You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.
Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. I can do a neat trick. I can disappear at wills.
You probably can too.
It's a skill that wasn't available to us when we were younger, and I's first turned in our direction, sliding over us on the street, at work, in shops and bars, and any space where we dared to exist, to judge us, slice, categorize, conquer. But now now we can slip through shops barely turning ahead, vanish instantly when leaning on a bar, and our voices when offering an opinion. Only dogs can hear it. I could lift a young man's phone from his hand before
he noticed I was right there. I could collect sensitive intelligence from the finest spies while pretending to whirdle alongside them. And I am deliciously free to walk a street without cat call or comment. There are upsides to being invisible, you see, but.
Generally it's a jolt. Do we still.
Exist if we're harder to see? Does it matter what we say, or what we want or what we know if we're considered an amorphous lump of looser bodies, frizzier hair, flatter feet. If we are invisible, not just out in the wild, but in parliaments and boardrooms and on screens and in our ears and in the pages of books, will we ever even hear? Invisible women lose sight of themselves too. That's why we start trying so hard to stay seen, to remember who we were and who we
are still becoming. There are some different tactics to being visible to the seeing eye, and we might try all of them. Paint on a bold lip, iron out our creases, cover our hair, silver stripes, wear a wild print, those thick, colorful specks, a statement, earring all of it, saying still here, see me pe color and movement over here? Can you still hear me? If I complain really loud? How about now? The trick is you, see, to lean into the soft
power in visibility gives us. Now that we're not only defined by how firm and fuckable we are, while still feeling like ourselves, staying bright and in sharp focus of our own clear sight. I can do a neat trick now. Maybe you can too, The incredible invisible woman, watch your wallet.
Hello, I'm Holly.
Wainwright and I am mid midlife, midfamily, mid disappearance. Today I'm talking to a woman who turned midlife invisibility into a significant advantage. While no one was looking. She wrote a novel so clever and funny and sharp about this time of life. Hollywood are after it, and it all came from a particular shit moment. Jane Tara is a writer who has written lots of children's books, who has worked with and close to books for many years. But the year she turned fifty, things were going to poop.
The year she turned fifty, she had been hospitalized with pneumonia, she'd lost her business, and her partner of a decade broke up with her by text. She sat on a beach and decided to change her life, which is the way a lot of my favorite stories start. Of course, changing a life is no small matter, especially when you're invisible. But Jane did it, and a lot of what we talk about today is about the how, as well as a discussion of how her book Tilda Is Visible, nails
this part of life. This conversation is a bit self helpy, a touch woo woo, and also pretty practical. It's for you if you don't understand why everyone keeps telling you to meditate? What the hell phrase is like, show up for yourself, do the work and enoughness actually mean? And also if you just love a bloody good story. So here we go. Two invisible women make a podcast. Meet Jane Tara on how to bring yourself back into focus. Jane, this is the most wonderful idea for a book ever.
Can I tell the audience about it?
Yes? Please?
Okay?
Friends. Tilda is fifty two.
She is a divorced mother of young adult children, living a seemingly great life, owning her own small business, living in her own home in a desirable bit of Sydney. She's got good friends around her. And then one day she wakes up and she realizes that she's becoming invisible. Her little finger is missing, but it hasn't gone. It's there, but she can't see it. And then her ear, and then her thumb. And she goes to the doctor and Jane, you tell me what the doctor diagnoses Tilda with.
The doctor diagnoses Tilda with invisibility, and it turns out to be a not uncommon condition for women of a certain age. And Tilda goes on this journey where she meets other women who are at different stages of invisibility, and you know, it looks for a way to cure a supposedly incurable condition.
It's so clever, Jane, because the initial stages of this, when the doctor is talking to her and saying it's an incurable condition, there's a support group, like there's a local support group of other women. Tilda starts googling, as of course she would, and she finds there's very little research done on invisible women's surprise, surprise, so no one's really sure if it's hormone related. Early symptoms include being overlooked by the servers in shops and bars, and there's
no known cure. As you say, it's so funny and clever. Want to start with the question that I'm sure you have been asked many times, but we need to ask when did you get the first symptoms of invisibility.
