Rebuilding Your Life From Scratch in Your 50s: Producer Hilary Shor on Confidence, Aging and Living on Your Own Terms

Confidence that was earned

Rosie’s first impression of Hilary Shor was that she does not care what anyone thinks. Hilary’s answer is that she earned it. She survived a traumatic childhood and a traumatic marriage, was in New York on 9/11, lived through a bombing in the UK and the Los Angeles earthquake in the 1990s, and has lost many of the people closest to her. Then, in her 50s, she had to restart her life and career from nothing.

This is a funny, sharp and sometimes unsparing conversation about aging in an industry that would rather you disappeared, menopause, the younger generations she worries about, the difference between followers and reputation, healing with her mother, and why being single later in life does not mean being incomplete.

What this episode covers

• How surviving hard things built a confidence nobody can take away
• Restarting a life and career in your 50s with no money, and doing it with grace
• Menopause rage, and getting through it by letting the river carry you
• Why society treats older women as if they have no use, and how to plant your flag
• Her worries about phones, isolation and lost common sense in younger generations
• Why relationships, not followers, are the real wealth
• Small kindnesses, empathy and getting out of your own head
• Being single, complete and unwilling to settle

A survivor’s confidence

Hilary describes herself as a survivor with a strong instinct to act. In the episode’s opening story, she gets out of an Uber on a narrow Hollywood Hills road and directs a line of stuck cars like a traffic cop. That instinct, she says, has carried her through a great deal, and somewhere along the way she found the confidence to stop caring about what she looks like, what she weighs, whether she has a partner or a job, or what people in the business think of her.

About fifteen years ago she decided to walk her own path and live in her own skin. Restarting her life and career in her 50s with no money taught her what actually matters: your relationships, and the peace with which you put your head on the pillow at night. Did I do the right thing today? Was I a good person? Those, she says, are the questions.

Plant your flag

When Rosie mentions the agent who told her menopause was not a sexy subject, Hilary points out that seemingly every movie star now has a menopause brand. Her own experience was rough. Menopause, she says, made her feel out of her mind, filled with rage, yelling at her daughter and at people on the phone. What got her through was acceptance: letting go and letting the river carry her.

She is blunt about how society treats women her age, as if they no longer have any use. Her response has been to know her value and own it. In her line of work, she says, you have to plant your flag and let everyone know you are still here. People rely on her, she needs to work, and she is not backing down because someone notices her flabby arms or wrinkles.

Look up from your phone

Hilary raised her daughter in New York and worries about the generations coming up behind her: young people who cannot read a map, who sit in a stuck car waiting rather than acting, and who are increasingly at the mercy of technology. AI is useful, she says, but the human brain is extraordinary, and we are losing sight of emotion and human connection.

She sees a lot of young people adrift: isolated after COVID, priced out of the things previous generations could expect, connecting mainly through social media and dreaming of becoming influencers. Rosie shares her own preference for things you have to work for, and her worry that people no longer even see the same news, which makes building community harder.

You can buy followers, but not a reputation

Hilary may not have a huge following, but she has a reputation, built partly by paying forward the help she received when she was young. She runs women’s groups, mentors people across film, fashion and PR, and takes calls from anyone who needs advice. Her strategy, she says, is to get out of her own head and into the other person’s: what is going on in their life? Her advice on confidence is to accept yourself and value what you bring, and to make small connections count, such as asking an assistant how they are or looking up to thank the waiter.

Becoming a mother healed a great deal for her, and she was present for her own mother at the end of her life after a difficult relationship. Today she is single and expects to stay that way. She has worked hard on being complete on her own, would love someone to share dinner with, but will not compromise for someone who is not her equal intellectually and spiritually. There may be another chapter ahead, she says, or not.

Timestamps

Times refer to the YouTube video.

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Questions explored in this episode

Related resources

• Mindfulness for life transitions
• Emotional resilience without the toxic positivity
• Perimenopause rage and menopause anger
• Self-compassion, and why it is not the same as letting yourself off
• Mindfulness and mental health coaching with Rosie Acosta
• All episodes of The Radically Well Podcast