I’ve got to be honest: I still struggle with the rhetoric around ageing. Like many of you, I’ve lived much of my life in a society that is both sexist and ageist. Its narrative about midlife women is toxic - but it’s a storyline I’ve been forced to listen to and absorb for as long as I can remember. And it has definitely changed the way I think. 

It’s hard to listen to society telling you you’re somehow “less than” without believing it on some level. And we can challenge that narrative, but I wonder, does it shift those deep-seated beliefs? Perhaps we need to do more than just adopt a different kind of language when dealing with them. Perhaps we need to reprogramme the way we think. 

The brilliant Andie MacDowell is at the forefront of this PRO AGE shift. Her approach is robustly positive - life-affirming, in fact - and I love it. The 67-year-old actor refuses to “embrace” the ageing process. Instead, she chooses to “glorify” or “romanticise” the changes happening in her body, and it’s such a refreshing approach. 

“It’s so important that we recognise our own value and worth, and that we watch what we tell ourselves, because our mind can play big tricks on us,” she told Today recently. I know that feeling: I sometimes have to remind myself to be grateful for this midlife body - which is hard when society is trying at best to disregard it, at worst to tell you how unattractive it is.

MacDowell’s solution? “Find a way to see the beauty of it: the beauty of your belly, the beauty of your shape as it changes, the beauty of your neck. I think you have to look for ways to glorify how you transform as you age because it is part of the process.”

Many of us are a work in progress, just like MacDowell. “I’ll probably be trying to love myself and accept myself as I age forever. I will be doing that, but at least I’ll be eating good food and working out.”

I love the idea of “glorifying” where we are - even though it can be tough. But if we employ a new vocabulary in an effort to try and reprogramme our thinking, we’re in with a chance. I sometimes look at my girls, and the way their generation talk about themselves, and I’m in awe of their positivity. They know they’re worthy of love. That change is something wonderful to behold, because it’s something many of us in midlife have to remind ourselves of every day. 

One thing we do get to indulge as we grow older, though, is our eccentricity. For MacDowell it’s about hugging trees. “I believe in forest bathing,” she told Today. “There’s science behind it… When I’m away working and I’m really tired, I hug a tree. I don’t care what people think. I don’t care who sees me. I go up and I thank them.”

And if we can’t glorify something as deliciously idiosyncratic as that, what hope is there?