Autumn Chickens
The Online Magazine for Forward Thinking People in Mid-Life and Beyond
Because we never stop reading
Too Young to Get Old
Lifestyle Advice from Author, Broadcaster and Retired Harley Street Psychotherapist Christine Webber
"Ten years ago, my main job was being a health writer. I was in my early sixties and I became very interested in ageing, and how to do it in a positive way.
I decided to write a book on the subject, but guess what? My usual publishers were not at all interested in anything about women over 50! Where have we heard that before? So, it took a while, but eventually – having changed agents and publishers – Too Young to Get Old came out in February 2010.
A decade on, keeping healthy is obviously more of a challenge. I wondered if I should update the book. But instead, I’ve recorded a short series of video podcasts.
The first one is scheduled for this week and I hope it will be of particular interest to writers and bloggers of ‘a certain age’. After all, we spend a lot of time indoors, sitting down. Are we doing enough to keep ourselves in the best of health? My plan, by the way, is not to ‘instruct’ anyone about what they should do. Simply, to get us all thinking about whether we can do more to achieve our collective aim of living as well and as vibrantly as possible, for as long as possible."
Christine Webber originally trained as an opera singer but had to re-think her career plans when her voice professor told her: ‘Your voice is OK, but your legs are very much better!’
Musical theatre beckoned. There was some success. But not much. In 1979, she became a news presenter for Anglia TV. At last she had found something she enjoyed that other people thought she was good at. It was such a relief that she stayed for 12 years. Towards the end of that period, In Honour Bound, her first novel, was published. After leaving Anglia, she became an agony aunt for various publications including TV Times, Best, Dare and BBC Parenting. And she wrote relationship advice columns for The Scotsman and Woman magazine. She also broadcast advice on Trisha, The Good Sex Guide Late and from the BBC’s Breakfast sofa. During her ‘problem page’ years, she decided to train as a psychotherapist – which led to her having a practice in Harley Street.
Christine has written twelve non-fiction books including How to Mend a Broken Heart and her guide for female baby boomers, Too Young to Get Old. She has also ghosted and consulted on several celebrity books. But in 2016, she returned to writing fiction and published a novel about romance in mid-life called Who’d Have Thought It? Her subsequent novel, It’s Who We Are, also explores what it is to be fifty-something (or older) in today’s turbulent world, and was published in January 2018.
