They Call Us Older Women – We Are The Ones Changing The World | Nan Made

We Are the Generation That Changes Everything

We were raised to be “good girls.”

Polite.
Grateful.
Quiet.
Don’t ask for anything.
Don’t make a fuss.

Some of us were literally told not to ask for a glass of water if we were thirsty at someone else’s house. You swallow that message at five, and it keeps echoing at fifteen, thirty, fifty. It teaches you that your needs are an inconvenience. It teaches you not to ask. It teaches you to disappear.

We have lived whole lives on that script.

And now — in our fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties — we are done.

We are the generation of women who are turning that story on its head.

We are looking after older women and younger women.

We are making sure a sixteen‑year‑old girl and a twenty‑six‑year‑old woman never have to live the way we did.

We are the generation that changes everything.

We are finally honouring our bodies.

Pause for a moment.

Stand in front of a mirror.
Or close your eyes and picture yourself there.

Look at her.

Look at your beautiful face — the lines, the softness, the spark, the history written in the way you hold yourself.

Look at that body who:

– got you out of bed on mornings when it felt impossible,
– walked you through grief, illness, fear and shock,
– danced in kitchens and streets, sometimes in the rain,
– sat through long nights holding someone else together,
– carried you into rooms you thought you couldn’t enter,
– felt joy beat through her heart when life finally gave you a good day.

She has stayed.
She has shown up.
She has taken every hit the world threw at you and still gotten you here.

We are done insulting her.

Instead, we are learning to:

– **drink her in** — really see her, not as a problem to fix but as a work of art and endurance;
– **appreciate her** — notice the way she moves,, the way she still wants pleasure and comfort;
– **thank her** — quietly, out loud if we want to: “Thank you for carrying me through all of this”;
– **honour her** — treat her as someone we respect, not someone we berate.

Honor matters.

When we honour our bodies, we turn everything on its head:

– we stop measuring ourselves against 20‑year‑old skin,
– we stop treating “pretty” as the highest compliment,
– we stop believing that our worth is tied to how acceptable other people find us,
– we start seeing our bodies as allies, not enemies.

This honouring isn’t solemn; it’s full of joy.

It looks like:

– choosing clothes that feel like *us*, not like “what you’re supposed to wear at your age,”
– eating food that nourishes and delights us, not punishes us,
– moving in ways that feel good — dancing, walking, stretching, lying down when we need to,
– saying yes to touch, intimacy, or stillness exactly as we wish, without worrying what anyone else would think.

We look at our bodies now and think:

> “She has carried me through a lifetime.
> I love her.
> I honour her.
> I am not going to spend the rest of my life apologising for her.”

That shift — from insult to honour — is one of the most radical things we are doing as a generation.

We were taught to critique ourselves.
We are teaching ourselves to cherish ourselves instead.

***

We are the first generation with the distance and tools to change things.

Our mothers didn’t have this language.

Their mothers definitely didn’t.

They were surviving wars, poverty, rigid domestic roles, limited work options, no internet, no networks, no widespread understanding of trauma, consent, boundaries or emotional safety. They were doing what they could with what they had.

We have more.

We have:

– hindsight: decades of seeing what hurt us and what we needed but never got;
– language: words for gaslighting, coercive control, burnout, boundaries, financial abuse, self‑worth;
– tools: platforms, networks, social enterprises, digital spaces, new legal frameworks;
– reach: the ability to speak to thousands of women at once and organise across cities, countries, generations.

We are the first generation of women with both **lived experience** and **infrastructure**.

That makes us the generation who can look backward and forward at the same time and say:

> “We are not going to let older women age into poverty.
> We are not going to let younger women live on ‘good girl, don’t ask.’
> We are changing this. Now.”

We are looking after older women and younger women.

Our mission runs in both directions.

**For older women:**

We are saying:

– you deserve economic safety,
– you deserve warmth, food, and secure housing,
– you deserve to stop choosing between milk in your tea, turning the heater on, and keeping a roof over your head,
– you deserve work that respects your wisdom, not just your willingness to sacrifice.

We are building services, platforms and communities — Nan Made, Lois, Esmeralda and the wider Madame Monet ecosystem — that:

– turn our skills into income in our own names,
– place women with deep experience in roles where judgement and steadiness matter,
– design housing and support so no woman is left alone, cold and scared.

**For younger women:**

We are saying:

– you do not have to be the “good girl” who never asks,
– you do not have to quietly defer to a husband or partner,
– you do not have to shrink in boardrooms or bedrooms,
– you do not have to spend your life chasing “pretty” at the expense of safety and dignity.

We want:

– sixteen‑year‑old girls who know their needs are not a nuisance,
– twenty‑six‑year‑old women who feel at home in their bodies and in leadership,
– thirty‑six‑year‑old women who understand that self‑respect is more important than approval.