It's interesting because at a couple of events recently, people have told me that when they were reading the book that they've actually googled to see if it's a real conversion. And I've jumped in at that point and said, well, it is, like it actually is a real condition. It really is women. Generally from my personal experience and also talking to women, the forties seems to be key for this.
We're juggling a lot in our forties, particularly if you have kids, and you're juggling all of that sort of stuff, and you're working and you've got all these balls in the air, and it collides with perimenopause and any unaddressed trauma or you know, past issues that you have sort of come home to roost at that particular point as well, and it's just this show of cortisol and stress and hormones and often deep seated grief and you're trying to
do everything for everyone else, and at that point you start to lose sight of yourself. And that was very much my experience. And there were just little things that happened along the way where I was out in the world and suddenly I was treated in a certain way, or I wasn't seen, or there was one really, really
great moment for me in my mid forties. My older son's a musician, and I was at a gig of his and I was talking to this musician who was doing kind of the staging for the band, and he was probably in his thirties and he was really hot. I was just laughing and chatting to him, thinking, oh god, you know if I was ten years younger, you know, he's a beautiful young man. At one point he goes, oh, I wish I had a mum like you, And he
was for me as someone I'm so much older. It's kind of like somewhere in your thirties is still milfy or whatever. And then suddenly you take this leap, and from that point on I started to think, oh my god, I really am at that stage where people are seeing me or perceiving me in a certain way.
It's often framed a little bit that it's vanity fretting about invisibility, or that it's very specifically about mourning being viewed in an objectively sexual way, like oh I don't get whistled out in the street, or like I think it's more than that, though, don't you. It's this sort of recategorization of you as you're talking about, like as a different kind of person.
I think generally, you start to go through it and you realize that perhaps you did use your youth and your beauty as a certain currency without realizing, and that currency has waned it is more than that. It's questioning sort of purpose and who you are, and particularly as your kids get old, and perhaps you've made sacrifices of
yourself for other people around you. And I've come to realize that the way that I made sacrifices was a form of self sabotage, because we do this as women because we think we have do or we think we need to give of ourselves at a certain level for everyone else to be happy, but ultimately we don't. And you know, the greatest thing we can actually do for our kids is to be happy ourselves and not be sacrificing ourselves.
Also, it's interesting because what you're talking about, it's like a dual level invisibility. There's the invisibility in the world, which, as you make the point in Tilda, sort of starts when you notice yourself just being overlooked in situations and that shift, as you say in your sexual currency, perhaps, but then there's also that invisibility to yourself.
So it's like there are two levels to it.
Almost absolutely, and I'm being asked about both because I tend to really write about the latter, about becoming invisible to yourself. You know, I don't think I can change the world at the moment, although there are some great people out there trying to. But it's how we view ourselves, how we perceive ourselves, and that became something of great
interest to me. And one of the reasons why this all happens in your forties, at this hormonal shift in our life as well, is because we're meant to be moving into the kind of wiser woman archetype in the human experience, and we're all grabbing hold of youth. We're wanting to maintain youth because we're told by the external thing that that's what gives us the currency, that's what
gives us the power. But actually there's a very deep, almost spiritual wisdom that comes with getting older as a woman and the four what is I call it the vortex that you go through that period of time and you're meant to really sink into it and work out, you know, work through your past and your traumas, and work out who you are and start to see yourself very very clearly for who you are as you age
as a woman into that. It's the matriarch in society and although society doesn't particularly value that, it will more so if individually and collectively women value that, absolutely, we need to start seeing ourselves as that community family matriarch rather than trying to sort of like keep hold of.
Our youth and making that something that has status, which you know, you could argue maybe it used to in a different way. Now when we talk about aging, well, we often are talking about those external markers of youth and can we hold on to it enough. My skin plump enough, is my hair shiny enough, is my body limber enough? All those things that we hold on too from youth, And that's all important, and we'll get to that,
but as you say, it's this much deeper shift. I wanted to ask you before we do talk about some of that deep searching work, whether or not you think there's any advantage to the invisibility that comes in midlife, because the external invisibility, the fact that you're less noticeable in a way moving through the world, it's a shock when it happens to you, because, as you said earlier, women are kind of it's sort of pushed upon us
as soon as we hit adolescents. Really that this sexual visibility is something we're going to have to figure out how to handle and use maybe as a currency to figure.
