Where Do You Get Support?

Finding & (Re)Defining Q3 Relationships & Networks

Jul 13, 2025

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I had a week on my own. Well, me and a very young puppy. It was heaven.

The joy of being able to do anything and everything on your own time, at your own pace was heavenly. Not having to cook and serve anything more than 3 puppy meals a day and my own fare was a gift. I love to cook. And equally, I was grateful for the opportunity not to. Being able to slow down, writing or spend hours reading or running down rabbit holes, easing into summer and enjoying the astonishing weather in the UK right now, was an exercise in mindfulness. Like reading this wonderful Economist take on the new English weather reality:

“Britain’s image of summer has not caught up with its sweaty reality. To Britons, summer is still a season for suffering, stoically, in the rain. Glastonbury, a music festival which kicked off on June 25th, is still written about as a mudfest even though sunstroke has been a far bigger risk than trench foot for years. Wimbledon is portrayed as a rain-addled fortnight, rather than a tournament that has had to introduce ten-minute breaks for players when temperatures reach 30.1°C.”

I learned to see the world through a young puppy’s eyes, where every bird song, every leaf rustle, every butterfly dance is endlessly fascinating. This little video excerpt is a perfect metaphor for this week’s exercise in savouring the moment, magnified my own pleasure by seeing it echoed by Tigger’s tireless curiosity.

I’ve been thinking about support this week - and been bathing in gratitude for so many of the kindnesses I’ve been gifted from so many different sources. Where people get it, when and where they need more of it, and how so many forms of it needs to be renegotiated in midlife. Where do you get it?

I was talking to my friend Martha yesterday who said that a random call decades ago had changed her life. One of those weak link people, a headhunter who she had talked with at a particularly stressful time in her life and who had charted out the life that she was now living. He had laid out three main ways she could go, a full-on 80-hour a week executive role, an academic deanship, or a strategy of Boards in the environmental space she was both skilled and passionate about. She had called me to celebrate the 7th Board she had just been appointed to, and remembered that it all started with this man, whose name she couldn’t even remember. I suggested she look him up, thank him and share the impact he had had, by maximising the impact that she will have in the decades to come.

It got me thinking of all the people I would like to thank, who have shaped my path in ways large and small. And how support so often comes as much from those those who know you least as those who love you most. Or in educational forays and retreats that meet you just where you are and hit you just with just what you need.

Especially in times of change, the theory of the strength of weak ties suggests that people most ready to help you move on from current roles, identities and behaviours are those least attached to your current ones. Who are most connected into networks/ countries and knowledge you know least about. But need to move forward.

So here’s a little breakdown of just some of where this thinking led me. Who has helped you get to where you are or become who you are? Did you tell them, thank them, celebrate them?

PROFESSIONAL - Networks of Support

As an expert and coach in midlife transitions, I’ve learned from some of the best. And am now deeply inter-connected with many of the people and organisations I met along my transition path. People are often asking me how I did it or where I went, so here’s a short list. Where and how do you learn when you want to grow or change?

When I moved from a 20-year focus on gender to a focus on generational balance, I spent a few years doing every course I could find on midlife, transitions, and longevity.

This included Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative and the 50 brilliant Fellows who accompanied me on a journey of investing a year in figuring out our next chapters. I’ve written a lot about this year, and started elderberries just as I was heading off to Boston as a way to track the learning, the network and the impact. Scroll back to 2022 if you’re interested.
The Modern Elder Academy runs an 8-week online programs, and 1-2 week on-site programs in Mexico and Santa Fe, with new offerings in development. Here’s my review of their online course. Chip Conley is an inspiration and a wise guide to rebranding Q3 as a time of opportunity and growth. He’s also astonishingly tireless. I now co-Chair the European network of MEA alumni and find this group a constant source of books, experiences and support.
Sageing International runs a course I thoroughly enjoyed called Awakening the Sage Within. Its based on the themes of Rabbi Zalman’s bestselling book From Ageing to Sageing, one of the first to launch the positive ageing movement. The focus is a bit more about coming to terms with Q4 and its consequences, useful for Q3ers to hear about in advance…
Noon, a website and movement aimed at midlife women was created by former Sunday Times editor and new friend Eleanor Mills. Here’s a write-up of one of their wonderful retreats I went on with a bevy of glorious Queenagers, 50+ women ready to embrace Q3 with attention and appetite. She recently published all her thinking in her book, Much More To Come.

This afternoon, I’m adding a new network, by convening a group of fellow writers on ageing and longevity on Substack to have an informal chat on Zoom. (If you are a Substacker writing on these themes and want to join us, let me know). I’m learning a huge amount from the people writing about ageing on this platform.

Many of them are a little ahead of me in life, in their 70s and 80s, and beaming a light on what the changes ahead - in everything from attitude, health, motivation and familial realities - might look and feel like. The world has never had the opportunity to hear so much from so many of its elders. I’m listening and learning with huge appreciation from this collective experience, wisdom and enlightenment. Who knew?

