JANE GREEN 

I love being 50. I've discovered very big earrings. Am I wearing them today? No, I’m wearing medium earrings. 

So, I've discovered large earrings and dancing - lots of dancing - and tequila, which has been really fun. 

I'm Jane Green. I'm a Westporter. I'm a mother. I'm a writer. I'm a wife. I'm a friend. 

As a 50-year-old woman, I love that I have much more comfort in my skin than I've ever had before. I love that I'm just...I'm very comfortable about gathering the people I love and not feeling that I have to do anything that I don't want to do. I’m just freer, I think, less self-conscious at 50. The downside of turning 50 is being invisible. I don't like how we as women tend to be ignored from here on in. I'm definitely leading a life that's far more isolated than I ever expected, and when I speak to women around the country - when I go on tour and I speak to women my age - everybody says the same thing.  And I think that that has been the terrific downside of technology. And there are so many upsides. I am now very mindfully phoning my friends, and I'm FaceTiming my friends, rather than just texting because I think that face-to-face connection is everything. That's what we're built for. Human beings are really built to connect. Telling stories is an amazing way to connect with other people. And that's what life is all about. 

My writing has always followed my life. And so, you know, I started writing novels in my late 20s when I was single, so all my books were about sort of being single, and then they covered motherhood, and then teenagers. And I have to say, I'm so bored about writing about middle aged housewives living in suburbia. I'm just...I can't do that anymore. I'm done. 

So, in fact, my next book, that I'm currently story-lining is about a 29-year-old daughter of a Steve Jobs-like character.  A sort of tech guru who has changed the world, who dies unexpectedly leaving his daughter with a choice of how she then lives her life.  Does she sort of go off as a wealthy woman now, and have this glamorous, fabulous life? Or does she, in fact, own her power and take the reins, and make real changes in the lives of women everywhere?

I have raised my kids to be enormously independent, and I've modeled for them working. Which I've needed, you know.  I needed to be defined by something other than just being someone's mother. I needed absolutely to have my own identity. But I've raised them to be very independent. And I hope that they have inherited my ambition and my drive. I suspect they have - and they'll forge their own paths. 

I've spent the last 18 years thinking I'd be absolutely fine - I couldn't wait for the empty nest. But then, in the weeks before my son left, I suddenly found myself following him around the house petting him like a dog. I'd stroke him or just put my arms around him. And I actually burst into tears checking out of Bed Bath and Beyond. And it just...it really hit me.  And I found myself completely bereft, until the day we moved him in. And it was so clear that he was absolutely in the right place. I miss him terribly. I FaceTime him all the time and I would say 98 percent of the time he doesn't pick up. But it's just lovely to see him thriving. 

I actually got more tearful with Adam, with my extra...my bonus son, who was his friend who was living with us for the final year.  When Adam left and we hugged him goodbye, I actually...I cried when Adam left. And I think because I'm not his mother, I wasn't there to move him in and go through that process. It was just like he was here for a year - over a year - and then suddenly he was gone.  And that was, you know, that was really hard. Look I'm tearing up even now talking about it! 

And I would say for everybody who's going through the pain of saying goodbye to their children as they leave for college, there is a quirky little book called The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus by a woman called Sonya Sones. And it's a novel written in verse that is the funniest, and most poignant, moving, lovely, quirky, little book about a couple who whose daughter is leaving for college. So, I would suggest that for everyone. 

We have the discussion every day about what we're going to do when the kids go. You know, we have such a history in Westport.  My husband's - both his grandparents were here. My husband grew up on Compo Parkway. I can't imagine ever not having a toehold here. So, whilst it may not be this house, I definitely think we will always have something in town. I could see us definitely retiring to a little cottage by the beach. 

I'm hoping that our 60s will be filled with travel. That's what I would like to do. My parents travel a huge amount in their 70s now, and I hope that my husband and I can emulate that. Just more experiences, and maybe you know meeting my adult children all over the world. 

Every decade has been so very different for me, and I love that process of transformation, of you know, every decade just seeing how you grow, how you change. And again, as we touched upon, the comfort that you get in your skin and the values - how your values change. And acceptance. I think that's been the other real transformation in so many of the people I know. As we grow older, how we become more accepting.