Women (50+) Talk

Inspiring Stories

For women navigating career and life transitions after fifty

Women (50+) Talk is an interview series designed to help you navigate your career or life transition with more confidence and clarity and create a fulfilling life on your terms. As someone who has been through my own career and life transitions, I know that other women’s stories and insights help. I also know that there are not enough stories available about the life of the modern woman in her fifties and sixties. So I aim to capture a diverse range of stories to inspire you with ideas and possibilities for your life path and insights about the transition process and how to navigate it.

Creativity Inspires Self Discovery

When Sharon contemplated her next career move, she felt stuck and uninspired. By returning to her creative roots, she reignited her passion for fashion, which set her off on a whole new path. Find out what happened next.

Reclaiming Control of Your Finances

Natallia Smith from TruWealth explores one of the biggest issues facing women over fifty in times of change: MONEY.

Making A Late Career Transition

Maree McPherson’s career took a turn at 50, and in this interview, she shares her story, insights and tips on late-career transitions.

Downsizing Your Career

Barbara Horne shares her insights about the opportunities and challenges her decision presented and she describes her journey in the six years since then as she transitioned to retirement.

Starting a Small Business

After Thea Bates finished full-time work at 67, her lifelong interest in the arts was re-ignited. This led her to start a successful art business, which she still runs in her mid-seventies.

Create a Portfolio Career

At 61, Sandy Chakrvarty has a portfolio career that she carefully nurtured over ten years. In this interview, Sandy shares her experience and insights.

Share Your Story

If you want to share a story about your career or life transition after fifty, email Sue at sue@flourishafterfifty.com.au

Interviews with women 50+

To inspire and empower women, Sue created the Women (50+) Talk, which features interviews with professional women who are successfully navigating changes in their lives in their 50s, 60s, or 70s. Through these interviews, you will gain insights and advice on traversing the challenges that arise during this phase, as well as discovering new ideas and pathways for your career and personal lives.

There is no roadmap for aging and many women experience uncertainty as they head north of midlife.

  • The variety of pathways, options, and opportunities available to women is not always clear and we are not exposed to an abundance of positive stories of older women leading flourishing lives.

  • Stories tend to focus on the challenges and limitations associated with aging rather than the opportunities and possibilities.

  • Some women feel pressure to conform to societal and family expectations and these expectations can limit their sense of agency and possibilities for their future.

The good news is that women are entering their 50s, 60s and 70s with better health, higher levels of education, greater work experience, and more resources than ever before in history. We have time and choices our mothers and grandmothers never dreamed of.

We can do life differently if we know how but it requires women to ‘plan carefully and pack properly and have good maps and guides so that the journey can be transcendent'. (Mary Pipher)

The problem of invisibility

We don’t know what we can’t see.

Sue’s work with women over fifty revealed a huge problem. Women find it hard to visualize their future optimistically and creatively when they don’t have mental models (internalized ideas and frameworks) for imagining life at 60, 70, or 80.

Why?

Part of the problem is the lack of positive role models:

  • Life for women looks different now than it did for our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers.

  • The media renders women over fifty largely invisible and we don’t tend to see positive stories about women after fifty.

The other part of the problem is internalized ageism. Sue hears this again and again:

‘I don’t want to turn 60 because …….insert ageist idea about what it means to be 60.’

How do we overcome this problem?

  • Make the invisible, visible.

  • Make the implicit explicit.

  • Celebrate diverse stories.

In short: allow women to share their stories of successful transitions after fifty to demonstrate:

POSSIBILITY, HOPE, LEARNING, and GROWTH.

Meet your host: Sue West

Sue is a seasoned facilitator who sees the mid and ‘north mid’ parts of a woman’s life as filled with possibility and potential.

Her own desire to flourish after fifty led Sue to read every book and paper written on the subject.

This combined with her deep empathy, strong emotional intelligence, and excellent facilitation skills means that she can inspire and engage participants as they learn and grow in a collaborative and fun way.