As Mariella Frostrup approached 40, she was at the peak of her career and seemingly had it all. With her honey-blonde hair and trademark gravelly voice, the Norwegian/Irish broadcaster was in demand; a household name, rubbing shoulders with everyone from George Clooney, Hugh Grant and Patsy Kensit.
But as the HELLO! columnist reveals to Ateh Jewel in this week’s Second Act podcast, behind closed doors, she felt a failure.
With no prospects of marriage or family of her own on the horizon, she decided the way to deal with what she felt was a disappointing start to midlife was to say yes to everything. And in so doing, she completely transformed her life.
How I turned my life around
“I got to 38 and I started thinking that despite all of the glitzy, successful stuff that had happened, actually, I had failed in the things that I really, really wanted,” the 62-year-old broadcaster and face of HELLO!’s new Ask Mariella column said.
“I thought maybe I was never going to have children, maybe I was never going to be married again. I decided to make my 39th year a year when I did anything I was asked. And so, I went on stage for the first time as an actress and did the vagina monologues and I went on various trips that I would never have taken.”
An unexpected meeting
It was during a trek for the Children’s Society that she met her future husband, Jason McCue, on the side of a mountain.
“My friend Gina made me go on a date with him when I got back, and I suddenly felt at home. I think it was because I had thrown caution to the wind, and I was open.
“I used to say, ‘Men are all terrible, useless. I’m not going to have children until I meet a man who I think would be a good father,’
“It was only when I met Jason at 39 that I realised I’d broken a pattern. He was someone who didn’t need fixing. He was a whole human who brought a lot to the table, and that was such a relief and such a change.”
The pair got engaged on the eve of Mariella’s 40th birthday, and she became a ‘geriatric mum’ at the age of 42 when her daughter Molly-Mae was born.
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“I was incredibly lucky to get pregnant. It took me a year of hard labour… enough to put you off sex!
“And there are a lot of women who aren’t that lucky, who for all sorts of different reasons end up at the end of their 30s and realise that they’re not going to be the parent they want to be. I think that’s tragic… I just know how powerless that was.”
While she achieved her dream of becoming a mother to two in midlife, Mariella doesn’t recommend it as a course of action for everyone.
Parenting in perimenopause
Mariella, who started to go through the perimenopause just a few years after giving birth, said: “I’m very cautious about saying ‘Do whatever you want in your 20s and then you’ll have babies in your 40s’, because it doesn’t work like that… it’s one of the hardest things for women.”
By being open to meeting someone new, and not her usual type, Mariella discovered a deeper connection in her Second Act than she ever had with previous boyfriends in her 20s.
“I watch my kids falling in love and it’s so powerful and so passionate and but actually there’s an awful lot to be said for a kind of mature love that makes me feel like there’s no place like home.
© Instagram“It’s hard to find and you have to be open to it, because it doesn’t always present itself to you,” she says.
“It can be quite mundane, and there are good days and there are bad days, there are good months and bad months. But the thing that Jason and I have is an understanding that we’re in it for the long haul. So, when the going gets tough, we might have slightly parallel lives, but then we come back together again. Everything in life is about adapting and working it out.”
Listen to the full interview with Mariella Frostrup on the Second Act podcast with Ateh Jewel.
Read the full article here
