KEHINDE
James
"There is NO AGE.
Ageless is what YOU CARRY
with you that is intrinsic to us all.
It is NOT A NUMBER.
It is an exquisite QUALITY."
I
Everything you will read about her in the interview is exactly as it is, she is simplicity personified, someone who ‘walks their talk’ and ‘struts their stuff’ but in the most unimposing way possible and still with a powerfulness that you can’t help but notice.
I had never spoken to Kehinde before I embarked on the interview process with her but I had noticed her from afar… her understated elegance and the grace with which she moved, so flowingly – plus she always seemed to be smiling (she has a great sense of humour and joy).
There’s a richness and rhythm to her speech, a gentleness to her cadences which makes her very easy to listen to. Read the below and be inspired that life can begin afresh at sixty in a way that is totally remarkable, if we don’t impose upon it any images of what we think it should be or what we think we need or want it to be. And therein is the secret of discovering inner riches. Kehinde is a real life, living, breathing example of someone who has connected deeply with herself, allowed herself to receive what was on offer and then embrace that wholeheartedly, without a glance backward – except in this interview I did ask her to give a few glances backward as she shares her story…
"You cannot WALK with a baby
on your back and a raffia tray
ON YOUR HEAD unless
YOU ARE ... UPRIGHT"
ON
WALKING...
ON EARLY INFLUENCES, THE FULANI WOMEN OF SIERRA LEONE, GRACE AND MOVEMENT
A few days ago when first we spoke, you said how you'd been thinking about clothing and your background and how you expressed yourself, what you had growing up, and how that had influenced you.…
I thought it would be a great place to start our interview – because you grew up in Sierra Leone, didn't you? Until you were eight or so? – JB
Until I was seven. – KJ
I am sure there is a story there but just talking about clothes now…
You've got a great sense of style and elegance which is obviously innate in you and a gracefulness when you move. And it seems to me, and I don't really know your full story, that although you've probably spent the majority of your life in UK, you still have this style, which has a flavour of Africa. – JB
Yes. And what is important is that the family I grew up in, the Creoles of Sierra Leone, were a very Anglicised tribal group. They were the descendants of slaves that took on the British norms. So, they tended to dress like the west, the western dress was their norm. They had things like the Gara and they would have the Lappa but it wasn't their everyday. Their everyday were things from Marks and Spencer's or whatever.
So that's what I grew up around but then around that were the other groups that were different communities, ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. My influences really didn't come from my immediate family. I don't feel that at all. They came from what I saw on the streets of Sierra Leone. – KJ
Right. You mentioned two things, and I don't know what they are. You said a Lappa and something beginning with G – JB
Gara is a sort of a tie-dye batik, the fabric in Sierra Leone – it's everywere. There are places like Makeni and Bo, where the women are dying fabrics. So, when you go to the markets, all the market stalls are full of vibrant colours.
This Gara cloth is like the tie dye, but really, really vibrant colours. So, there's that. And a lot of people wear gowns, round necked, open gowns, open at the sides so the breeze can come through, and then the lappa is a flat piece of cloth that you tie around your waist.
And then the women carry their babies on their backs, papoose style tied with a lappa, and they walk carrying their fish or their fruits or their bananas or their whatever on these raffia trays on their heads. You cannot walk with a baby on your back and a raffia tray on your head, unless you are... upright. – KJ
Yes – JB
So that's how they do it. They just walk and they swing their hips when they walk, there's this kind of slow walk – it's not fast, but it's just a slow walk. So that's what I grew up around. I used to sit on the veranda and just watch the women walking past. – KJ
"Fulani women: It was the
EFFORTLESS GRACE
of them, their movement and
they were UNSELF-CONSCIOUS
of this MOVEMENT."
