Welcome to a very special week of MenoShine WOW, celebrating our Woman of the Week.

If you've been following along, you'll know that for the past five weeks I’ve introduced you to my best friends in the world, The Posse, six of us who have known each other for over 35 years and are, in essence, the beating heart of this whole MenoShine movement. This week, my Woman of the Week is my mum, Jenny, in celebration of her 80th birthday!

Before I tell you about my lovely mum, there’s something important to address. I was asked recently, ‘If we nominate someone for the MenoShine WOW, do they have to be in their menopause years?’ The answer is no.

MenoShine is for anyone

A little while ago, I wrote something that's become a bit of a manifesto for this whole movement. MenoShine is for anyone, any age and stage of life. Yes, my tagline is ‘MenoShine because no one should have to PAUSE’, but it was never just for women experiencing menopause. It's for the woman in her 30s facing early onset menopause due to illness or surgery. It's for the woman in her 40s frustrated by the complexities of perimenopause. It's for the woman in her 50s navigating her menopausal years. It's for the woman in her 60s coming out of the fog, wondering who she is. It's for the woman in her 70s who wants to shine her light bolder and brighter but needs some inspiration.

And it's for the woman in her 80s, celebrating the chapters behind her and looking forward to the next.

That woman is my mum. And honestly, she might be the most MenoShine person I know.

Where the shine comes from

To understand my mum, you have to understand where she came from, because this family is quite extraordinary but in the most quiet and humble way.

Mum’s father, my grandfather, was Jim Bradley, an artist, sculptor and Head of Art at Sidcot School in Somerset, a role he held for nearly thirty years. He believed art wasn't a throwaway subject but the way children learned to truly see the world, and he built a way of teaching around that belief so groundbreaking the school still credits him for it today. You can read more about his legacy at Sidcot here. I'm endlessly proud of what he built, and prouder still that it didn't stop with him.

In 1966 Jim spent a sabbatical year in Perugia, studying local art colleges. It was there that he fell completely in love with Italy. He bought a small plot of land near the hilltop village of Bettona in Umbria, and built a tiny house on it, Casa Mendip, which became our family's summer haven for many years.

My mum’s mother, my grandmother Helen, was a nurse, and creative in an entirely different way. I remember our summers at Casa Mendip. We'd cut fresh lavender, dry it, rub it through our fingers to strip it from the stalk, and sew it into little bags. Helen made and mended so many clothes for our family over the years. She baked bread, made jam, kept everyone clothed and fed with her own two hands. Like so many of her generation who came through rations and the war years, her creativity was survival as much as it was joy. But it was creativity none the less.

Mum has two sisters, both incredibly gifted in their own creative ways with painting, pottery, sculpting, knitting, sewing, the list is endless. One sister, we sadly lost too soon, but her creative spirit and energy live on through her work and her family. The other, amongst many talents, is a wonderful potter, and I have several of her pieces proudly placed in my house today (along with many of my grandfather’s sculptures and prints). Mum's younger brother has one of those incredible minds you don't come across very often, a maths teacher for decades, a lifelong learner, a history buff and geologist who has turned his own garden into a masterclass in self sufficiency, growing his own fruit and veg with the same quiet brilliance he brings to everything else.

That's the bloodline. Creativity was never a hobby in this family. It was the family language.

From the classroom to the headteacher's office

Mum was naturally gifted as an athlete, and combined with her love of teaching, she began her early career as a PE and biology teacher. She took time away from teaching when my brother and I came along, and went back to work once we were school age, this time as an early years teacher.

From there she worked her way up. Deputy head, and then headteacher of a primary school in an area that did not have much at all. She had to get creative just to find ways to educate and lead well with what she had. She took early retirement in her fifties and became an Ofsted inspector for early years. And then, true to form, she decided that wasn't enough. She wanted to do more. She wanted to see the world.

A Decade of Daring Decisions

In her 50s, Mum saw an advert for an adventure trip to Alaska that included kayaking, climbing, walking and white water rafting. She didn't know anyone else going on the trip. Once she arrived she realised that she was actually quite a bit older than everyone else in the group. But she didn’t let that stop her.

She landed in Anchorage and set off with twelve strangers in a minibus with canoes strapped to the roof. Tents pitched at 10pm in daylight. An 11pm canoe trip on a lake. At one point, walking to the loo in the dead of night, she came face to face with a bear up a tree, and calmly talked to it to let it know she meant no harm and just needed a wee.

On the day of white water rafting, Mum asked the trip leader outright whether he thought she was too old for it. He told her she'd know the answer herself, depending on whether she liked the music they played on the bus. In true ‘mum-form’, by the end of the trip she'd introduced the whole group to the sounds of the sixties and seventies, and they loved every minute of it.

When there weren't enough spots for everyone in the white water rafts, Mum volunteered to go with a group of strangers, purely, by her own admission, because she thought the instructor in that raft was ‘quite dishy!’ The following day, she went on to do a full day of solo white water kayaking, tapping into decades-old PE teacher instincts to watch, learn and follow. Somewhere in the middle of all this there was also Denali, North America's tallest peak, where she and the group hiked in the national park on their own, watching for bears and wildlife. The trip also included a stretch of kayaking in the ocean, dog sledding, and a flight in a tiny plane landing on the water!

Not long after the Alaska trip, Mum signed up for a two-week trek across Tanzania's Rift Valley with the Maasai. No safari lodges or luxury accommodations, and again, with a group of people she’d never met. They slept in the wild, guided by the Maasai, heard lions at night, and walked across the valley.

