‘The average woman will live 30 years after menopause. You can have lots of fun in that time. This is our third act, the time that many women learn to ROAR! I’m now marinating in all the things I love most and writing about them.’ After retiring from a distinguished career in education and health, Jay Courtney found life rather beige. ‘I realised that I didn’t know how to do this part of my life’ she says. ‘There was no route map to follow, only a looming 'Exit’ sign, so I went on a quest to find a colour that suited me.‘ For Jay, her metier turned out to be a mix of travel and inspirational writing, combined with a talent for finding others whose experiences resonate. In Juicy Crones she celebrates the lives of women who have embraced their 'third act’ with gusto. Meet Belle, who is building her own house solo in the Australian Outback (with the help of YouTube), and Debs, who is setting up a well-being tea house in one of Hungary’s national parks. There’s also Pat, living an off-grid, permaculture life in a Dorset pony paddock, Lesley the funeral Celebrant, and a handful of others who stand as testimony to what it means to be an older, wiser woman, an explorer. Juicy Crones is a joyous celebration of post-menopausal women life travellers. ‘Crones were revered as wise-women, warriors, speakers of uncomfortable truths, carrying with them the wisdom of life’ says Courtney. ‘As for the 'juicy’ part, this is me thumbing my nose at the language often used of older women as ‘dried-up’, wrinkled, barren. Many older women I have met have been the very opposite: beautiful, vibrant, outrageously funny, full of self-knowledge, free-spirited. There is no better group to be part of. What we lack in collagen we often make up for with wisdom!‘ And the subtitle? 'Free for the Strangest Adventure’ is a quotation from Virginia Wolf in To the Lighthouse. ‘For me it represents the state of mind that enables a Crone to be juicy!’ says Courtney. ‘This is when the magic happens.’ AUTHOR: Since retirement from a distinguished career in education and health, Jay Courtney has embraced post-menopausal life. An infectious enthusiasm combined with the benefit of experience has helped her to achieve a new-found happiness and freedom, making the most of life’s ‘third act’. A proud ‘Crone’ - women once revered for their wisdom, as warriors, and as speakers of uncomfortable truth - her ability to find perspective and to offer practical support with riotous good humour have become embedded as guiding principles. ‘What we lack in collagen we often make up for with wisdom!’, she says. Until retiring, her writing had focussed solely on children’s health and well-being, but after completing an MA in Travel and Nature Writing at Bath Spa University and winning the Telegraph’s ‘Just Back’ travel writing competition for her account of a solo trip to the Faroe Islands, she has made it her mission to seek out other ‘Juicy Crones’. In this, her first book, she celebrates wonderful women, who have often overcome personal crisis and, in the words of Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse, given themselves permission to be ‘Free for the Strangest Adventure’.