ON
ELEGANCE
Wow. And did you love that? Did you respond to the colours or the markets or whatever else was around? – JB
Oh, I love the markets. I love the clothes. I think what happened was that I came to England and did whatever happened in England, was caught up in the sixties and the Mary Quant and the Mod, the miniskirts and all of that, but also got caught up in the seventies and all the funky clothes, platform heels, crushed velvets, bright colours, Afro wigs. I did it all. I did it all. Yes, there are pictures of me, in psychedelia.
And then I went back to Freetown (Sierra Leone). On my first trip back to Freetown I was with my twin brother and I had whatever clothes I was wearing. Then we'd be driving around Freetown and then what stood out to me were the Fulani women. The Fulanis are cattle herders, they herd cattle from one province to another. They have a mixture of Arab culture in them, so their features are different.
Their skin is lighter than mine, and they have longer heads and longer noses. But the Fulani women – I was enraptured by these women because of the way they walked. They were so beautiful. They were so elegant and it is not like in England with the fashion where everybody's trying to make a statement.
They were just ‘It’. They walked this grace and everywhere I went, I was looking out of the window saying, ‘Wow, look at that’. Everything I came in was like nothing compared to them, and it wasn't just the clothes, it wasn't just what they would wear, they would have their own lappas, they'd have their booba tops, they would have their head scarves – but it's the way they walked. It was just the effortless grace of them, their
movement and they were un-self-conscious of this movement. You know, in Europe, if they’ve got a style, everyone's aware that they've got a style, they walk in the style. – KJ
Yes.– JB
But this just emanated from them. And that's what really moved me. And I always, always remember it. And I went online since our last conversation and I Googled Fulani women, but I just saw horrors – because obviously the time I’m referring to was when I was eighteen, in 1970.
I saw lots of makeup, lots of stuff on their lips – they had been ruined basically – to have a Facebook page or an Instagram account. That's not the Fulani women that I knew in 1970 – then there was a purity. Whereas now it's just been completely corrupted. And I'm sure there are still some that are in the pure state. But when I went online, that's not what I found, so I just quickly closed it down.
So, there were the Fulani women and then there were the Mandingo women. The Mandingo women were up country where my mother used to work in her diamond mining concessions in the provinces. I used to go up to the villages and the Mandingos, black, jet black skin, and they wore vibrant purples, greens, browns.
I mean, they were so vibrant and they wear their wealth in their ears. They have solid gold, eighteen-carat large gold earrings in their ears. And these are powerhouse women. The Fulanis are slender, the Mandingos are more solid. And you do not mess with a Mandingo woman. Just do not. They're traders, they're trading gold, they're trading fabrics, they're trading whatever they trade in. They had me astonished that there was such raw beauty, deep in the villages, up in the provinces just doing their thing.
So, all of that influenced me. – KJ
"I've DONE EVERYTHING
with MY HAIR.
Until I came
to a point: ‘You know what?
I JUST want it
SIMPLE"
ON
HAIR...
But I wanted to say something about how I was brought up. The house that I lived in, in Wales, was the complete opposite of all of that. It was a working-class house. There was no interest in clothes or looks or anything. They were poor. Literally. I won't go into the story of how, but they were loving in their own way, in the good way, you know?
And so, the mother there used to knit clothes for me. She knitted and she made clothes for me which was lovely. And I remember one beautiful red dress that she knitted for me with a cowl neck and it was fitted. And I loved that dress. Absolutely loved that dress because it was very similar to what I'm wearing now – I love the knitted fitted clothes.
There was a point where they were very short of money. And I remember her taking me to this place, a family run second-hand shop – and I love charity shops now – she bought me these shoes. But these shoes were black, heavy, ugly. When she gave me these shoes, I thought, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ And I remember thinking, ‘I never ever want to put my feet in anything that looks like this again. I can't wait to get to the stage when I can buy my own shoes’. And they were so awful. The elegance that I've just described, that was not what this was. These shoes were like a clog but not the Dutch clog. She just didn't think, she just thought, ‘It's cheap, it's her size. I'll buy it, I'll put it on her feet’. It was horrible
The other thing about this household, was that they did not know how to look after African hair. When you are at home, your hair is braided every night so that it's soft or it's plaited. So, they had no idea what to do with this hair.
