Glynnis MacNicol: everything you've been told about being a middle-aged woman is a lie

Jul 29, 2025

Glynnis MacNicol, author of "I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself," shares her journey of rediscovery during a month in Paris at age 46. She challenges the myths surrounding middle-aged women, discussing pleasure, confidence, and the freedom that comes from living without societal narratives. Glynnis dives into topics like self-worth, the importance of personal agency, and embracing independence post-divorce. She advocates for enjoying life fully, revisiting desires without guilt, and finding joy in every stage of life.

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INSIGHT

Midlife Freedom Is Fragile

Women's freedom to choose their path in midlife is recent and fragile, shaped by financial and bodily agency.
Current cultural shifts threaten these hard-won rights, making female autonomy a political act.

ANECDOTE

Lockdown To Liberated Paris

After 18 months of lockdown isolation, Glynnis MacNicol flew to Paris seeking life, pleasure, and connection.
She leaned into decadence fully, realizing once you break free from deprivation, there's no limit to joy and experience.

ANECDOTE

From Lockdown to Paris Freedom

During NYC lockdown, Glynnis lived alone and craved connection and freedom.
She spontaneously booked a trip to Paris to reclaim joy, community, and life beyond isolation.

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What happens when the life you find yourself leading in midlife doesn’t tick all the supposed boxes?

That’s the situation today’s guest found herself in. Glynnis MacNicol was 46 - a woman of a so-called certain age who found herself living life without a roadmap when, in august 2021, after almost 18 months spent alone in lockdown, she picked herself up and packed herself off to Paris for a month of living, loving and, well, pleasure.

I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is the story of that month - a month spent in search of friendship, food, community, contact and sex. Plenty of sex.

While she was at it Glynnis discovered that far from being, as she puts it, “past cultural appeal and expectation:, everything she’d been told about living life as a middle aged single woman was a lie.

Glynnis joined me to talk pleasure, confidence, agency, learning to enjoy your body in midlife, knowing what you want and asking for it, sex, cycling, The joy and freedom of living life without a narrative and why she’d rather have a piece of prime Manhattan real estate than a husband!

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, including I'm Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

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