As an active women's rights campaigner, menopause specialist, author and broadcasting icon, we are delighted to announce that Mariella Frostrup is joining the HELLO! family. In her new monthly column, 'Ask Mariella', the 62-year-old shares her wisdom and expertise in answering readers' questions about the burning issues that can affect all women as we move into this stage of midlife. To celebrate the news, Mariella joined Ateh Jewel on the HELLO! Second Act podcast where she shared her own honest account of the life lessons she has learnt, from her tough early years in Ireland, becoming an It Girl about town in the 80s and 90s with friends Hugh Grant and Patsy Kensit, to the lessons she has learned as a wife and mother-of-two later in life.
Reaching her 40s was "the point at which my life pivoted in a different direction, one that I'd longed for – to a place of security, where I felt more able to take risks," the broadcaster tells Ateh.
A midlife pivot
It was just before her 40s, aged 39, that Mariella met her future husband, the human-rights lawyer Jason McCue, and it was then she realised she'd "broken a pattern. He was someone who actually didn't need fixing." Two children, Molly, 20, and Danny, 19, followed, and Mariella relishes the fact that she became a mum aged 41.
© Lia Toby"I was incredibly lucky, but it was my dream to have these two amazing characters come into my life. They made me want to change the world more, and faster," she says. In 2018, aged 55, she made a BBC documentary about menopause in which she shared her struggles to find the right treatment. "Menopause galvanised me into battling because I could not believe the injustice of it," she says. "I couldn't believe that this thing that happened to every woman was considered shameful to even bring up. I was like: 'I can't have my daughter grow up ashamed of something that just marks a turning point in our lives.'"
Listen to Mariella Frostrup in conversation with Ateh Jewel on the Second Act podcast.
