Gilly Smith is an author and podcaster who coaches and works with women in mid-life to help them find their voice. You can buy her book out this week,

How to Start and Grow a Podcast here.

What is your name?

Gilly Smith

Where do you live?

Brighton, UK

What do you do?

I’m an author and podcaster.

Tell us what it’s like to be your age?

Blimnin fantastic! At 54, I left the part-time working, child-focussed world and started podcasting. Four years on, I’ve found my voice, am coaching others, all midlife women, to find theirs in podcasting, hosting retreats (pre and post COVI) and my book on How to Start and Grow a Podcast has just come out. Finding my voice in podcasting must have helped my writing too; after writing 15 or so books, I’ve just been shortlisted in the food writer category for the Gourmand Best in the World Awards in June for my book Taste and the TV Chef: how storytelling can save the planet.

What do you have now that you didn’t have at 25?

Where do I start? Voice, confidence, belief in myself, a proper relationship, a passion to change the world and a career that I love and can see growing until the day I die.

And what about sex?

I literally wrote the book on sex, but it’s not until I felt confidence in myself that it really works.

And relationships?

Marriage is a deep dive into ourselves and that’s been a 25-year swim among different universes, only occasionally coming up for air!

How free do you feel?

Once I’m done my lower back reset yoga in the morning – FREEEE

What are you proud of?

Finding myself in my 50s. My girls. My podcasts.

What keeps you inspired?

Family, work, campaigning through podcasting, communicating.

When are you happiest?

Pretty much all the time. I’m a white middle-class mid-lifer living happily, working creatively and keeping warm and safe in a pandemic. How could I complain?

And where does your creativity go?

Into my podcasting and writing, my daughters and my gold walls.

What’s your philosophy of living?

It’s never too late.

And dying?

I read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying at an impressionable age. Watching my dad die was one of the most incredible and privileged experiences of my life. I’m cool with it.

Are you still dreaming?

ALWAYS. I also host a weekly Dreamwriting Zoom class with a bunch of mid-life women.

What was a most outrageous action of yours?

I’m not sure I’d call anything I do outrageous although most people dare to ask for most of the things I ask for.