And of course, my birth mother was thousands of miles away, nobody told her. If you see photographs of me at that time, my hair is just nappy. It's knotted. Nobody would photograph you with hair like that in Africa. But they didn't know. So, it was only when I was twelve, my cousin came up and she showed me how to braid my own hair and that's when I started to braid it. And you have to oil our hair. You can’t just leave it – you have to condition it, nightly. So, it's a ritual that you do little plaits every night, then you undo them in the morning and then you use your afro comb, and then it's soft. I grew up for the first, say four years in UK with absolutely no attention paid to my hair. Or my skin because that's the other thing with us at home, we are always conditioning our skin. You don't have to condition skin in Africa, in Freetown because it's so humid but in the West, you absolutely must moisturise your skin. So that didn't happen. – KJ
There's two things that came up when you were talking to me. One is that I've always noticed African hair because I grew up in London and there were a lot of Jamaicans that were arriving at that time, which was the early sixties. I was always very attracted to them because of their vitality. – JB
I've been to Jamaica – I was sitting in an audience and everyone was black apart from a couple of people. And everyone had something amazing going on with their hair. Either they were wearing some kind of a hat or things through their hair, or their hair itself was highly styled. And then I was noticing in New York last summer how all the black people had pretty elaborate hair styles. – JB
There's lots of transition because for a while, you know, there was the Afro cut and there were also the Afro wigs. – KJ
Yes, that's right. In the seventies and Jimmy Hendrix made that popular… – JB
And Angela Davis, she had the natural afro. Then there was a move away from that and everybody was having their hair straightened. Everyone was having their hair either straightened with a hot comb and vaseline or chemically processed. And I was very much of the radical ilk. I said, ‘I will not be having my hair straightened.’ I was into cornrows.
I'd go and sit for hours to have my hair cornrowed, or I'd have my hair in little plaits with beads. I went for that – for a while, my hair was just beaded. That was in the seventies. But there's a whole thing about black women, whether they be in Africa or they're in America or in the Caribbean, they absolutely abhor their natural hair, they hate it. They'll cover it, they'll straighten it, they'll do whatever there is to do with it. And I've done it only once or twice, but it wasn't me. It wasn't me, it didn't feel right. I stopped it. And now there’s the hair weave, another trend not for me.
I've had the extensions. There was a time when I had long extensions, which I liked because I could then flick my hair. I've done everything with my hair. And then it came to a particular point and I just thought, ‘You know what? I just want it simple. I just want a simple cut’. Then I just started to have it cut really, really short, went to the other extreme, and that's how it's been.
– KJ
"Also, in my sixties
I CONNECTED to my
INNER AUDREY HEPBURN
Blue, grey, salmon pink – OUT.
Block colours and prints,
black and white – IN."
ON
BEING SIXTY...
To go back to your story briefly – you ended up living in London eventually which is quite a fashionable place. That's where you were working. Have you always had your own sense of style? Has it been a kind of developed process for you where you've now distilled it into what you wear today? – JB
When I look back at photographs, I see all sorts of different styles but I really didn't connect to my own sense of style until I was sixty. That's when I started to feel what to wear in terms of clothes. And I always thought that certain colours suited me and I always gravitated to certain colours, the more vibrant ones. And then suddenly I just thought, ‘No, it's not that’. And so, then I moved to black.
What I see, when I look back at photographs of myself, I see someone trying to find themselves through the clothes that I wore. Sometimes I'm wearing very African clothes but I didn't really connect to the woman in me, the true woman in me until very late in life. – KJ
JB: Can, can you talk a little bit more about that, what that was for you? How that then expressed through you as your style? – JB
Let me just say that before that happened, I went through phases where I was just wearing rubbish. I was not really attuned to me. I might have been attuned to people I was moving with or whatever. I've seen photographs of myself. I'm thinking what was I in?