Out what we do with that.
And when that leaves you there can be a bit of freedom in it. I sometimes feel a bit of freedom in the fact that nobody's looking at you or expecting too much. And I read a piece by Hannah Rosen once, the American journalist who wrote, really, because no one can see you, you can shed a lot of different worries as you enter your forties and fifties, and you can create, achieve, and not play in that way anymore. There's a freedom in that invisibility that we don't take
enough advantage of. Do you think that's true at.
One hundred percent? But I think that I enjoy that freedom now because I see myself clearly. So we still need to be visible to ourselves, which is the point of tild up, and yet we can't do much about the people who don't see us in the external world, or the opportunities that we miss out on because we're getting older. So there are some negatives to it as well, but there are some positives, you know, just the freedom that comes with not caring, really not giving a shit.
It's the great gift of aging if you can harness it. More of my conversation with Jane Tara coming up next. Well, we discs us how to harness your mind through meditation if you can manage it and finally get out of survival mode as a mid woman. I want to move to this incredible talk you gave recently at an event in Sydney called Generation Women. And you've written about this, what you've touched on already about this period in your forties. I'm going to read a little bit about it. You
talk about childhood trauma, as you mentioned before. You know, often in this period of your life, a lot of stuff that you think, and we've talked about this on mid quite a bit.
You think you've.
Kind of managed to push away will come back in this mail stream of all the things you're going through. You write, my forties arrived, and boy were they tough. With perimenopause, my trauma magnified, and everything that I'd been trying to unsuccessfully escape was mirrored back to me and the choices I'd made in the relationship I was in. I took an emotional and psychological beating in my forties.
By forty nine, my life was in free fall. Two weeks before I turned fifty I was in hospital with pneumonia. I lost my business and my I partner of a decade, and did our relationship via text.
On the day I.
Turned fifty write A bit later on, I sat on the beach and I watched the sunrise on a new decade, and I made a promise to myself.
This cycle of heartache.
And trauma and the same old shit happening in countless ways was going to change.
It had to.
First of all, Jane, I could cry that is so relatable in so many different ways to myself and so many women who'll be listening to this.
Tell me what you did.
I went home and meditated, and I've meditated Nelly every day since I write in that speech. That was nothing new to me, Like I'd experimented with self development and self help and looked for a teacher or a way out of the trauma and the pain that I was carrying around from living in a house where domestic violence was the norm. So I'd really given it a good shot. And I think I've always been really positive person and had a really interesting life, but I carried this trauma
around and it had really shaped my perception of the world. Relationships, love and self love ultimately. So that particular day, I went home and I started meditating every single day and sort of incorporated it in with a bit of neuroplasticity and really addressing my internal programs. And that's been a bit of a buzzword for a few years now. But the fact is that you can change the neural pathways of your brain, you can change the way you perceive
the world. You can change yourself and in fact, if your life is chaotic, if your life keeps feeding back trauma loops to you, by changing the way you think about the world is the way you're going to change your external world.
So you say in there, you, as you just said, you've always been something of a searcher, and you're familiar with ideas like chakras and all that kind of thing. For people who might say, oh, I've tried meditating, like I've sat in quiet rooms and I've tried, and I can't turn my brain off and it sounds like hard work and who's got time for that?
And all that?
Can you explain in a way that's quite simple to us? You also, right, Tilda goes on this journey too in the book. Right, And I've heard you say that you now put meditating above everything else in your life because you know that it's the foundation, So above family, above work, above all those things.
Why like how because my meditation practice has now created a space in my life that allows the external events to occur.
And of course I was so reactive. My whole life was spent reacting to things, and usually at quite a high level, because I was living in survival and had been living in the hormones of stress and survival my entire life. So as that started to settle through meditating, because it affects all your chemicals, your physiological, neurobiological kind of makeup, It impacts that and it settles you. So
that's the first thing. And then it creates a space for you to actually have the experience of road rage. For example, someone yells at you and instead of that being a huge reaction from you as well, and then taking that into the next phase of the day and the next and it having ripple effects, you choose how you're going to react. You choose how you're going to react if someone is nasty, if your boss has a go at you, if your partner has a go at you.
