Fifty-nine, looking down the barrel of sixty

I was fifty-nine last week. Not sixty yet… not for another year… but fifty-nine feels portentous. It’s the year before the year which in a way turns it into the dress rehearsal.

Some of you will have seen from Instagram that I was chatting to somebody recently who was dreading her forthcoming 60^th birthday so much that she couldn’t even speak the word. She’s banned all family and friends from mentions of it and celebrations – her sixtieth is to pass like any other birthday.

It set me thinking about next year but not in a bad way, it feels more like the way I look towards an upcoming holiday and start deliberating over what to pack. Because sixty isn’t somewhere I’m being sent against my will, I’m walking towards it with my eyes open, grateful to be here – but I’d like to arrive feeling really good.

My fifties have probably been the happiest decade of my life. Yes there have been losses and worries, the adjustment to having a grown-up family and the ongoing pressures of running a business in a permacrisis climate. But I’ve been happy in a way I wasn’t at thirty or forty. I’ve worked out how to manage worry better and offset it by really learning how to let my hair down… which I have (a lot). And embracing the opportunities for carefree fun that I missed out on in my twenties has been the upside that I would have never associated with this decade until I started living through it.

So it leaves me wondering – if my fifties have surprised me by being so good, what might sixty be?

That’s how I feel when I look ahead. And I’ve noticed that I’m preparing, not in a self-improvement/spreadsheet sort of way (although there’s a little bit of that when it comes to health). I’ve decided to spend a year getting ready by focussing on five separate areas of my everyday life that I want to get as right as I can and I’ll be referring to them as my five threads. It’s a project that I’ll be focusing on more on Instagram than here because that lends itself to the format of getting just one thing right at a time. However I will summarise on the blog every so often so let me explain the thoughts behind them a little more.

I don’t want a different face, I want this one but looking well kept – there’s a difference.

Somewhere in my mid-fifties I decided that I wasn’t going to chase looking younger. The women I admire most at sixty and seventy aren’t the ones who try to look forty. They’re the ones whose faces have settled into something that looks like an older, wiser version of the woman they’ve always been inside. They look vital and often quietly amused, with eyes that can read a room.

So my preparation for sixty, as far as my face goes, is specific but uncomplicated. Sleep more. Drink more water than wine (most of the time). Stay out of the sun without being a vampire about it. Find the skincare and make-up products that are exactly right and stop wasting time and money on the ones that aren’t. Wear lipstick (always wear lipstick). And I’ll keep on smiling a lot because a smile gives the most immediate facelift anybody can ever have.

I’ve said a few times recently that I’ve really noticed my face ageing over the last eighteen months and I’m trying not to panic about it. My job as I go into my sixties is to keep it looking cared for, not to wage war against it. So by my 60^th birthday I’m aiming to have defined what works and have a small, simple but powerful skincare and make-up routine.

This is the thread that I’ve already kicked off with because there’s progress to be made and it’s going to take a bit of time and effort. As some of you will have seen on Instagram, I’ve started Couch to 5K (yet again).

The word that’s going round in my head though is “gently”. My PE teacher’s voice from decades ago has finally been replaced by a kinder one. I don’t enjoy this phase of beginner running but I know it keeps on getting better until it starts to feel triumphant, like a regular win. I’ll be running slowly, twice a week, not because I want to become someone who runs marathons but because I want to be sixty with a body that still wants to go places.

I’m not chasing a number on the scales, I’m chasing capability. Stairs without puffing. Long days exploring new cities without my legs playing up. The strength to always carry my own suitcase which is a stubborn position dressed up as a practical one.

The body lesson that’s come from my fifties has been about injury. I’ve tried not to moan on about it here because it’s one of the most ageing things you can do but my upper body has been scuppered since last July with a pretty serious biceps tendon injury. I haven’t been able to do much upper body work since then and when I look in the mirror this spring, I’m really grieving the loss of the muscle definition I’d achieved. Working with an older PT has taught me that tendon injuries are one of the biggest risks of pushing too hard, too fast at this age – they come on so easily and they last so long. I’ll be backing running up with my usual strength training, adjusted around that pesky tendon and Pilates will come into the mix when life settles down a bit (soon I hope).

So my upper body issues are another reason behind the move to running – along with the fact that I’ve barely spent a full week at home since January so I need some kind of portable training that I can do anywhere. But I’ll be doing it at tortoise speed which will allow my tendons to adjust gradually. And that isn’t defeat, it’s wisdom.

You know I’ve been editing my wardrobe quietly and it’s an ongoing task.

Looking back I can see that my fifties have been my time for experimentation, for working out once and for all what is exactly right for me and the person I’m becoming as I approach the end of this decade. The quiet, classic wardrobe that worked for the more buttoned-up woman that I was at fifty doesn’t match the much more confident one that I’m finally turning into.

What I’m building now is a collection of trousers and jeans that fit like a dream and rebalance my long body/short leg proportions. My tops make the most of the small bust I’ve spent most of my life trying to hide because it doesn’t make me feel less of a woman any more.

