Step into your own mid-life power without celebrity role models, says author Yvonne Bridges

8 November 2021

Yvonne Bridges writes an exclusive piece for Female First

Yvonne Bridges is a successful Business Mentor, who has worked for years at an executive level as a global corporate consultant. She is now paving the way for mid-life women to step into their own power with the release of her first book YOU Are Relevant. In an exclusive feature for Female First, she looks at the impact of having celebrity role models...

When representations of mid-life or beyond, women like J-Lo, or Liz Hurley or Helena Christensen are depicted as representatives of ‘the new fifties;’ it further diminishes the relevance women in that same age group experience. It also further objectifies women to a certain look or instead the value placed upon a perfect body, face, and hair. The value of role models in all ages of women occurs only when the role model inspires others to be the best version of themselves rather than be a certain size or creating a certain look or having the funds to pay for lifts for various body parts.

Mid-life women often experience challenges due to empty nest syndrome or being side lined in their roles due to their age or their appearance, or needing to care for elderly parents, or having less savings/pensions than men due to lower salaries throughout their careers plus taking time off for childbirth. Each of these elements contributes to women feeling less than or marginalized or irrelevant.

If it is important to look at female role models who age powerfully and gracefully, instead we can look at Helen Mirren, or Meryl Streep, or Melinda French Gates, or the women who have been heralded in the Forbes 50 over fifty list. Those female role models exude grace, determination, realism, power, and relevance. Each of them contributes to the world despite their age.

Mid-life women have runway left in their lives. No longer are women obliged to retire, take care of grandchildren (unless this is what they choose), or wither away until their time here on earth has passed. Mid-life women hold great wisdom and as they step into their power, they know they are relevant. They matter. They have made their own decision about who they want to become. They are willing to step into the arena and stay there to take the steps required to emerge from the arena – battle scarred, unscathed – to have the outcomes they seek … courage, justice, growth, strength, impact.

I’ve travelled this road. I wrote my book, YOU Are Relevant, because I too stepped into the arena when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma and came out with a seven-inch river shaped scar on my upper right thigh. I’ve had pieces of my face removed this past year because of deep basal cancer cells.

Does this mean I’m less than I was before? No, it does not. What it does mean is that I’ve made a choice to examine who I want to become, what I want to do with the remainder of my life and have the outcome I seek – helping over one million mid-life women worldwide know, in the very marrow of their bones – they are relevant.