So there is a space there rather than being reactive because you flip into I need to survive because I'm being confronted here, I could yell like I was a big yella as well, And I can't even remember the last time I yelled because it has been completely wired out of my brain. Because I choose how I'm going to react, and generally it is to my benefit, I'm not going to like have an extreme reaction anymore.
Can I ask you in a very practical way? Because I interviewed Catherine May on this podcast too. You probably know about amazing writer he evmentory, and she also meditates, of course, but she said that when she first started, she found it became a bit of a sort of another mountain to climb, another stick to beat herself with
if she couldn't fit it in. She said sometimes she'd listen to Guruz who would say, you've got to do it for this amount of time at this time of day, and she would like, well, I can't, Like I've got the school run. I'm like, can you tell me in a practical way how you fit it into your life and how women you know who have benefited in a similar way. Do you have found ways to actually make it work.
So I know what she means. I don't know whether you're up to this bit in the book, but Tilda does the the Passionate ten day course.
So that's when you go away and you're not allowed to speak for ten days.
Yeah, silent retreat for ten days. Hell so tough, very beneficial, but really tough. And you agree to give up all other types of meditation and different healing modalities if you become a practitioner and you're meant to meditate for at least an hour a day using this technique. And I found it so boring. The benefits were there, and I have friends who do it and they love it, but
for me, I hated the structure of it. The meditation style that I use Now, I can meditate for fifteen minutes or I can meditate for two hours, depending on the day and the time that I have. I will meditate when it fits in. I'm in such a routine of it now that generally I know if I'm going to have that little bit of time in the morning, and I use guided meditations. I never did before. It just sit there and battle my brain and that was tough.
So I use these guided meditations and they're fun. So what I now know is that our spiritual journey, our journey of personal growth, we're meant to actually enjoy it. It's not meant to be a drag. I love that you commit to yourself that you're going to sit. You don't beat yourself up if you miss it, but you commit to yourself because it is really an active of such self love to give yourself that time. And then you do fifteen minutes or you do an hour, depending
on how long you've got busy lives. But you start to get into a routine of that and it starts to really impact your brain and your body and your life. And then it becomes non negotiable because you want it because you enjoy it. But the less structure you have around it, the less oh, I've got to do this, I've got to tick this box. It's another I've got a teck called another thing I need to juggle. It's got to be enjoyed.
So this is where we're getting to. When you were saying about the day that you made the choice, and that's the day you started meditating in earnest and that self love and showing up for yourself, I've heard you say, is the thing that did change you. So the doctor talking to Tilda at the beginning of the book, who's saying there is no cure. You were looking for cures and treatments and you this has been your cure.
Yes, absolutely so, Tilda's Journey is very much my journey.
Yes, I've heard you describe it as fiction with self help woven through it. And I want to assure everybody like the book. It's so funny and it's so just delightful and surprising.
So talk to me. The meditation is key.
What else does showing up for yourself mean?
Because to me and I.
Love that Tilda's business is she has a business where they have like inspirational quotes on mugs and t shirts and signs, and she hates I love that about this too. Yeah, but showing up for yourself is one of those phrases that I hear a lot, but I don't know what it means, and I have a feeling that I meant to do it more. What does showing up for yourself mean?
I'm sure it differs for people, but for me it was at the end of my relationship I took. It was nearly six years by myself and I was meditating during that time every day, so I really worked through a lot of my past pain and trauma and I got to know myself really well. You know, i'd buy flowers for myself sometimes, or you know, I always liked my own company, I guess in my own space because being a writer, we like our own time, love it.
But there's there's a difference between having that time and space, and you know, the possibility of never having someone in that bed with you again, and learning to sleep in that bed alone and everything becoming your space and becoming
really comfortable with it and then moving into contentment. And probably about a year, maybe eighteen months into this journey, I was in the kitchen and I was making coffee for myself one morning, and something was really different about me, and it had been for about three weeks, and I was thinking about it, thinking, is this what depression feels like? Is this because I've never experienced that, but it was something that I'd never experienced. But I always had very
highs and lows, but I'd never been depressed. I'd somehow sort of pulled myself out of it, and I thought, Okay, something here is not me. I don't know what it is here. I am making my coffee and everything, and I looked out the window at this tree and it was like this just rush of energy in me, and I went, oh my god, I'm content. Ah, And I had never experienced that before. I might have had glimmers, I might have had, but a maintained period of time that was so unfamiliar to me that it took some
reflection for me to go, what is this? And then I realized I was really deeply content.