Disregard would be the word, Josephine. I remember a beautiful cerise pure silk blouse bought by my birth mother in London. I could not receive its vibrancy, colour, delicacy – it was too much. It was rejected (I was angry) and exchanged for a Shetland wool cardigan, camel in colour from the same luxury hotel.
Disregard. I really lost the plot. When I left home in Wales, I followed the trends of the time for many years. And I was very trendy and I had all the clothes and ... – KJ
And you look good in them. I imagine you looked amazing. – JB
And I looked good on the outside, you know? People were always photographing me and all of that sort of stuff, but it wasn't true. Whereas now it's me. It’s, not me really, but it's like this – before I came to this interview, I realised that there's an agelessness which is something that is intrinsic to all of us, but you have to connect to that agelessness.
To answer your question on my style, in my sixties (and a little earlier) I embraced silk, cashmere and merino wool clothes, new or nearly new, I sought them out. Now I mainly wear cashmere. I had a beloved fine merino wool knitted purple trouser suit which I wore for work. It was classic and I loved how it made me feel – delicious.
Also, in my sixties I connected to my inner Audrey Hepburn. Shapeless trousers, non-descript tops – OUT. Tailor-made (in Vietnam) capri pants – IN. I loved them, I felt like I was coming home. Blue, grey, salmon pink – OUT. Block colours and prints, black and white – IN. Jumpers – black polo-neck and fitted – delicious.
When I had just turned sixty, I went to a very wise female counsellor, and she said, ‘Kehinde, this is where it all starts. Go out there and enjoy it. I know sixty-year-olds all over the place who are having a ball of a time’. And that meeting gave me permission to just drop everything that went before, really re-imprint and move in a different way.
And I also had sessions to get help with my finances. There was a time when I was lost. I was not good with money. I was in a bit of a mess, when I say I lost my way. And this lady just tweaked me. She said, this is how you do it. She gave me such a solid foundation for my elder years and by then I was receiving retirement money. She simply said, ‘Don't spend your retirement money. Save it. Work’.
That was the spark that ignited me because I just started building, building, building, building, building, building resources on the side and then working, working, working, working, working, working.
And then I just thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing’. So those two women brought within me such a sense of connection with my deepest essence. Then from there I was able to say, ‘Right, this is what I like, this is calling me, that's calling me’. –KJ
ON
EXPERIMENTATION...
I was CAUGHT UP in the sixties
and the Mary Quant and THE MOD, the miniskirts
AND ALL OF THAT."
MOVING TO THE UK – BEING BROUGHT UP IN WALES –
HER SISTER
Then there was my sister who was eight years older than me, we all had travelled to England together, four of us travelled to England together. She went to a private school – we didn't – but she was very elegant in the Western style, so she had all the clothes and she chose clothes of a particular cut and a flavour – and she had the hair – and cars would stop when she walked by.
But she was different – hers was more of a staged classic elegance. It wasn't coming from within like the Fulani women. I'm only realising this now – her photographs were always on the mantelpiece because she looked amazing. But what she did for me was that living as I did in this Welsh working-class family, she'd come on holidays and she was always saying to me, ‘Sit up straight’.
No-one in that household was bothered about posture. No poise. Not in that household and she would come in and spot it immediately. She said, ‘That's not how we sit’. So that was amazing to get that from her. From when I was about ten or eleven, she started to hone in on how I moved and how I sat, particularly how I sat in chairs.
So, there was my sister, that influence. I used to go shopping with her and she'd always go to these parts of Manchester where they had very specialist shops that sold really lovely clothes and she didn't have a lot of money, but she might just buy one item, with really elegantly cut fabulous fabric. That's how she did it.
