Reinvention, Rage & Reality Checks: Midlife Without Apology

At 24, Eimear thought she’d already missed the boat. No “real” job. No obvious path. Just a string of mismatched roles and a heavy sense of being behind.

Now, decades (and multiple reinventions) later, she’s here to call BS on the myth that it’s too late.

In this unapologetic and fire-fueled episode, Eimear busts open the cultural conditioning that tells women in midlife to sit down, shrink back, and stay small. She shares personal stories, surprising stats, and powerful examples of women who didn’t start their most meaningful work until their 40s, 50s, or beyond—reminding you that your timing isn’t wrong… it’s just getting good.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• [00:01:10] Feeling behind at 24 and the myth of missing the boat early
• [00:03:45] Midlife and the invisible timeline we’re pressured to follow
• [00:05:58] Surprising stats about midlife success and female entrepreneurs
• [00:07:12] Reinvention stories: Vera Wang, Julia Child, Louise Hay & Maya Angelou
• [00:13:15] Aging, visibility, and the pressure to "look good for your age"
• [00:22:50] Seeing yourself beyond qualifications and old identities
• [00:24:35] A free resource to spark new ideas for your next chapter

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Midlife isn’t a dead end—it’s a powerful new beginning
• The “timeline” you think you’re behind on? Total nonsense
• Reinvention is possible at any age (and often more powerful later)
• Women in their 50s+ are starting businesses, running households, and holding massive financial power
• The pressure to stay youthful is a distraction from your real value
• It’s never too late to choose yourself

QUOTABLE MOMENTS

“I thought I’d missed the boat—and I was only 24.” — Eimear Zone
 “It’s not that I need more sleep. I’m just 55. And fuck it—that’s okay.” — Eimear Zone
 “The world is afraid of powerful women. So it tries to distract us with wrinkles and waistlines.” — Eimear Zone

📥 Grab the free download mentioned in the episode:
A list of second-chapter ideas to spark more freedom, purpose, and possibility in midlife.
Download Now: https://www.subscribepage.com/second-chapter-ideas

CONNECT WITH EIMEAR

Explore Working With Eimear: Book a Call -> https://eimearzone.as.me/gameplan

📱 Instagram: @eimearzonecoach

💻 Website: eimearzone.com 📧

Email: hello@eimearzone.com

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© 2025 Eimear Zone Coaching. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Reinvention, Rage & Reality Checks: Midlife Without Apology

Hi, and welcome back to the podcast, I'm Eimear Zone, and today I wanna talk to you about a myth that I've fallen for lots of times, and I think it's out there in so many different forms, and it's this idea that it's too late for you, it's too late for you, and it's too late to start over. And there are too many obstacles.

You are too old. It's too difficult to break into that industry. You'd have to learn a whole load of new, I don't know, skills and really broaden your knowledge base to be able to make a big change and kind of get into something new. And I think it's absolute bullshit. And I'm gonna curse a little bit in this episode. 

And I remember falling for this crap really early. And when I, just a little story, when I graduated college, I did a qualification in marketing and languages in Dublin. And I didn't have an obvious sort of pathway into a job then. I wasn't very successful in getting recruited out of college. It was a tough market, and in fairness, I wasn't killing myself either.

And I ended up doing a number of not very related to my topic of my course kind of jobs. And I was working in the hospitality industry. I worked in timeshare, I was working in retail. And I really was beginning to think I've missed the boat and it's too late and I'm never going to get a proper job that has anything to do with my degree.

And I thought I was too late. And of course that was absolute nonsense. And I was only 25 then. And maybe there's somebody who's listening to this who is younger and is in a similar situation. And so this episode will be for you too. So it's. It's not too late, it's, it's never too late. And particularly in midlife, it's not a dead end.

And when I moved over to the US from the UK, I felt like my whole career trajectory had sort of been upended. I moved to the States when I was like 40 and I was just, actually, I was older, I was 45, and I was like, what the hell am I gonna do here? How am I gonna, I don't have any connections. I had a law degree.

Law degrees didn't translate. What the hell am I gonna do here? And managed to begin new things and reinvent. So today we're gonna really crack open the truth about starting over and we're gonna spotlight some badass women who've done some really incredible stuff in their later years. And we're really gonna take on this myth and this conditioning particularly that's towards women, that sort of your value diminishes and fades as you get older, and you need to just kind of sit quietly on the sidelines and not make too much noise and stay small. 

So there really is this narrative that we've missed our window, we've missed the boat. Whether that's career, creativity, you haven't found your purpose, you never will.