In my life and it was so unfamiliar to you that it worried you.
And it was just like this standing at the coffee machine, going oh my god, you know I've got here. I've got here. That's so great. And so that is kind of my baseline.
Now after this shortbreak, we hear how being diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease led Jane to having clearer vision of how she wanted to live the rest of her life. Can I ask you, because I know there'll be people listening to this who relate to that journey as a post divorce story in terms of learning to be on your own. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't, But as you very rightly pointed out, there's a difference between oh, I like my alone time and now.
It's just me.
After you found that place of I am content in what I have, this is enough, I'm enough. Did that change the way you felt about a loneeness and whether or not you did want to seek out companionship and all those things.
It's interesting because everything is always an ongoing process. So about six years into this journey, I decided that I would go on a dating app and you know, maybe meet someone. I didn't know how that looked or anything. I did meet someone. I've been seeing him for about two years and it's very much a catch up one or two nights a week. Treats me like a queen. We're very independent. We're in touch during the day, but
that merging of lives is not there. And at every stage when you're reflecting on this, would I like more? Am I capable of more? I've worked so hard to have the life that I have and the contentment that I have. Would I want to even risk that at this point? And so of course I've drawn into my life someone that very much fits with the mindset of where I am at the moment. So, yeah, you know, I get to have someone in my life without Havn's like the Clayton's boyfriend.
It sounds really good.
I've heard that described as a permanent part time position that a lot of midlife women want. It's like, I have a world that I'm very comfortable in and I'm not interested in going back to caretaking or giving all of this up, but of course I have needs and I would love companionship, So permanent part time is one of the ways i've heard that described. Can I ask you we might take this back a bit, because I
probably should have asked you this before. You've spoken about how in the middle of a lot of that dark period of when you were searching and struggling with invisibility, you've got a misdiagnosis that really changed the way you saw yourself literally for a while.
Can you tell me a bit about that.
So I was misdiagnosed with a condition called retinisis pigmentosa, and I've given that condition to the love interest Patrick in the novel, and it's a degenerative eye condition, and they were one hundred percent certain that I had it, and I was then referred to the Center for Eye Health at the University of New South Wales. It's funded by the Guide Dog Association and the idea is you go there sort of annually they check the amount of
loss that you have to your site. And I do have a very unusual pigmentation in my retina, which is what they were seeing, and it presents completely as this eye disease. Unfortunately, one of the machines that they needed to use at the Center for Our Health was broken at the time, and so I had to wait nearly three months, two and a half months to get in
for my appointment. So in the novel, when Tilda is first diagnosed and she sort of sits up in bed in her pj's, drinking wine out of a bottle and dancing seventies hits, that was me.
It is that what you did?
Yeah, that was definitely me. And then I went down a big rabbit hole of this condition, how it would present in my life, the sort of gene component of it. I was sort of went through this whole period of for my sons, but then I kind of veered left and went into a whole area of the question being what does it actually mean to see? And obviously that's a different question for actual sight imped but for me, it got me questioning how I actually saw the world,
how I saw myself. Each and every person sees the world differently. We see ourselves differently, we see events differently. And I started to really question how I would see if I didn't have sight, but how I actually see with sight now? And at one point I was looking in the mirror and that had pretty much been a exercise of self loathing. I was starting to really criticize the aging process, and it was just like the world tilted.
It was a really strange experience. And in that moment, I just looked at my face and all the lines and all the living that I'd done and just loved it. And I thought, oh my god, am I not going to get to see myself age? Am I not going to get to see the march of time across my face? And I thought, if I really feel like I'm losing gift, why would I do anything to erase it or not embrace it. So it was a really big moment for me,
and I still carry that today. I occasionally sort of go, oh God, very rarely I'm like, embrace it, embrace aging.
