Midlife is when we hit our stride

I'm wearing an identical model of the Levi's 501 jeans I had as a teenager. On my right hand is the chunky African silver ring my mother gave me for my 21st birthday.

- 

And before I sat down to write this, I exchanged a stream of excited texts with my best friend from university, about his new girlfriend.

I might be 53, but in many ways I feel much like I did three decades ago. Not least because I'm writing.

Being in the library researching and writing essays was my favourite part of my architecture degree. Having been waylaid by building sites and bathroom details for a quarter of a century, I'm back doing what I love most.

From the vantage point of my 20-something self, 50 was when you slowed down; when you'd ticked off life's main boxes of career, partner, and kids, and the descent towards old age began. But when that day came, I was mother to a toddler and hoping to carve out new paths in my work 'I think of 50 as the age we finally become the women we always wanted to be,' says Eleanor Mills, the founder of Noon, a community for midlife women, and the author of Much More To Come (HarperCollins, £16.99). 'We are not done and invisible - all the things popular culture would have us believe.

We are just hitting our stride.