For many years I was very different, but I always had that sense of my sister in her twenties, her early twenties. Of course, what happened later on to her is something else, which I won't go into, she lost all of that. – KJ
From what you are saying about how you were affected by your sister, who was an influence and about the Fulani and Mandingo women with their colours and gracefulness – style, dress, movement was obviously something you were very aware of and sensitive to. And you talked about the experimentation in your younger years when you were into the Afro wigs and all the fashion gear.
Clothing was an important part of your expression.
– JB
Yes, it was. I was just moved by clothes, women, movement, fabrics, all of that, you know. For a while I came back from Africa with masses of fabrics and had clothes made while I was on that first trip because you have all the tailors cutting and sewing and stitching. And we have all these embroiderers, everything's embroidered, machine embroidered. So yes, I was very much moved by it.
I think what moved me most was the every-day-ness of the beauty of the culture, the women and their dress, the every-day-ness of it. It wasn't as if you were going to an event and these women were dressed up, they were just walking along the streets. They were just out there, women going to the sea to pick up their fish and putting on their metal pans and then just walking the streets. It was just amazing. – KJ
Mm-hmm. Yes. Beautiful. – JB
"I DONT FEEL as if I'm wearing clothes FOR EFFECT.
I just DRESS for the moment
and how I feel in THAT MOMENT
– that's it."
ON
SIMPLE STYLE...
Then what I did from my sixties on was I charity shopped. Occasionally I go and buy clothes from proper shops, but I love to go out and find bargains in charity shops, and most of the time, that's what I'm wearing. – KJ
Love it. So, you don't mind that they're things that other people have worn? – JB
No, because you re-imprint them. You just re-imprint them.
You wash them, clean them. It’s the joy of going into these little shops and not knowing what you will find, but that there's something there, just waiting for you to pick it up. Could be a scarf, could be a skirt. Could be a dress. There's one dress that I wear a lot for events, which I just found in this charity shop for about ten pounds and I’ve worn it to weddings.
I reached the stage where it works, it works for me. So instead of style, it's just keeping it simple. Everything is very, very simple now. I had a huge clear out and decluttering about six, seven years ago, and I just literally got rid of everything except for very few choice items, which stay. Shoes – the lot. It just went.– KJ
There's a beautiful freedom in that. Isn't there? A simplicity? – JB
Now I just go and I just pick a few things. There’s not a lot of clothes, there's a lot of Pulse wear [activewear brand] now. I just wear skinny things, black and I wear big boots and I love them interestingly enough. And very simple dresses, straight styles. Polo necks, halter necks. – KJ
In your wardrobe are there any traditional clothes?
– IP
All gone. Gone. I had so much in boxes and I just thought, ‘I'm not wearing these’, because they were part of the culture but they didn't represent who I am. I don't need to be wearing gowns. – KJ
And is there anything where you combine with a belt or something that comes from the traditional? Or a bag or something for the hair or earrings or something where you feel, ‘Wow, this is worth keeping to bring it into my daily wardrobe?’ – IP
There's nothing. I have just gone, that's not it, that’s not it, that is not me. Out. I have eighteen carat gold earrings and necklace my mother gave me. I have one Gara tablecloth, which is a printed tablecloth with napkins, which I've kept. And I bring that out when someone comes for dinner. I have one drawing on the wall here of a Fulani woman.
It's a pastel drawing. I kept that because it was given to me by my brother and it was done by somebody he knew. It was rolled up for years and then when I had the flat re-done, I thought, ‘Ah, this now goes up’. And I had it framed and put up.
There were lots of lovely things I had but all I can say is that I've just felt, ‘clean sweep’. Let it go. – KJ.