And that's really loaded as well. This idea of finding your purpose, It feels like you only have one purpose and you're supposed to uncover it. Like the whole world is some sort of treasure hunt and you have to search everywhere to find this magical mythical thing. And that's a whole lot of BS too.

Because I think that's just onerous. Because we're many things, so we'll look a little bit about that. I wanna talk about, first of all, this invisible timeline that we internalize, that you're supposed to have it all figured out. You're, but first of all, I'm a mother to a 16, 17-year-old, and the pressure, she's a junior in high school and it's like all about the college selection process at the moment, and she's getting stressed going.

I'm not sure. I don't, I'm, I don't really know. I'm interested in the sciences, but I'm also interested in international relations and there's this ridiculous pressure of this timeline that you're supposed to know exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life when you're 17, so that you can be, have been preparing this perfect bloody resume that you can send into these faceless college people who will then decide whether you are worthy of that career path. So it's everywhere. It's just rife that you're supposed to have figured things out early, and you're always a little bit behind and it carries some appallingly onerous consequences for your whole life path if you don't know what this thing is.

But the reality is that real life doesn't work like that at all. At all, and we're stuck in this stress fest and the data doesn't back up. This idea, this conditioning, that it's too late and you have to know early and you have to follow this one path and starting over isn't, you know, it means that you made a mistake.

All of that bullshit. Here's some statistics. Most successful entrepreneurs are in their forties and fifties, their forties and fifties. Bang in the middle of midlife, nearly 50% of new business owners in 2020 were women, and that was up from 29% in 2019, 50%. And the average age of a successful startup founder is a beautiful 45.

So let's look at some real-life stories and some of these. You may well have heard of. I love Ra Wang. She really just reinvented the game at the beautiful age of 40. Most people know her name now and they associate it with fashion and particularly bridal wear. But she didn't start designing wedding dresses until she was 40.

And before that, what was she doing? Something related to fashion? Was she working? No, she was a figure skater. She was a figure skater. Then she became an editor at Vogue for 17 years, but she was passed over for the editor in chief role. So instead of spiraling, she decided to pivot and she designed her own wedding dress and then opened a bridal boutique.

And then that boutique became an empire, as we all know. So she turned a no, a closed door into an opportunity, into a signal for reinvention. And she did that at 40, you know, not 22, not 28, but 40. So it's not too late. You know, she was seasoned. I think we get more confident as we get older and we begin to trust ourselves more and know ourselves more.

Maybe you know the story of Julia Child who didn't even learn to cook until she was in her mid-thirties. I'm still working on that myself actually. And then she enrolled in culinary school in her late thirties. Right? And then that now iconic book, mastering the Art of French Cooking wasn't published until she was 49.

49. I can imagine if you were telling like a 20-year-old, but you're gonna create your greatest work at 49 or your most memorable work or the biggest legacy work. You're gonna make the contribution. I think there's too much pressure to think that it all has to happen in that first decade after you graduate college or you get into the workforce.

You don't have to go to college and often we're putting unnecessary stress on ourselves. And when you're doing that, I don't think that you're able to do your best work. Julia Child wasn't raised to be a chef, you know, she chose to become one. And she changed how America cooked, all because she followed her curiosity and said, Hmm, maybe I'll try this.

Maybe I'll learn to cook in my thirties. See where this takes me. Following curiosity rather than some, you know, pre-formulated career track is often where the magic lies, and it's getting outta that rigidity of what we've been raised to think this is how it should look and this is how things should be.

And if you're in the area of personal development, you've probably read a book or you're interested in personal development, you've probably read a book by Louise Hay or from Hay House Publications, which she founded.  She was 50 when she published, You Can Heal Your Life, which is a famous self-help book that sold over 35 million copies.

She was 50 years old, but she didn't stop there at 58 when many people are thinking that's when they planned to be retired, right? She started Hayhouse Publishing from scratch. Like there were no investors, just belief. And that company now publishes authors like Wayne Dyer, Gabby Bernstein. If you're into personal development, look on your bookcase and see if you can see Hahas publications.

If you're interested in anything, particularly in the spiritual domain or manifesting that sort of genre, you'll have a, he has publications book on your shelf. And she was 58. 58 people. When she did that, she didn't wait for permission. She didn't say, I'm too old to start a business again. It's following curiosity and interest.

She just got going, you know, at an age when most people are slowing down. She was gearing up. She's choosing what her path is gonna look like, and it doesn't have to be a carbon copy of anybody else's. It's finding a kind of safety in that really beginning that deep self-trust to go, I need to do what's right for me.