I absolutely love that story because it's so profound when you say that. Is that this privilege that I get to experience so much in life. And that's one of the things that infuriates me about a lot of the aptitudes towards midlife women is that we're sort of seen as a bit pathetic or a bit sad, or a bit invisible obviously, but actually we are profoundly wise, experienced, strong, and that story illustrates that brilliantly. Is it hard to
hold on to that? Because often you have these profound moments of realization, but we are all swimming in this constant bombardment of look younger, be more relevant, have more opportunities. If you eraise this, that is it hard to hold on to it?
Well, it has been ten years since that moment, and I would say I've done a pretty good job of holding on to it. There are days and times I hear that in a critic coming back in and I've got this one line down here that came from an expect we'll call that one, Bob, And it's like, you know, for me going like this the whole time, the whole relationship, and I'm like, oh, if I could get rid of that. But actually it's just a part of it. I think
we're always going to catch ourselves criticizing ourselves. That never changes. But the inner critics about observing you're in.
A critic has a name, Am I right?
If I heard you talk about pearl, Pearl, tell me about Pearl.
Well, Pearl is the name that I gave the inner critic for the novel. And so Tilda has this Pearl and it's program everything always repeat, loop, And that is pretty much what our inner critic does. It value tags information that we have found important enough to keep rolling out in our minds and in our lives. And being a program, it can be reprogrammed, you know. That's what I did and do with my meditation practice.
Although that acronym obviously is very specific, it also brings to life a very specific kind of person who's talking to you. Because Pearl, yes, is a bit of an older lady who's got a bit of a wagging finger, you know what I mean.
Yeah, she's like the busybody neighbor who you know, is through the lace curtains staring at it, who's just parked at your place, and that kind of you know. But given that I've become quite attached to my pearl because I understand that a lot of the programs she feeds me is when I'm in fear. You know, if I'm stepping out of my comfort its own. You know, she doesn't want me to or I don't want myself to
be shamed, humiliated, harmed, all of those things. So you can kind of nurture your own pearl as well and make her feel a little safer as you do sort of step out into being different, because change is really uncomfortable state to be in.
To the people who are listening to this, who I know they're going to love the very notion of tildre is visible, but they might feel like they're at the beginning of that tilded journey where you were too on the beach that day when everything had fallen apart. What wisdom are we giving those women who are listening to this?
What would you say to them?
Look, I know that not everyone is ready to meditate, but I will say it anyway because I wasn't ready to meditate when I should have started, but I came back to it a few years later. So hearing the message now might be an that in a few years someone will sit down when they really need it. So definitely meditation. But I think that once the genie is out of the bottle and you start to observe how you speak to yourself, you can't shove it back in. It's out and you need to start to address it.
So when you realize that you have an inner dialogue that's on a loop. I just say to people, think, you know, is this true? Like if you're looking in the mirror and you go, God, I look old? Is that true? Is it kind? Would you say that to your best friend? And each time that happens, change it, observe it, change it, and you might not believe what you say when you change it at first, but it does eventually start to take over as the program that comes up. So you know, I look old? Is that true?
Is it kind? Would you speak to your friend like that? No? So then just litly say what you want to replace it with. I look beautiful. I'm getting older. I'm a gorgeous older woman.
I absolutely love that.
I really do. Lastly, Jane, I want to ask you, obviously, Children Is Visible has been really successful because bloody great idea. It's a beautiful book and it's so well written. I mean You've had a long career in books and writing and lots of things. But does having this very sort of profound truth that you've wrapped up in this beautifully accessible, funny book be so successful? Is it just so validating you know that you've got to that in this phase in your life.
Yeah, it's a really interesting experience, actually, Like it's out in the US in February, and it's fantasticting to see how it goes over there. You know, there's a lot happening with it, a lot because it's resonating with women. I'm always a little bit woo woo about things and sometimes the conversations that I'm having with women, which I'm loving, Like, I'm really loving talking to women about these themes. It's
almost like it's the creative news. You become a channel for something to come through you, a message to come through you, and you know, this is a conversation that it's not just my book. There are plenty of authors out there writing in this space, older women, writing about older women, and it seems to be the time for all of that. It's really exciting to have these conversations. So I don't know, I'm just writing this way, not
at the front of it. Other women started it, but I'm writing it and I'm really really loving it and definitely want to keep writing in this space and having the conversations.
