Geri Horner only found "inner contentment" when she reached her forties.
Geri Halliwell only found inner contentment in her 40s
The 51-year-old pop star shot to fame in the late 1990s as part of the Spice Girls alongside Emma Bunton, Melanie C, Victoria Beckham, and Mel B but felt "eclipsed" by pressure in the decade that followed and only felt satisfied later on in life.
She told Grazia magazine: "I think there are different ways that a person can feel marginalised, or boxed in, and one of them is age. 'I can show that it's actually OK to grow older, that ageing can be a positive thing. OK, I'm vain like the rest of us, but there are benefits to growing up. The fact that I get to be this age? Wow!'.
"I found [my thirties] so difficult. I felt so much pressure in so many areas where everyone was eclipsing me, and ticking boxes that I wasn't – relationships, life goals. I felt like I was in no-man's land. "The ingénue had left the building, that twenties bravado had gone and I'd fallen down a few times. It wasn't until I got to my forties that I found inner contentment. It happened bit by bit. I began to think, “You know what? I'm doing the best that I can."
The 'Mi Chicho Latino' hitmaker - who made a shock exit from the Spice Girls in 1998 amid a battle with depression but went on to release a string of hit singles in her own right - went on to add that she has often used her own personal struggles creatively and believes that people can "learn" from the past without letting it take over their lives.
She added: "I've always had the philosophy of turning poop into fertiliser. Any pain that I've experienced, I've used for creativity. I think you can learn from the past without dwelling on it
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