You'll never see journalist, TV presenter, and author, Jessica Rowe, grinning under a headline that reads "fabulous at 50" or "feisty at 50."
She refuses to fit into the cliched trope that tries to package women up into a neat little box. She spent too many decades doing that.
But since turning 50 in June this year, Rowe has realised she's shed all of those 'protective' layers she spent so many years building up. The ones that made sure she spent her 20s and 30s trying to be the perfect career woman, the perfect mum, the perfect partner and the perfect best friend.
She's not perfect, and more importantly, she no longer wants to be. But it's taken this long for her to truly, wholly, accept that.
Here's everything Jessica Rowe thinks you need to learn before you turn 50:
1. Ticking off 'goals' isn't real life.
As Rowe tells Mamamia, there comes a time when you realise that it's the "zig-zagging of life" that makes it worth living.
Fitting into the aforementioned boxes, and spending your life just ticking off the goals that society sets for you, is not only unrealistic, it's also unsustainable for any length of time.