And so do you find that you live with a lot of simplicity? I get this feeling from you that you tread quite lightly on the earth and that there's a simplicity in what you do. – JB
I have a Pulse shirt which says, ‘Rich in simplicity’ it’s the one I wear most. It's a sweatshirt or it can be a t-shirt. It can be whatever you want it to be. And yes, everything is super simple about my clothes. You'll see there's no big anything. It's just leggings, black top. But what I do love, the only thing that's stayed are head scarves. I'm always wearing head scarves, but I don't wear them the way they wear them in Africa, in Freetown. It's just scarves around my neck or on my head.
I feel as if I've lived somewhere else at some point, so I just love wearing head scarves. Winter, summer, rain, shine. – KJ
Are they traditional? – IP
They have traditional ones. Oh, they are very elaborate. But they're not me. And in fact, the way I wear my head scarf looks kind of Arabic or Muslim – more Arabic. My family always look at me as if to say, ‘Why are you putting that on your head?’ But that's the way that fits me. Feels good. So that's it. It's very simple how I live. I have a simple flat and I wear simple clothes. I wear a lot of black and I’m beginning to enjoy gold.
The interesting thing is that when I work as a carer, I dress every day. I just love putting on clothes. That’s just like, you know, a nice bit of funkiness. I love the Pulse brand because they have inspirational messages on their tops and I wear them in the little communities, in the villages where I work, just super simple.
– KJ
Did you used to spend a lot of money on clothes and things at some point in your life? – JB
Yes, I used to spend much more on clothes, but I used to go to the department stores or to these little independent stores and buy things. But now I don't, I can't be bothered with department stores, anything like that. I've moved on. So, I like little shops and there's just a joy in buying clothes for next to nothing. An absolute gem. And what you find is that you find fabrics, proper fabrics because some of them are, I won't call them vintage because I don't go looking for vintage but you find beautiful fabrics for next to nothing. – KJ.
And do you have particular places that you go that you know are great areas because people donate good quality clothes? – JB
Good question because I work in these places where people have a lot of money. So, their charity shops have quality items and that's where I tend to go. And then here in London, I go to Highgate, to Muswell Hill and Marylebone High Street. To places where again, you'll find really lovely clothes that people have just got tired of. And, some of them are actually new. And it seems in London a lot of people are size eight and ten like me, so I can pick up clothes pretty easily.
Yes, I just love wearing clothes, but now I don't feel as if I'm wearing clothes for effect. I just dress for the moment and how I feel in that moment – that's it. And there's nothing more than that. – KJ.
Do you turn things over quite quickly or do you find that you don't need the stimulation of shopping anymore? – JB
No. I can still get caught out with clothes and see something and think, ‘Oh, this is what I want’. And I buy it and take it home. And I think, ‘what is that?’ And then it's out. And I bought something recently in Scotland, which was really expensive and then I never wore it. I picked it up, I said, ‘No way’. I was with a friend and we got caught in that shopping bubble, which you can get into. We sat down and we said, what was that about?
I mean we both got caught. I took the item back to another charity shop because I never put things online and sell what I bought. I just can't be bothered. That's too much work. That's too much effort. I just give it away and then buy something else. –KJ
I have one question that is really, bubbling in me since you talked about the grace and movement of the Fulani women. And when I met you the first time, what stood out for me was the grace you are walking and the grace you moved and the grace you danced in. Then when you described how as a child you were watching these women passing and seeing this graceful movement and this is so freeing when women can move so gracefully and freely, moving the hips and everything.
I was wondering did you see this movement in Western women as well? Or did you lose connection to it? Or did you find it in yourself when you were a child and then move it through your life – because the way you move your body it looks like you never lost it. Or did you lose it and re-claim it back? – IP
Yes, I think I lost it. I think I had it. Later on in my teens, a little bit of it, I had in my twenties, a little bit. But somewhere in between a lot of things happened in my thirties, and forties, I literally lost my way, as I said. But what I observed as a child, actually this was kept, the essence was in me and I've just reclaimed it, your words, from my sixties.