Maya Angelou, I'll just share one more story. Maya Angelou had lived several lives before she ever became a published author. She was a dancer, singer, obviously a civil rights activist, and her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, came out when she was 41. 41! And it shook the world, and she went on to become a national treasure poet, playwright, speaker, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She didn't rush right. There's a sense again that I know I grew up with it, that you had to prove yourself before you were 30. You know, this idea of having made it, what the fuck does that mean, made it,? It's a very external validation. It's not self-defined. I think this made it, I think it's usually quite nebulous chasing after something that feels like I did alright.

She did well. She did well. At least that's better than she married well, which is the old one. Still heard sometimes, which is a little bit, yeah. Not good. Thank God we've moved on from that. But yeah, Maya didn't rush. She lived and when she spoke and when she wrote, the world was ready and she was ready and her impact is timeless.

It's timeless. The work that she's produced. So why is midlife potentially your prime time? I think we have to think about how we're viewed as we age. And today I was on Instagram and I just posted something 'cause I was thinking about this topic and then I came across a short video of Helen Mirren, the English actress, and I don't know what age Helen Miran is. She may well be into her seventies looking fabulous, creating wonderful work. Beautiful, beautiful human being. And she was talking about this comment that she so often receives and women of midlife and older often receive, which is that she looks good for her age.

And there's this thing isn't there about aging, how aging women are viewed as if we're kind of past it or invisible, or that you have to be involved in some incredible amount of work around your physical self to be alright. To be, wow, she looks good for her age. Just think about the people who are like these Gen Xer women in my generation now, who would be, you know, fifties or Demi Moore as well, who's in her sixties, and the incredible pressure that there is to hold onto what is impermanent.

Their youth. You don't get it forever. Why would you? And you see Jennifer Aniston looking after herself very well, I'm sure, but these kind of images of this is what 50 or 60 can look like, and if you're not putting in that amount of work, then you know there's something you're not trying hard enough, which is absolutely fucking bollocks, as we all know.

Um, bless her, Demi Moores had a lot of work done and the other people who I mentioned, J-Lo, et cetera, they all have an awful lot of money that they're pouring it into preserving the look of their youth as they age, and that can't go on forever. I was watching the documentary about Hedy Lamar with my daughter, who I mentioned is 17, interested in science, and so we were watching the story about Hedy Lamar, and beautiful, beautiful.

All the talk was about how beautiful she was, not how incredibly smart she was. If you dunno the story of Petty Lamar. She was a very smart woman, very interested in inventing, and she invented and got patented, an invention that was about  signal hopping, I think, which is the basis for wifi and GPS.

She never got credit for it until after she died, and she definitely never got paid for it. But we were looking at how she kind of hid herself away when she aged and she was doing a lot of cosmetic surgeries and you know, beginning to look like a caricature as she aged. And this idea that women aren't allowed to get old because you're just not valuable anymore and men are, you know, distinguished or you know, the silver Fox idea.

And I really want to champion the idea of the wise, older woman, and I'm thinking myself as a 55-year-old how I deal with aging. And for somebody who practices a lot of mindfulness meditation, very interested in that. I mean, this body is of a nature to grow old, to age and die, and me investing or spending hard-earned money trying to prop it up and pretend it's something that it isn't, just seems ridiculous. 

So that's something that I work with. Maybe you're working with that too. This idea of like, I dye my hair. I have done since my thirties. Then it was for kind of fashion and fun and now it's still that and I'm covering gray and I'm thinking, huh, when will I stop doing that?

Well, yeah, I'm thinking that - when will I stop doing that? And looking at my face in the mirror sometimes and saying, oh, that's getting older. That's not going to look like that picture from 10 years ago. It's not that I just need more sleep, it's 'cause I'm 55 and fuck it. That's okay. You know, fuck it.

That's okay.  We're all on our own journeys there, but I just wanna speak to this idea. There's so much conditioning and pressure on women. Yes, men get some of it too. There's lots of images now of them online supposedly having to have all their abs and everything, but really it's nowhere in comparison to what women put up with and this idea that, oh, she looks good for her age, or she's past it, or, you know, old women just being sidelined and put out to pasture. 

Whereas men, well, we've seen it leading countries deep into their eighties and stuff, and nobody questioning that. We're all, it's all right to see old men in the public eye, but old women? Hmm, not so much. Not so much. They're just supposed to be pretty, and enhancements and young.

But the real truth is that when you look at, again, some stats about women over 50, they make 95% of household purchasing decisions in the UK. That's interesting, isn't it? Women over 50 are deciding where huge amounts of financial resources go, and I was just looking at making some purchasing decision the other day as a woman who is 55, and I'm telling you, I was buying from a female-owned business.