PHYSICAL - The Power of Personal Trainers

I only learned the definition of the word ‘sarcopenia’ when I was 60 and at Harvard (from someone at Stanford!). Do you know what it means? You do if you’ve been reading elderberries for a while. It’s age-related muscle loss, and how it accelerates after 60. That got me back to the gym doing more than my usual walking + yoga regime.

But it wasn’t until I got a diagnosis of osteopenia that I decided it was time to get some more expert help. I joined The Fitting Rooms, which is a great group of accessible, friendly, gender balanced trainers (My prior gym was just a bunch of young guys who didn’t have a clue about older ladies). They run sessions of up to 4 people, push you beyond what I would do on my own, and are welcoming and knowledgeable about the 50+ folk who they understand and prepare really well for smart, strong longevity.

FINANCIAL - The Necessity of Money Folk

From 20 years of working on gender balance and women’s professional development, I’ve read a million books and talked to a million experts about women and money. And I’m still pretty rubbish at it all. My mother imprinted me with her idea that investing in the stockmarket was ‘speculation.’ She kept all her money in simple, interest-bearing accounts - and did astonishingly well over her long lifetime.

I’ve made enough to manage, but I’m a terrible example of not caring enough about the stuff to spend enough time on it. But luckily, my mother also inculcated a (relative) degree of cheap scarcity mindset in me re. money. I don’t spend beyond my means and have saved consistently over the decades. Luckily, there are experts, because the older you get, the more you want to plan and prepare for later life. It’s super complicated, the laws are in full flux, and women across the UK and Europe are at an average 30 to 40% pension deficit compared to men (I’ve written all about it). So thank God for Celia, who keeps me solvent, and on track. Have you got your financial house in order? Will you still have money if you live to 100? What if you live to 105?

REAL ESTATE - The Joy of Experts

As I shared last week, I’m in second home upsizing mode. And because real estate decisions are some of the biggest and most consequential decisions and investments most of us make in life, they are also a bit terrifying and nerve-wracking. Especially in countries like the UK, where you need to learn the definition of words like ‘gazzumped’ to begin to navigate the rather tortuous, expensive and lengthy process of buying or selling property.

So I was grateful for my old friend Juliet randomly mentioning that friends of hers had hugely appreciated the support of a couple of guys, Paul and Michael, in finding their dream home. She introduced me to them. I was in the middle of my Rightmove addiction, glazed eyes trawling through hundreds of apartments for my daughter and country homes for us. It’s totally overwhelming. And one of those areas in life where the learning curve is huge, but rarely used. It takes you months and years to figure it all out. And then you just need it every other decade or so. And by then you forgot the last round, or it was in a different context or country.

Or you hire people like Paul Gransbury and Michael Linz at Timothy Hallin. They do it all for you. The hunt, the knowledge and even the negotiation of the sale. They were incredibly helpful and gave us some priceless advice on the two properties we eventually settled on. What to offer, what to pay, what to look out for… and they aren’t just for over-the-top budgets, as neither of our eventual purchases were expensive. They’re also incredibly charming, reassuring and you’ll be grateful, as I was, to have them on your side.

FRIENDS - And Making New Ones Now

I hosted a new friend, Julianne, for a visit to Somerset this week. She’s the co-founder of the brilliant Career Returners organisation which has helped thousands of people get back to work after significant career breaks. She started with women wanting to get back to work after maternity, but has grown to include everyone needing to re-enter the workforce after pauses of any kind - childcare, illness, elder care, sabbaticals… she’s also a huge influencer in getting organisations to accept and normalise ‘returnships.’

But that’s not mostly what we talked about. We were far more interested in our plans to upsize, downsize and decorate our next chapter homes. In sharing backstories of families and careers and kids that span decades. In comparing perspectives on politics and parents and shifting priorities in our 60s. It was fascinating and invigorating. New friends in later life are fun and energising. Just as they were in our 20s. They open new horizons, cultures and experiences. They read books you want to know about and travel places you’ve never heard of.

As I was mulling over friends new and old that I was grateful for, I read Eleanor Mill’s newsletter celebrating exactly this theme, and acknowledging our own new friendship, The kind of serendipity I delight in, see How To Make New Friends In Midlife and Why We Need To. She shares what her members are saying about losing friends in midlife - through divorce, divergence or disappointment. And how to find, design and create new friendships for the rest of the road. “Often we need a new crew,” she writes, “a new tribe to explore a new part of ourselves – others who are on a similar journey.”

It’s another unknown part of Q3. That you can have an entirely new social scene, meet new people and have new adventures. That it’s healthy, desirable and engaging to keep changing and growing at every age and stage. Julianne was sharing that her mother, in her late 80s, has just moved into a wonderful retirement home and is making a whole series of new social connections she’s loving. It’s not the image we have. And it’s a reassuring reality.

I’m a bit daunted by this list. Especially as it only scratches the surface of all those who have helped me in this past year. I feel like I may have to spend some of this summer writing thank you cards…Who have you met this year? Who supports you - physically, emotionally, professionally?

I have to go call my fellow Substackers. I’ll let you know what I learn…