Step by Step: Starting to Leave

From Tickets to Truss

London Chic, St Martin’s Lane Hotel

Today I cancelled my yoga subscription and bought our return tickets to London. Thus begins the beginning of the end of our American adventure and my midlife return-to-school. A few more weeks, a packed agenda, and the constant presence of ‘last’ dinners, dates and deliveries ‘before we leave.’ Another transition beckons, this one back to where I began a short year ago. Yet so much, it feels, has changed. And keeps changing, relentlessly.

First, some 40 new friends whom I have watched transition through the course of a year. What a gift! We came together in the confusing, wandering, ‘what am i going to do when I grow up’ phase of elderhood. Explored purposes and passions. Studied the world’s challenges, imagined a role and space for our energies and contributions. Reached out to colleagues, faculty, family, sponsoring organisations. Nudged and argued our way in and through. A hugely inspiring bunch of caring humans who have helped each other through Covid, broken bones, loss and heart attacks.

And in the middle of all this fun and growth, came a whole other lesson of change. I am suddenly motherless, and will leave behind the childhood home I’ve known for almost 60 years (first I have to empty it!). I am also dogless, and will return to a home where, for the first time, no happy bark and wagging tail awaits. My new grand-daughter has turned one, and I’m getting used to be a proud (if sadly distant) Glam’Ma. As I prepare to leave America, my daughter settles in - we recently raised a glass to her first anniversary in New York. My son is moving on from the first company he founded in Dakar… to the next. But our tiny steps are nothing compared to the seismic shifts we’re witnessing.

In the Meantime …

I made a short hop to London for some work this week. Just in time to watch the UK government unravel in record time, first one woman, then another, angrily give up the post, jab a knife, turn away - in relief? Or disgust? It was terrifying to watch as the antics that launched a thousand jokes also threatened millions’ pensions, home purchases and trust in one of the oldest democracies (and economies) in the world. A ‘submerging economy,’ said Larry Summers. The bon mots are multiple, the media in overdrive, the fear not yet palpable.

Walking the warm, sunny streets of London’s Southbank, fall hasn’t yet tinged the trees colourful. The tourists were out in droves enjoying the late warmth and sliding pound. The restaurants were pounding full, laughter was loud and ubiquitous, and the pubs’ sidewalks overflowing with their usual male-dominated drinkers cheerily chatting into dusk. Other cities’ version of cycle lanes are tranquil routes inclusive of families and ladies in heels. London claims Lycra-clad speedsters, barreling their way through the new super-highways. It’s fast, high energy and feels utterly insane. There is not a mask to be seen, Covid a dim memory this city is in a hurry to forget. Absorbed with its leadership travails and ongoing Brexit aftermaths.

Occasionally you pick up a book that absolutely meets the moment you are in. The Hero of This Book, by Elisabeth McCracken, is a glorious ode to her recently deceased, larger than life (but physically tiny) mother. She remembers her as she wanders the streets of London, wandering around my own neighbourhood. “Page by page,'“ writes the Washington Post, “it’s the quiet story of an adult child mourning a parent. As a whole, it’s a map of how to love someone.” Step by step, it felt like I was walking directly - and literally - through her emotional landscape. Across the Thames, by the National Theatre, into the Tate, even into the Rothko room for a moment of silent tribute to the book and the loss - and love - we share.

One of the joys of returns is reconnecting with friends. I had a delightful dinner with two wonderful friends who I introduced and who are now, delightfully, working together: Eleanor Mills, who runs the great Noon website for midlife women and writes a high-energy newsletter, Queenager. And Diane Kenwood, Noon’s new Editorial Director (she was formerly long-time Editor of Woman’s Weekly). Diane is better known to me as one of my ‘6 Old Broads,’ the gaggle of American, Canadian and British ‘ladies interested in longevity’ I have been Zooming with weekly since Covid first locked us up in our respective countries. As the well-connected Brits these two are, they gave me a deeper perspective into what’s been going on in the UK. It ain’t pretty.

If I have to get on a plane flying back to a Johnson government, I’m moving into my mother’s house.

The Bigger Transition

But beyond Britain’s travails, the much bigger news story of the week seems to be this slightly under cover American war with China via the Chips and Science Act - and its unleashing during Xi’s big party congress. It’s strangely not making the front pages, although it signals the biggest change in US trade policy in 80 years, we heard in class this week. Voted in last summer, the rules were just announced by the Commerce Department. The huge, tectonic global power shifts are now clearly visible - and hostile.

We may remember 2022 as the year things tipped. As I have enjoyed a year of stepping away, the whole world has catapulted dramatically forward, into entirely new shapes and geopolitical alignments - through Covid and war and energy crises into a new era of deglobalisation. Fukuyama is still arguing the ‘end of history,’ (worth a read in its entirety in The Atlantic), pointing to the horrors and failures of the world’s autocratic regimes. And how they may yet wake the rest of us up.

“Liberal democracy will not make a comeback unless people are willing to struggle on its behalf. The problem is that many who grow up living in peaceful, prosperous liberal democracies begin to take their form of government for granted… By resisting Russian imperialism, the Ukrainians are demonstrating the grievous weaknesses that exist at the core of an apparently strong state. They understand the true value of freedom, and are fighting a larger battle on our behalf, a battle that all of us need to join.”

Leadership, Anyone?

This is very much the feeling in the UK. Under the jokes and disbelief and multiple unleaders the Conservative Party has Brexited us into, the system itself has become the obstacle to good leadership. People can’t believe that Johnson will be back - until he is. The sense of the surreal sharpens tongues but dulls reactions. The call to good leaders to step into a deeply unappetising vacuum is urgent. The trend to macho ‘heroes’ has done leadership a disservice. I would vote for a book called From Great to Good.

I met with a global group of Founding Members interested in the leadership challenge convened by Ade McCormack under something called The Intelligent Leadership Hub. The hunt for a way to distill, among experts, what leadership is needed now - and how to build it and scale it. Also had a delightful coffee with multi-talented Steve Tappin, co-author of The Awareness Code, aimed at building emotional skills and self-awareness to ground existing leaders in personal and emotional strengths and resilience. Many great minds are in movement, and the moment, as we know, often makes the (wo)man.

So, as October draws to a close, the future starts to tap an insistent hand, beckoning me back ‘home.’ But there is never any real going home. You have changed while being away. So has the place and people you left. And the wider context spins its take on any narrative you try to write. But, eyes wide open, it’s time to start leaving.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot, from The Four Quartets