This article was written for Annabel & Grace, which is now part of Rest Less.
We are also humbled to be in the company of the other winners who have all achieved so much and have changed the world around them for the better. Mary Berry is one of these winners. She is a national treasure and a great favourite of ours. Even at the age of 83, and with her very busy work schedule, she has managed to find time to be Patron of Child Bereavement UK and I am sure she is an inspiration. Another winner is Carrie Herbert, MBE who has won the Shaping the Future award as a Founder of ‘intensive care’ schools for bullied children. Lesley Knight the mother who’s funded 21 NHS helipads in memory of her son. This is to name but 3 of the 10 category winners. They are examples to all of us. Buy the November issue of Women&Home (out now) to read their stories.
As with any award, Grace and I cannot take all the credit. We are so grateful to all of our regular contributors who bring their own opinions, stories and sense of fun to our website. BackPacking Granny, Bumble, Geraldine Keith, Hotel Guru, Louloulapomme, Marvellous Mother-in-Law, Miranda, Page Turner, Poppy Patmore, Sassy, Zeynep and of course our third co-founder, Ellie. Behind the scenes there’s photographer Annabel Vere who takes many of our fashion shots and Tom, our website guru who keeps the site running smoothly and has taught us so much techie stuff over the years.
We must thank all of our wonderful clients who have found CountryWives and supported us by asking us to review their products or services. We are so inspired by them and we continue to keep finding and writing about the things that we think older women will be interested in. More and more women in our age group are not retiring but reinventing themselves, taking up new challenges such as starting a new business to fill a niche in their market. We are constantly being amazed at their passion and hard work.
Finally the biggest thanks go to our subscribers and readers because without them we would have packed it all in years ago. We love the comments that they leave on the website and the emails they send us with stories of other like-minded women that we might be interested in featuring. Our readers keep us informed and in touch with what they would most like to hear about.
This award has inspired us to continue finding more really useful things to tell our readers about. We are both in our 60s but we still feel young and able and believe we have something to offer other mature women. So come join us.
If you want to read more about how our online magazine works click HERE.
All photos in the magazine: Liz McAulay/Woman & Home
Finally a video –