Well, the thing about that is, I mean, you know, being close to the Australian publishing industry, you know that it's difficult, competitive, crowded, it's very tough. But it's very interesting that it goes hand in hand with the message of this book. It's that older women have stories to tell.
Of course we do.
We've lived a lot, we've seen a lot, survived a lot, We've been through a lot, and it makes sense that we want to hear those, read those, talk about those, rather than constantly being convinced that either there's something a bit sad about that, or that we should really just be interested in the hottest new writer under thirty or whatever, which is also brilliant. Of course, every generation, every era
needs its voices. But this generation and this era are not done telling stories, right, We're not ready to shuffle off quite yet.
No, there's a great story about my cover, which I love. I love the cover of my novel. And the designer is a great designer. He designs a lot of books. But when they gave him the brief for it, he came back with a few versions before this one. I felt like, what you're going to say, sad old woman with gray hair, and you know, my publisher, Kelly's like, no, no, that's not quite right, like that, she's fifty five. It's not you know, on another sad woman. No, no, no,
she's yeah. Go on her instagram and check out what a fifty five year old yeah was like and the type of life that they lead, and yeah.
Absolutely, it's so interesting. When we were launching this show, I asked midlife women who listened to Mamma Mia out loud or who are engaged in our communities in other ways to send me images of themselves, because again it's not their fault, but when you're briefing people in about like so this shows for women in age between like forty and sixty and you know, a bit either side and all the rest of it. The vision that young people have of those people is really interesting. And the
actual imagery that came to us. It's women running marathons and getting doctorates and dyeing their hair pink and going shopping in New York and going through cancer treatment and writing books and you know, and they looked all kinds of different ways.
You know, it's kind of funny.
It's kind of funny that they think we're really sad, but we're actually anything.
But it really is. And I think you know, as a woman, as you age, if you do the work, and I will say meditation also really helps balance those hormones. And on the other side of menopause. Perimenopause was hell because I wasn't meditating, but menopause was a breeze. I'm through the other side of it. I feel better than I have felt probably ever, like just mentally, emotionally, physically, you know, my energy, what I want to do in
the world. It's a very exciting time. I'm not ready to be wheeled off to the retirement home just yet.
I hear you.
Jane, thank you so much. This has been the most wonderful conversation. And Tilda Is Visible is the most amazing book. And obviously we will put links in our show notes to where everybody can buy that and find out more about it. But thank you so much for sharing this with us.
Thank you Holly for doing this, for having these conversations, and for having me on as well, Thank you so much?
Is it true?
Is it kind?
Would you say that to your best friend? If you take nothing else from this conversation with Jane, and what you should also definitely take from it is an urge to buy, borrow read Tilda is Visible because it's brilliant, and a link to do that is in the show notes. Remember those three questions for your well meaning but misguided in a critic. What's particularly great about the way that Jane tackles the conundrum of the invisible woman is that it's about us, not the world. How do we continue
to see ourselves? How do we not lose focus of what we want as we move into this next stage of our lives? And look full disclosure, I still haven't managed to meditate after our chat. Jane very generously sent me some links and I had good intentions, but so far I still haven't found a way to make it stick in my head or my day. So don't worry
if you haven't either. We're all just muddeling along. If you liked Jane's description of what she wants in a relationship now, please go back and listen to episode one of this second season with Leslie Morgan about sex. It's really a refreshing ear pricking doozy that one. And also, if you're keen to hear more about all this meditation, mala apologies to everybody who meditates for that description, go and listen to the episode with Catherine May that I
referenced in our conversation. She is brilliant on it. Stay visible, my glorious friends. And on that note, meet me back here next week when we'll be rounding out season two with a supermodel, No, not that one, a gen x icon who knows a lot about raging against and making peace with our appearance in Mid Thank you to our team ep Nama Brown producer Charlie Blackman and audio producers Tom Lyon and Leah Porge's, and thank you to you Mid's See you next week.