I’m focusing on buying pieces that can look fine with no effort – and fabulous with just a little. Cut, cloth and colour mean everything when it comes to getting dressed now – and comfort too. I don’t care if loafers are a trend (they make me look like someone’s Auntie Doreen), I love my collection of vivid trainers that I can walk miles in.

My wardrobe in my fifties has reflected my inner transition. I’m less understated than I used to be because I’m not afraid to take up space any more. I know who I am and what I stand for. I’ve discovered that as an older woman when you dress unapologetically, people see you as somebody who must be interesting to talk to. And the conversations I have with all kinds of strangers make every day more stimulating.

So this year you’ll see me pinning down the perfect pieces and explaining more carefully than ever the detail that really matters in clothes and shoes.

This is the area that’s shifted most for me as I’ve emerged from the family years and seized more opportunities for adventure. I’ve spent my fifties trying all kinds of different types of travel so that as and when my disposable income reduces, I’ll know exactly where to focus it.

I used to think that travel in your sixties would be all about ticking places off like a kind of travel bingo. Instead I’ve found that I like to savour them. Slower trips, longer stays… a market on a Tuesday morning rather than waiting in a queue for a honey trap spot. Coffee in the same café three days running, enjoying the moment when the woman behind the counter recognises me and smiles. Walks that don’t go anywhere in particular. Reading in a patch of sunshine.

I want sixty to be a decade of really seeing places, sometimes through the eyes of new people… with friends… with women in similar life chapters… with Mal, of course. You already know that there’s a project we’re working on in the background that will hopefully involve taking small groups of women on the kinds of trips I’d like to be on. More on that another day… as soon as global prices start to settle.

The point is that this year I’ll be getting my travel muscles in good shape. The right luggage. The fitness (see above). A calendar left less full than it has been before so that we can actually do these things. At the moment I have all of the energy but none of the time. I have to change that this year – there’s no point in arriving at my sixties with all of the time and none of the energy.

This is the central one and often the hardest to write about.

I think what I want, more than anything in the run-up to sixty, is to keep getting better at the feelings part. By which I mean noticing them and letting them in… not running away from the difficult ones… protecting the good ones with boundaries.

I want fewer relationships that drain me and more that don’t. Less news doomscrolling and more enriching reading. I want to keep being honest with the women in my life because the friendships I have are some of the loveliest things – but I know I don’t give them enough time. I’ll probably always be like that and my true friends understand but they need to feel treasured.

And I want to make peace with the parts of my younger self that I also didn’t give time to – the girl I told to ‘woman up’ when so often she wasn’t quite ready.

I want to acknowledge the days when ageing doesn’t feel easy; I’m not going to gloss over them but I’ll try to balance them here with everything that’s good.

I also want, and this is perhaps the most important bit, to stop expecting myself to have it all worked out. Sixty is not a finish line. It’s not the age at which you’ve sorted everything and sit and gaze into the distance. If you’re lucky it’s another doorway and I know this sounds woo woo but it could be another twenty or thirty years of becoming. I’m hoping to approach it with curiosity and share that with other women who are ageing with a mind that stays wide open.

This isn’t one of the five threads but it pulls them all together. Not ageing conventionally is a phrase I’ve been turning over in my head for months, trying to work out what it means to me.

The convention for women at sixty (depending on the script of the decade you grew up in) is one of two things. Either you disappear quietly (cardigans and biscuits) or you spend the decade pretending sixty didn’t happen (filters and fillers). Neither works for me.

A third option for those of us who are doing it in a new way could be to turn up to sixty visibly and recognisably as yourself. Don’t disappear, don’t dissemble, don’t apologise. Wear the lipstick, go for the run, book the trip, dance at the disco, write the blog post.

I’m not under any illusion that the next decade will be all sunshine and roses. Bodies do what they do, losses hit you and the news will keep on being the news. But I do think that if I can weave my five threads together well – face and body and wardrobe and travels and feelings – then there’s a chance that sixty could be as much fun as my fifties have been.

A year from now… that’s the project.

I’m fifty-nine looking sixty squarely in the eye.

Just as I finished writing this, filled with positive plans for ageing well, Mal received the much dreaded phone call telling him that his mum has died. Suddenly. In the twenty minutes between his nephew’s wife popping in for a chat and his brother arriving, she was gone.

It’s a shock. We were over there for the whole of last week and she was having a happy time. One of her grandsons was staying with her and she relished a trip out to the seaside with Mal.

I wasn’t sure whether to send this post live but with her trademark stoicism she would expect me to carry on. It’s perhaps fitting that it’s about ageing positively, as she did, for as long as she could. I’m telling you what’s happening because you’ve been living through this with me for so long and you feel like friends. Don’t be surprised if you see a couple of pre-organised posts on Instagram over the next few days that don’t mention what’s happened, we’re not ready to discuss it ‘publicly’ yet so we’re leaving anything that’s planned to just run.

I’m not sure what the next days and weeks hold now, you’ll understand that everything is suddenly up in the air.

But I’ll be back.

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