Life begins at 50
Feisty, flirty, fifty year old heroines - your mothers, in fact!
For twenty years your mother has been the lady of the house caring assiduously for you and your siblings, entertaining friends and your fathers’ work colleagues with finesse, maintaining all the values of a lady-like house wife who married young, and to a suitable man. You come home from University and discover that your fifty year old mother is looking more attractive than ever, and - like you - is on the pull.
Just as you leave the watchful eye of Mum and Dad and embark on a journey of sexual discovery at University the last thing you want to think of his your mum, at 45 or fifty, doing the same. Surely she should be knitting booties for much dreamed of grand children or volunteering for the local WI to occupy her time? Instead she is dieting, having her hair done, and wearing revealing clothes. And she wants, yes, it has to be said, sex!
Divorce after 45 is on the rise due largely to the lessening pressure on women to be the personification of The Virgin Mary. It is hard to imagine that only twenty years ago women were not expected to have careers and instead encouraged to marry and have children at an early age. As trends changed and society was disrupted by the voice of 80’s feminists like Germaine Greer and the entire baby boom generation, life choices became very different for young women. And, rather than sitting back and wishing things had been like this in their day, middle aged boomers whose children have fled the nest are joining in, and in turn becoming the re-invented role models for their adult daughters.
That is why Nikki Lewis set up Transita, a list of books in which women over 45 are the heroines. Tired of reading about skinny twenty-somethings, she started a range of novels that empowered older women and recognised that life was not over once they hit 50:
“One of Transita’s aims is to give our readers heroines who embrace this time of life – characters with an interesting past, a stimulating present and lots of future..”
This struck chords with lots of unpublished writers who had tried unsuccessfully to get their work even looked at by the big fiction publishers. And Nikki Lewis insists that Transita is not just for women in this age category to read. As a mother of four girls, all under 30, she gives the books to her daughters to read:
“Women over 45 have a voice that needs to be heard, not just for their own generation but for their daughters too, who through them can be inspired by heroines who are not afraid of growing older; or of death, divorce or separation and the need to earn an independent living in their later years. They can know that perceived physical decline can be more than compensated for by the confidence and inner beauty that maturity reveals.”
At 54 Nikki Lewis is an attractive, clever, sexy women and an inspiring influence on her daughters who she encourages to be independent and career minded with out losing their feminine qualities. As one of her daughters says:
“It is an understatement to say that it is disturbing seeing your mother change so dramatically and leaving your father for someone else. You have to question all the values that were instilled in you when you were growing up. But on the other hand my mother understands the importance of being independent and self assured as a woman. She doesn’t live her life through us; she has her own life to lead, so I don’t have to worry about her being home alone and miserable now that my sisters and I have all left home. Through the characters in the books she publishes for Transita you come to understand that women’s wants and desires and ambitions do not slow down with age – in fact they grow richer and more sophisticated which in itself is exciting.”