I caught up with this podcast recently – it was broadcast on ‘Woman’s Hour’, BBC Radio 4, last month.

In this interview, Kim (best know for her role as Samantha Jones in ‘Sex and the City’) talks about ageing, later life without children and single life over 50. She’s very candid about what this means for her and some of the content seems to apply just as well to men facing these type of issues, as it does to women.

For example, the part where she talks about having hurt her knee and visiting the physiotherapist who tells her: “It’s not really going to come back the way it was.” and uses the phrase “…at your age…” which, for Kim, was the first time she’d heard this – “one of those landmarks…” she calls it.

In answer to Kim’s question “…what do you mean it’s not going to be the same? So what do I do now?” the physiotherapist replies: “You have to strengthen all of the muscles around it.”.

Like Kim, I think this is a fantastic metaphor for all sorts of changes that we go through in life and Kim goes on to say: “So if I can’t use it, I’m going to have to find other ways of dealing with this to strengthen that part of me which is no longer what it used to be.”.

I am reminded of how we cope with other losses such as bereavement, serious illness, redundancy, retirement, divorce, and so on. Events that can leave us without a way to express or experience a particular part of ourselves – for a time, at least – and how, once we have come to terms with what has changed, we often find another way around things.