We are building bridges so younger women can walk straight into lives we had to claw our way toward.

***

We are positioning our wisdom as the goldmine it is.

We have lived.
We have made mistakes.
We have survived losses we didn’t think we’d survive.
We have worked, loved, left, stayed, negotiated, raised, led, burned out, reset.

We are a **goldmine of experience and wisdom**.

We are done letting that sit on the sidelines.

When we design Nan Made and Lois and Esmeralda, Aunt Tea and Matri Pair –  all the parts of Madame Monet, we are saying to the world:

– put women over 50 in boardrooms and strategy circles;
– put us in decision‑making seats, not just behind the scenes;
– treat our judgement and creativity as assets, not as “nice extras.”

Women are brilliant leaders.

We are creative, focused and relentless when we choose to be.

When we decide to do something, we do it.

We are not the “retired” part of the story. We are the **engine room**.

***

We are changing what leadership looks like.

For too long, leadership has meant volume, speed and bravado.

We bring something different.

We understand long arcs: what happens to families, businesses and communities over time.

We notice small details: where safety is missing, where people are being quietly mistreated, where the cracks lie under the surface.

We can hold complexity: money, bodies, children, ageing parents, illness, grief, hope — all in one life.

When we sit in boardrooms and around planning tables, the questions change:

– “What happens to the woman at the bottom of this structure in ten years?”
– “Will this decision leave someone invisible and unsafe?”
– “Are we paying people properly?”
– “Are we building systems that allow women to have lives, not just jobs?”

We are changing the world by changing **whose eyes** decisions pass through.

***

We are changing it in big rooms and small kitchens.

Our revolution has two faces:

– **Big rooms**: boardrooms, councils, project teams, design tables, hiring panels, investment meetings.
– **Small kitchens and living rooms**: cups of tea, scones, gingerbread houses, blanket tents, cake, games, books read aloud.

We know that:

– big rooms shape policies, pay codes, laws and infrastructure;
– small kitchens shape people’s sense of worth, safety, love and joy.

We are turning up in both.

In the big rooms, we argue, plan, insist, redesign.

In the small rooms, we:

– read to children,
– bake,
– listen,
– talk,
– create moments where girls and boys see women as strong, loving and self‑respecting.

We change the world when:

– a child grows up seeing women lead and rest,
– a colleague watches a woman over 50 hold her ground and thinks, “I can do that,”
– a younger woman hears us say, “I’m not doing that for free,” and realises she can say it too.

We are organising ourselves, at last.

The one thing we hadn’t really done — until now — was organise ourselves.

We were scattered:

– each dealing with her own life,
– each carrying her own stories,
– each assuming she was the only one feeling this way.

Now we are finding each other.

Through:

– communities like Nan Made and Aunt Tea,
– platforms like Lois and Esmeralda,
– gatherings, tea parties, workshops, online spaces, lamplit living rooms,

we are building something bigger than any single woman:

– a generation of women over 50 who know their worth;
– who refuse to let older women be cold and hungry;
– who refuse to let girls and younger women grow up mute, scared or economically trapped;
– who use the joy and the pain of what we’ve lived to redesign what comes next.

Nan Made, Lois, Esmeralda, Madame Monet — they are **bridges** and **tools** in this.

The story is not the platform.

The story is **us**.

We are changing what it means to grow older as a woman.

We were taught that aging meant shrinking.

We are proving that aging can mean expanding.

We are:

– more honest than we have ever been,
– more unwilling to tolerate disrespect than we have ever been,
– more interested in joy than we have ever been,
– more clear about money and safety than we have ever been.

We are not asking to be “pretty.”

We are insisting on being:

– safe,
– valued,
– paid,
– free.

We look at our bodies and honour them.

We look at our lives and honour them.

We look at our younger selves and say, “You deserved better.”

We look at the girls and women coming behind us and say, “You will get better.”

We look at older women beside us and say, “You will not age into poverty. Not on our watch.”

We are the ones who will do it.

We are not waiting for someone else to fix this.

We are:

– building enterprises,
– making tea,
– baking,
– hiring,
– leading,
– writing,
– laughing,
– refusing,
– deciding.

We are the generation that:

– sees clearly what went wrong,
– knows in our bones what is needed,
– and finally has the tools to act.

We are the women over fifty.

We are the change‑makers.

We are looking after older women and younger women.

We are making sure no woman has to choose between milk in her tea, turning the heater on, and keeping a roof over her head.

We are making sure no girl is raised to believe that being “pretty” matters more than being safe, free and self‑owned.

We are the ones who are going to change the world.

Not with apologies.
Not with permission.

With honour.
With joy.
With our bodies, our brains, our baking, our boards, our platforms, our parties, our whole selves.

And we are just getting started.