Hilda Smith is an accidental influencer – blazing a trail for stylish midlife woman…
Sitting down for Sunday lunch with my family, I poured myself a glass of wine.
‘Have you noticed there aren’t any bloggers for women over 50,’ I quizzed my daughters Kirstin and Courtney.
They both stared at me blankly. Kirstin worked in tourism PR and Courtney was a fashion creative director. It was Spring 2015, and I’d been retired for the past three years.
I’d always loved fashion, magazines and latterly blogs about style, but there was nothing for women like me. Women who’d reached midlife.
For some of us, it’s an exciting time. Kids flown the nest and retirement, which mean more time and sometimes a bit more money for yourself.
‘Start one then,’ Courtney suggested. My husband Graham laughed as I didn’t even know how to turn on the computer! At that time, the word ‘influencer’ wasn’t in my vocabulary…
If there’s one thing I’ve learned
I’ve always enjoyed fashion and never shied away from colour. I love to experiment with clothes, and I have a weakness for a good pair of boots and a lovely coat.
At 18, I went to Trinity College Dublin to study English. And I went on to become an English teacher – eventually returning to my old secondary school near Dublin to teach.
It was a six-day week school, and I’d always wear colourful outfits: over-the-knee skirts, dresses, suits, I wore things that gave me confidence. ‘Like your outfit, Miss,’ the students would say.
I joined a Dublin hockey club where I met Graham, who worked in PR and was captain of the men’s first team. That was in 1981 and I was 26 when we married 18 months later. Kirstin was born two years after that and Courtney in 1987, just as we moved to the seaside town of Malahide (25 minutes from Dublin). I returned to teaching after each three-month maternity leave (that’s all it was then), but in 2005 I took on a second role as Academic Head. I’d always put 100 percent into my teaching, but I’d under-estimated the toll of the additional work.
One morning, I found I couldn’t get out of bed. I was exhausted; I’d been ignoring symptoms, such as loss of feeling in my legs, between my ankles and knees, and raised lymph nodes. Blood tests showed dangerously low white blood cells, but nothing sinister was found. ‘You have chronic fatigue syndrome (ME),’ my GP diagnosed. Apparently, my body was telling me to slow down, but I hadn’t taken the hint. I found conventional medicine didn’t help, and after having acupuncture and ly
