for two or three responses at most. In both scale and sheer inspiration, I got way more than I bargained for.
It was, quite frankly, a thrill ride, and I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Within the Substack Notes thread it turned into a bit of a party, complete with cheer squad. There was a soul mechanic, a wisdom doula, a joy concierge, a sex tutor for seniors, a woman who loves latex, and a doctor launching a visionary World Love Forum, just to name a few.
No Jason Recliners or La-Z-Boys round here. No sirree. There’s too much fearless leaps into the unknown going on, from taking a gap year to travel the world at 70; and moving permanently to France, alone, with barely any spoken French, at 68. Women are busy… challenging themselves, challenging the world, often both.
But it’s not all roses…
Many of the stories were hard to read, even heartbreaking. Yet through adversity, women are discovering themselves and new depths of agency and determination.
In the end what has really struck me is the universal sense of possibility this period represents for women: a time for chasing new skills, new thinking, new careers, new studies, new businesses, new passions, old passions, new dreams, long-held dreams, often in multiples of these.
Some stories were like being rained down on by glitter. Many were wondrous. Some still make me cry just thinking about them. Every story was unique. No two are the same. All of them, in some way, changed the shape of my brain.
When I put out this call, Road Trip to Younger had only just launched. I was buzzing with curiosity. My first issue, with a call to ‘Turn ageing upside down’ had hit a nerve. But I was still dying to know who was out there, how they viewed ageing, and how they were ‘doing’ ageing.
Now here I was, basking in stories,
generously shared. Each one seemed to add another thread to what was clearly becoming a larger movement.
“This is what ageing really looks like for women right now,” I kept thinking to myself. It seemed like a real culture shift, so why wasn’t it being talked about?
The editor in me couldn’t rest until I’d defined, understood, and most importantly, had a stab at a name for whatever this movement was.
“If not now, when?”
This was one of the most common refrains I’ve read over the five weeks since this surprising adventure began, and it came from women of all ages.
It’s clear older age is being reinvented. Women are seeing their age, every age, as an ‘age of opportunity’ where they get to rewrite the entire script, wielding their agency and hard-won wisdom, all along the way.
In this newly reshaped world of ageing, the stories suggest that a woman’s prime isn’t behind her—it’s wherever she decides it should be—and usually that’s right in front of her.
Coming through in so many stories was a sense of the prime of life looming large. But women in their 50s had a particular bent. I amused myself by calling them Empty Nexters.
Yes, I think you can see where I’m heading with this—Empty Nexters being an evolution of Empty Nesters.
Of course, empty nest syndrome refers to that sense of loss, emptiness, even potential identity crisis when kids leave home.
For Empty Nexters, after what’s often decades of focus on family and/or career, they see that empty space the kids leave behind as representing pure freedom. Far from simpering around wondering who they are now, they ask themselves with pure relish: “what’s next?”—it’s full of opportunity.
Ageing in colour
As the stories about turning ageing upside down started flowing in at breakneck speed, I was still looking for a stab at that elusive name for whatever this was that we were seeing here.
The more I looked at it, the more it suggested colour. Yes, every story was different. There were so many nuances. Everything came in different shades, subtle to intense. A vast spectrum, in seemingly every hue—exploding the ageing colour palette beyond the standard grey, ‘silver’ and ‘golden’.
The energy that women were bringing to doing ageing differently was bold, intense with big brushstrokes. They were using the entire paintbox.
Ageing in Colour also the festival-like mindset I was seeing here. Rather than being feared, ageing was like an anticipated event where women were turning up with optimism and enthusiasm, and rallying each other on.
The rousing revolutionary call of Ageing in Colour also aligned with the determination so many had to shake things up, and even blow things up (maybe with metaphorical fireworks). Colour is after all the universal way to stand out. To be seen and heard.
Perhaps the thing that solidified Ageing in Colour as a paradigm for how we “do” the second half was the relationship women were having with ageing, which was often, at its heart, creative, vivid and exciting. This was a change from what you’d expect not long ago would have been far more transactional.
We are change-makers
The rumbling groundswell of women wanting to do ageing their way is palpable. And that brings me to a side note, which is to say OF COURSE this cohort, with their long history of social agitation was going to shake things up and reinvent ageing. We should have seen it coming. These rebel-rousers were never going to be taking ageing lying down.
I’m talking about the 50+ cohort here. They’re aged from their 50s to their 90s, and wow, do they have some good form in reinventing life stages.
The older crew, now in their 90s, were the first teenagers back in the 1940s, the Bobby Soxers. Noting that this started as a female-centric movement.
Then two decades later, the women who are now in their late-60s and older, drove the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s.
And now here we are, poised at another frontier. Let’s give ageing a shakeup, especially for women.
Chew on this snapshot, just one example of a stunning disconnect. While 46% of US adults are aged 50 years or older, only 15% of the online media images include people of this age. When they do appear in imagery the portrayal doesn’t tend to be flattering.
Writing the playbook
When you look at the track record of those of this 50+ to 90+ year range, there are stunning accomplishments—from pioneering teen culture to revolutionising women's rights, we’ve literally written the playbook on turning society's expectations upside down. They’ve cleared paths ahead for coming generations along the way too. Leaving their mark in technicolour as they go. And now, from coming of age—to coming of ageing.
If that's not a blazing green light for us to continue reinventing aging, I don't know what is.
A final very special thanks to all the wonderful women in this issue for their contribution in kicking off Road Trip to Younger magazine’s Postcard Project.
Brodee, thank you so much for including me as one of the 12 fabulous women highlighted in this issue. I'm honoured and proud. x
I also love the title because I read somewhere that we’ve lost colour in our world as the aesthetic of beige has ploughed its way through social media. I deliberately chose bright colours for my business and publication branding as an act of rebellion against boring! Hurra!