During the trek, in the evenings, Mum made beaded necklaces as gifts for her guides, not realising that in Maasai custom, offering a necklace is essentially a marriage proposal. She'd unknowingly proposed to four of her guides in one trip. The tribe, with great affection, gave her a name that roughly translates to "crazy white woman." They performed a wedding dance for the group that night. To calm the situation down, Mum spent the rest of the trip making everyone necklaces out of ring pulls from beer cans as she’d run out of beads!

*(This image is blurred to respect the privacy of the individuals photographed.)*

After that came two years with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) in Mongolia of all places, helping shape the kindergarten curriculum with the national education department. She learned to live through brutal cold, got mugged on a bus and somehow carried on, rode horses out into the wilderness, stayed in traditional gers rather than hotels, and became deeply involved with a local orphanage.

While in Mongolia, Mum travelled to so many places including a train ride to Beijing and then a flight to Vancouver, British Columbia to go climbing with a friend, and then on to visit me in Atlanta. Later she went to Australia, where she took a bus to Alice Springs to see Uluru, and spent a few days with the indigenous community where she learned how to make glue out of grass amongst many things.

*(This image is blurred to respect the privacy of the individual photographed.)*

Through her travels, Mum never stayed in fancy hotels. She never wanted the postcard version. She wanted to sit on the ground with people, learn how they lived, and come home with new skills and stories to tell of the magnificent places she’d been and people she’d met.

The house full of her life

Walk into Mum's house today and you'll understand her instantly. It's full of relics from her life and travels. Rain sticks, stones, dream catchers, bead curtains, sculptures and artwork from her father and her sisters, and her own creations woven in among them.

The creativity has never stopped and it never will. She's currently sewing a bedspread that is her own interpretation of a stunning sunrise photograph her father took, bringing his eye and her hands together in one piece. She knits, crochets, and used to build incredible structures out of wire or willow, a prize creation is a pair of boxing hares in her garden. She's gone through phases of felt making and wall hangings, jewellery made from beads and crystals, and dream catchers strung with tiny crystals that catch the light exactly the way she does.

Two years ago, as I began thinking about MenoShine, I gave Mum a copy of a workbook I created, made especially for her called The JenoShine Experiment. Mum was facing a hip replacement and was a little hesitant about what the recovery would look like. I wanted to remind her of the incredible spirit she has and how I knew she’d find a creative outlet to get herself through the recovery period. I wanted to remind her of the light I see within. I wanted her to have something tangible to use on both good days and bad, to be able to reflect on what she was feeling and find a spark to hold onto.

She loved The JenoShine Experiment so much that when her 80th birthday came around, she asked for it again, so she could do the whole thing over. That, right there, is Mum. With the same grit and determination I’ve witnessed for years. Now facing an upcoming knee surgery, still courageous, still curious, and still creative. Still willing to sit down and do the work of finding her own shine, at 80.

The grandma who plays to win

Ask my boys about their grandma and you'll get a flood of stories, but here’s what came up when I asked them what they loved most about her for a family video I put together for her birthday.

My two oldest, without even comparing notes, remembered the exact same thing. The only way to ever beat Grandma at chess is to give her a glass of wine first. My youngest remembers coming home from a sleep study appointment to find Mum had made him bread rolls shaped like Ninja Turtles. And my sixteen year old told her that whenever he thinks of the colour purple, he thinks of her. It's her favourite colour, and somewhere along the way it quietly became his too. He told her, “If I had to describe the colour purple, it would be you, Grandma. You're the essence of purple.”

The thread I didn't expect to find

Writing this blog has done something I didn't expect. I've spent years building MenoShine, telling myself I was creating something new. But sitting down to write about Mum, I've realised I'm not building something new at all. I'm continuing something that was already there, long before me.

My grandfather believed every single person was an artist in their own right, whatever that looked like for them. Painting, sculpture, needlework, bread making, a garden, a classroom, a business, a family. He built his entire life's work around that belief, and it clearly didn't stop with him. It's in Mum's hands as she sews that bedspread. It's in her sisters' pottery and paintings. It's in her brother's garden. It's in the boxing hares made of wire standing in Mum's garden right now. And it's in me, in this movement I'm building, in a way I didn't fully understand until I wrote this.

That belief, that everyone is an artist in their own right, that everyone has a light worth sharing with the world, that's not just a nice sentiment. That is MenoShine.

Mum, you are the epitome of everything I hope this movement becomes. Eighty years in and you are still learning, still making, still saying yes to the next adventure. Thank you for showing me, and my boys, what it looks like to shine at every single age.

Happy 80th birthday. I love you more than words can express. x

The MenoShine Movement

Next week's MenoShine WOW is a little different, and I honestly cannot wait to share it with you. Let's just say, if you loved hearing about The Posse, you're going to love this one. Watch this space.

And I want to hear from you too. Send me an email and tell me about a woman in your life who deserves her moment in the spotlight. Nominate a friend who inspires you. Nominate someone who could use a boost. And absolutely, unashamedly, nominate yourself. There is zero shame in saying "I think I'm a bit of a WOW actually." That kind of self awareness is exactly the MenoShine spirit.

Every MenoShine WOW will be featured in a book next year called The MenoShine Movement. So go on. Send me that email. I want to meet your WOW.

Sending sass and sparkles from MenoSHINE, because no one should have to PAUSE! x

MenoShine WOW: Jenny