Midlife Stories: Kirsty
This woman is for turning!
From self-employed decorator to creative agency director, with zero regrets
I do feel like a bit of a fraud, talking about my midlife 360.
You’d probably agree that imposter syndrome is strong in females who push out professionally anyway, let alone those who make their move in their 40s and 50s? But it isn’t just that for me.
I don’t want to come across as the human equivalent of a fairground ride spinning out of control, but it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t confess that I’ve experienced a few 360s in my time!
I think, if a lot of women look at their lives, they’d agree we all have to adopt different roles and personae at different times, over the course of our years.
From daughter to mother, schoolchild to professional, professional to mother, single person to wife, wife to mother (you see the one that’s on repeat!), wife to single parent, single parent to working single parent, working single parent back to partner and wife, to mother again… and back to professional…
You get what I’m trying to say.
Like Cleopatra, who Shakespeare described beautifully as ‘Infinite in her variety,’ women have always had to adapt to survive; or to make sure their families thrive.
So, what is different exactly about my midlife 360? (Other than the timing, obviously.)
Our emotions and energy levels can become unstable with perimenopause and menopause. (Was it this difficult for our mothers and their mothers, or does modern life exacerbate our symptoms?)
Well, perhaps it’s the timing that makes it different? In our 40s and 50s, which we would hope are our middle years, our children are growing up – some have totally grown up – our bodies are changing, not so subtly moving our focus away from sexuality and childbearing. Our emotions and energy levels can become unstable with perimenopause and menopause. (Was it this difficult for our mothers and their mothers, or does modern life exacerbate our symptoms? That’s a whole other subject I could wax on about.)
We are still ambitious and driven, (but, also, usually in steady recovery from the loss of identity that is one of the most common yet misunderstood side-effects of motherhood), and curious people. We’re regaining our energy and lifting our heads up out of the laundry pile… a bit.
And feeling like maybe it’s our turn now?
If any of this is ringing bells (and not just menopause-related tinnitus bells), you will understand that when you hear that call, you are compelled to listen. It doesn’t go away. Slowly, you come to believe it can be true – that there is still something you need to do to feel properly, consistently alive, on your own terms.
My midlife 360 was partially driven by a deep feeling that there was still more I needed to prove to myself, and partially by economic necessity. The cumulative outcome of my previous 360s was that my now husband and I were both self-employed decorators, were practically pensionless, and were surviving with the support of benefits from the government. I wanted to change that. And although I was a happy decorator, I wasn’t as successful at it as my husband. I desperately wanted to be a solid role model for my children and to contribute, in my own way, to their security and our futures.
Driven by an almost overwhelming ambition to make this the case, and 120% morally supported by my husband, I re-tooled myself with marketing skills while still working as a full-time decorator and being the main caregiver to my two children who remained at home. My daughter, the youngest, was seven years old when my latest 360 started to turn, my eldest son was twenty-two.
With an incredible (for me) surge of confidence, I started to work as a freelance social media officer for a local estate agent, planning and creating content in my work lunch breaks and while waiting at the kids’ parties and sporting fixtures. I was lucky, the estate agent needed more marketing support, and I pulled on one of my past experiences (from a few 360s ago, pre marriage breakdown, pre 2nd child etc etc) as a creative services director in a marketing agency in the not-for-profit arena – think National Trust, Greenpeace, The Labour party. I started to build comms strategies and co-ordinated a website build.
As the positive evidence of my work started to show, the profile of the estate agent grew, and so did its customer base. I was offered a full-time role as marketing manager for another local organisation, which was actually a growth hub for small businesses. This didn’t work out quite as well for me, but I did meet my now business partner there, with whom I now own and run VDM Agency, a full-service design and marketing agency.
Three choppy years later, and I’m currently earning enough that my husband and I no longer need the government to support our family with benefits – I am almost earning enough to think about putting some money by as pension contributions. It might not seem like much, but I did it from ground zero, and it means the world to me.
Equally importantly, I am building a thriving business that now employs a total of six people, doing something I love most of the time, and planning more growth and profit over the next few years.
It’s not that I don’t have to make sacrifices… but women are used to sacrifices, right? And my strong sense of purpose makes them easy-ish to bear.
It’s not that I don’t have to make sacrifices – I rarely get to spend time with friends and family, and my daughter has spent more time than I’m truly comfortable with in childcare over the last four years. But women are used to sacrifices, right? And my strong sense of purpose makes them easy-ish to bear.
Who knows, I might soon be bringing home enough to have a holiday with my family without regretting the cost of it for years afterwards? That will definitely be worth the sacrifices.
You can probably tell that my personal ambitions are not ridiculous. If I can sell my business in 12 years’ time, or have a team run it for me, I will have pension enough for my husband and me. In the meantime, I want to feel fulfilled, to feel truly myself, feel validated by a decent income and feel like I’m making a positive difference in the world.
- Be sure of your purpose. You’ll need to pull on it when times get tough.
- Set yourself regular goals and design action points towards them. Tick off your action points when you achieve them. Write new ones down. Don’t get disheartened if you don’t complete some – just transfer them onto the next list.
- Ask for help – with your venture or with your home life. No one will appreciate how much help you need unless you face them with it.
- Take any support you can get, be it childcare, pet care, counselling, holidays, mentoring… all of the above…take it!
- Believe that even when you feel like you’ve got nothing left to give – there is always more in the pot. Like with parenting, when it comes to a paradigm shift like this, you give… and a bit.
- Read every self-help book you can get your hands on – and then decide which are likely to actually help. My favourites range from Tony Robbins to The Compound Effect, and even Victor Frankl.
- Find a good friend who you can share your journey with, and who truly listens and understands. This will stop you feeling like a total nutcase when things get tough. I am lucky that my husband is quite literally my better half, and he has also embraced his altered role as ‘joint director of home life’ fully.
- If you have a role model, even better. Knowing how someone else has achieved the success you seek can be such a powerful accelerator in your own journey. Puzzle over how they’ve done it, ask them for advice, share your experiences. (This is one of the reasons I love what Midlife360 are doing – they’re creating a pool of inspiration, which is perfect.)
- Rest when you can. Value rest. Put rest in your diary.
- Celebrate when you can, particularly if it means a spa day.
- Look after your health – physical and mental. Eat well, sleep well, do an exercise that you love.
- Take HRT, nothing else works like it.
- Network, network, network. Before my latest 360 I had an unrealistic expectation that I could achieve what I wanted alone, and professed to hate networking… I have actually learned that every contact I make widens my horizons and can bring me closer to new clients and new employees or suppliers. It’s a big part of my life now.
- Use social media to widen your network further and be intentional about using it. Seek out people who look like they can help you, and welcome people who you feel you can help.
- Learn to meditate if you don’t already indulge. This has been a lifesaver for me. I’ve had mental health issues in the past and rely on the discipline of meditation to keep me well. It feels like such a luxury to escape entirely from the constant buzz of my days, to find real peace. Take lessons and get stuck into an app like Insight Timer.
- There is no rule book, so write your own and be proud of it.
- Stay true to your purpose, enjoy yourself and, finally, be kind to yourself.
Kirsty Goddard is Owner/Director of VDM Agency, a design and marketing agency specialising in brand and marketing strategy and fulfilment. She is 52, has three children, and lives happily with her husband and daughter in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.