Just think about that. We have a lot more power maybe than we're tapping into. And women over 50 can control over $20 trillion in global spending. And also when we look at the entrepreneurs who are 50 plus, we're outperforming, our younger counterparts. So midlife women are running stuff, man!

They're running stuff. They're controlling financial assets. They're making big purchasing decisions. They have a lot more power, but we've been conditioned to believe that we don't. So when I think about midlife women, I want you to start thinking about the decades of experience that you have that you potentially are undervaluing or dismissing.

You've got the power of your intuition, your compassion, and Lord knows the world needs more of that! And your grit. You're not some bloody dusty relic. You are a real powerhouse and a force, and I think we too quickly sort of dismiss and diminish ourselves in that regard. And it's to do with what we're, we're not seeing.

It's about representation. If you look around, you're not seeing the women. You're not seeing as many women as we would like to be seeing. But there's lots going on that's maybe not in the spotlight. So much! And there's lots of opportunities for midlife, older women, if you are kind of thinking about, you know, it's too old.

I'm kind of, this is all there is. I don't see myself having the energy or the capacity to make any big changes. You know, I came to America at 45, didn't wanna come here, and many positive things came from it. And that was only because, and I tell this story in the book, Choose Yourself, that I decided I, I really chose myself.

I said, and I didn't need to know everything. I didn't need to know everything that I was going to do. I just needed to start taking small steps, to follow my curiosity, and to think back on what this woman of 45 years had to offer. And I didn't have to be shackled to my qualifications that I got in the previous 20 years that I was thinking, how am I gonna shoehorn those into a career over here?

How am I gonna make that work? I looked at the totality of who I am and what I'm capable of, and what I have inside me that I potentially have been undervaluing or that I hadn't sort of put time into. To develop more, and I think I grew up with the idea that you had to have a perfect resume before you, you know, applied for that job, or you put yourself into a certain situation where you started.

Talking about what you could offer, that you had to be credentialed up to your eyeballs before you could do it, anything like that. And I think that's just typical female conditioning, maybe particularly from my generation, is that it all had to be perfectly, i's dotted t's crossed before you could just claim the space.

So I really want to - if you feel like you're in a position where you want to maybe make a change and see what might be possible for you, I've created something that you can download in the show notes from this episode, or if you're, if you don't have access to the show notes or it's not easy to, just DM me or email me at eimear@eimearzone.com and I will send it to you. And it's just something that I put together for you to start sparking your imagination and some ideas if you are looking for more freedom and flexibility, fulfillment, or income, right?

This is a list that will spark some real possibilities, a list of ideas of things that you could do in different sectors where you could tap into some of your own resources and your own experiences that you could turn into a passion project or an income side hustle that would bring more meaning, fulfillment, and enjoyment into your life.

Make this second chapter, this next chapter, more about you choosing yourself in a more profound way rather than kind of sitting on the sidelines and saying, this is as good as it gets. And it doesn't have to be anything wildly dramatic. There are lots of ideas of things that you can be. Doing just in, I don't know, a few hours a week or on a weekend if they're of interest to you.

Just in closing I really, it just pisses me off so much when I see this kind of women disappearing in midlife or being tortured by these images of midlife women, Hollywood types, and feeling devalued because they're not who they were when they were younger. And I want to remind you that your value isn't attached to your youth.

It's not attached to your weight. It's not attached to your, you know, your facial features and smooth skin or no wrinkles - None of that bullshit! That youth-obsessed bullshit, and women who are in their midlife trying to keep up with that is just a way to empty your fucking pockets instead of leaning into what could be the richest chapter of your life in so many ways.

And I think the world is afraid of fucking powerful women. And it's much easier to deal with women in society if you distract them by telling them that they're not powerful or they need to worry about, you know, looking older or what they weigh or any of that bullshit. And I'm tired of that shit. So more women taking up more space, choosing themselves, having a fulfilling life. 

There's lots going on in midlife. There is menopause, there's stress, there's, you know, depression, there's loneliness. There are all of these things, and we really need to come home to ourselves and reclaim that power. Within that. It is our time. It is our time if we choose it to be our time, and we profoundly choose ourselves.

Okay, fabulous humans. I hope you've enjoyed this little, I hope it didn't sound too much like a rant. Maybe it did, but you know, fuck it. There we are. And I'm cursing a lot on this one, and that's just the way it is today. That's just the way it is today. Love you heaps. Have a fabulous week. Look after yourselves.

You're not human doings. You're human beings. Be soft, gentle, and compassionate towards yourself. You rock. And don't forget to download that PDF with those ideas. I'd love to hear what that sparks for you. Okay? See you next time.