WHILE I WASN’T a really bad girl in my 20s, I had a lot of fun! I couldn’t wait to leave home after school, some ‘domestic goddess’ type courses and a driving test pass. I wanted to travel, to make my own choices and to experience the World.
There ensued lot of trips; long ones to the USA and Australia, and short ones in between. No one relied on me and I relied on no one. I was free! I behaved happily badly and looking back I was probably lucky to get away without official sanction. Generally, I didn’t understand consequence and I didn’t get caught!
I was ahead of my time, funding my own lifestyle, and increasing my debt. Culture, my family, my environment had equipped me for marriage, babies and an old-fashioned life of service to a good man. I was very well-prepared to be a wife. I looked forward to it, but until it happened, I was going to study at the University of Life and have a very good time!
It happened. At 27 I met and fell in love with someone who was kind, loving, strong and interesting. In a very short moment I was in love, married and off to Germany to start a new life in the Army. In those days, the system treated wives like their husband’s possessions. Camp followers. I became ‘wife of’ 123456 Captain Labouchere (number, rank and name) and completely lost my individual identity. I married a man and his calling and adopted his friends and colleagues as mine.
By the time I was thirty we were desperate for children. Two ectopic pregnancies led to sterilisation. We went through five cycles of IVF and finally, while posted to Canada, we were successful. A boy. Two years later, we had a beautiful girl (made in India) and the family was complete. I joined the gaggles of women at coffee mornings, listening little and talking a lot – about children, boredom and absent husbands. I had a nagging underlying question: “is this it?”
In my forties we packed the children off to boarding school as the gypsy lifestyle imposed by two-year postings was not conducive to good education. We moved. I created a home. We moved again. I created again. I was probably already perimenopausal. I was certainly depressed. Unknowingly, undiagnosed, but deeply depressed. I bounced from mood to mood, but the trajectory was downwards and the dark days became longer as I divorced happiness. My husband was busy, focused, good at his job and engaged in fighting all over the world while I was left behind. And then he asked me what I wanted. We left the Army and headed for the bright lights of Dubai and a new start.
The change did not bring happiness. Well at least, not at first… I entered my fifties medicated, miserable and missing something. I worked at a gym and then a school, more to have something to do than for money.
I was working as the school receptionist when out of the blue at an event, I was scouted as a model to open and close a major Dubai fashion show. Walking down the catwalk, hand in hand with my beautiful daughter in support, something fundamental shifted inside me. It was a shock, but despite fear of failure and disbelief, it happened again and this time I ended up in British Vogue, full-page, in eight editions in a year. Whatever had been missing wasn’t any more.
I started saying ‘yes’ to everything, often with little or no idea what I might be letting myself in for. I travelled to China, and won a major beauty pageant! I flew to Napa Valley in California to sit on a star-studded, celebrity panel. I went to Canada, Hawaii, South Africa, Jordan and Lebanon. I modelled widely in Europe, the Middle East and New York. My husband was in support throughout my metamorphosis from something drab and sad to butterfly; opining on my style (occasionally with valuable insights), listening to my ideas and generally ‘being there’, even while he was building his own income and our future. I started to drive events rather than fall prey to them. I was making life happen. Life was no longer happening to me. Carpe diem.
Now? I take my opportunities and every opening door leads to another. I have found purpose in helping women to live healthier lives. I point out that we do not need to retire from life. Instead we can honour ourselves by sharing our stories, celebrating our time so far and planning for a long, bright future. I wear my grey hair as a trophy of survival and a signal that I don’t intend to hide away and decline. I will accelerate as I age, doing more, getting stronger, doing better and helping more people. I am happy.