I do it by just keeping clothes very, very simple. I don't like a lot of clutter around me. Just simple jeans, simple jumper, simple pencil skirt. I love pencil skirts fitted. I love simple knitted dresses fitted, boots. I can feel an exquisiteness in my body now when I dress and I go out – even if it's just going to the shop, I will put my head scarf on. I will dress for the shop, I still put lipstick on.
What I've noticed in the little community where I work, in a little hamlet, I have noticed the women have started to change, up their game, in the neighbouring houses. I've noticed they're having their hair cut, they are wearing more beautiful clothes, even if it's just cutting the garden. They've noticed me coming out and I'm wearing my black and gold. This is deep in the country. I'm still wearing it. – KJ.
But as you say, you’ve always been noticed, people used to take photographs. It wasn't just what you were wearing, it was something about you. – JB
There was a point in my life when my closest friend was an Indian woman, Caribbean descent Indian. And she was super graceful and I spent a lot of time looking at her and thinking she was IT. Can you imagine that? – KJ
NOW in my seventy-first year,
style morphs with PURPOSEFULNESS
in the way I DRESS, WORK,
WALK, EXPRESS"
ON
FINDING HER CALLING...
I want to explore a bit more about your sixties. – JB
For years I worked in corporate. I was in management, I was training, I was picking very beautiful clothes to go out and do my training work. But then all of that was stripped away. All my contracts went. Apart from a couple in London, in the city. I had very little money and then I became a carer, first of all, a home carer, then a live-in carer.
That's when everything changed, I thought, ‘Wow, this is it. This is amazing. I know how to do this’. And so that just brought something back in me that just said, ‘you are amazing, Kehinde’.
I lived with a woman for six years who had Parkinson's disease and she absolutely adored me. She saw me. She saw the real me. She adored me. I adored her. And that was the flowering. This was the reclaiming. The flowering of the true essence of me came through this, came through being a carer. I just loved it so much. Adored the fact that I could be of service to others. And so it just affected everything else I did. Gave me the money. I cleared out this house, redecorated the flat, chucked out all the rubbish, chucked out all my business suits. Everything went out.
Simple. Hands on, practical. You go in, you help somebody. You wipe somebody's bum, you cook their food, you drive them. Simple life. That's me in essence, simplicity. – KJ
Beautiful. – JB
And that came when I was sixty. All the big jobs that I took or whatever jobs they were, I realised that none of them gave back what caring has given back to me. Nothing compares with it.
It's so, so, it's super simple. – KJ
It’s beautiful talking to you because I really get that sense with you that you are so settled with yourself and the simplicity. And that's a very restful energy to be with.
And this is a great thing to hear because you are saying that you discovered yourself at sixty and you'd had a high-flying life, you were a successful career woman. And then it just all went and you haven't missed it. In fact, you've discovered something much more.
People are afraid of getting older but at any age and whatever life you've had, you can let it all go, can't you? And discover something more. You’re actually living that and it's the simplicity of your life and the vitality of what you live and what you've discovered for yourself really works. – JB
Yes. And for a while when I first came into care work, I had the consultancy there, I had the care work there. I'd go away for four weeks, come back, come to London, go to the city, do the consultancy. I kept it, because I’d earn more in a day than I’d earn in a week as a carer. But then after a while I just saw, ‘Oh, that can go. Don't need that anymore’. This is where it's at. And this transition happened just like that.
You know what else happened? I'll just say this. It is what came to me in my sixties. I realised after spending a lot of time comparing myself with other people, I had the thought just be myself. That's it. Just be you.
Now in my seventy-first year, style morphs with purposefulness in the way I dress, work, walk, express.
So, to be in a place where I’ve been blessed with a responsibility in life that fully represents what I am here for and is of service to others 24/7. What else is there?
And what came to me this morning about agelessness is equality. There is no age. Ageless is that you carry something with you that is intrinsic to us all. It is not a number it is an exquisite quality. – KJ
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Photography by Iris Pohl: www.incocreation.de