Pour yourself a glass of wine – or a very large cup of tea – and let’s have an honest chat. With Meghan Markle recently turning 45, it got me thinking about how we navigate this whole “forty-something” era.

Is it just me, or do your forties feel like someone suddenly flipped a switch in your brain? Suddenly, the desperate desire to please everyone else just… goes. You wake up, look in the mirror, and realise your bandwidth for drama and living by someone else’s rules is completely gone.

While navigating this strange and wonderful midlife shift, I’ve found inspiration in the most unexpected place: Meghan Markle.

© Leanne Bayley

Now, look, wherever you fall on the royal-watching spectrum, you have to admit one thing: at 45, the woman knows how to handle her second act. She looked at her mid-forties and basically said, “Watch this.”

Here are five totally relatable, wildly empowering midlife lessons she has taught me over the last few years.

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1. You can hit ‘reset’ whenever you damn well please

Remember back in our twenties when we thought 40 was the age where you just… settled in and stayed put? Yeah, nope.

Meghan was in her late thirties when she married into the most traditional family on the planet, and by her early forties, she had completely rewritten her life’s script. Now at 45, she’s thriving in sunny California, signing major media deals, enjoying her lifestyle brand (and the aforementioned jam!) and leaning fully into creative projects that actually make her happy.

The Lesson: Reinvention doesn’t have an expiration date. If you want to change careers at 42, start a side hustle at 45, or totally change your life’s direction in your fifties, do it. If Meghan can walk away from an actual palace to start fresh in her forties, you can definitely leave that soul-crushing job or step away from things that no longer fit who you’ve become.

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2. Boundaries are your new best friend

If midlife bestows one ultimate superpower, it’s having zero patience for toxic energy.

Watching Meghan and Harry draw a massive line in the sand to protect their family, their privacy, and their mental health has been a huge lightbulb moment for me. Now in her mid-forties, she embodies that quiet confidence of someone who refuses to shrink herself just to keep everyone else comfortable.

Midlife Mood: Learning that ‘No’ is a complete sentence – and you don’t owe anyone an essay explaining why.

How to apply this in real life

• Mute without guilt: Unfollow or mute social media accounts that make you feel like crap.
• Protect your weekends: You don’t have to go to every social event you’re invited to. Staying home in pyjamas is a valid plan.
• Ditch the energy vampires: Life is far too short to spend your hard-earned free time listening to people who only complain.

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3. Quality over everything

Can we talk about her aesthetic evolution as she’s moved through her forties? In her twenties and thirties, like most of us, it was all about fast-paced trends. Now at 45? Her whole vibe is warm, effortless minimalism. We’re talking cosy beige knits, crisp linen shirts, homemade jam, fresh flowers in simple glass vases, and quiet mornings with a hot drink.

It made me look around my own home and realise: we spend our early life accumulating stuff, but our forties should be about curating joy.

Elegance at this age isn’t about flexing or showing off. It’s about making your home feel like a calm sanctuary. It’s investing in one really good knit instead of five cheap ones, setting a pretty table just for a Tuesday night dinner, and prioritising peace over clutter.

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4. Real Queens lift each other up

On Meghan’s Netflix show she was all about uplifting her female friends, and she often celebrates female founders.

When you get into your mid-forties, the silly competition of our younger years completely melts away. You stop looking at other women as rivals and start seeing them as your tribe. Midlife is the moment we pull up an extra chair to the table, share our hard-won wisdom, and hype up the women around us. Success feels a million times sweeter when you’re helping someone else win, too.

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5. Let people think whatever they want

If there’s one thing Meghan has faced in bucketloads, it’s public opinion. Everyone has an opinion about her outfit, her voice, her decisions, her family – literally everything. And yet, at 45, she keeps showing up, smiling, cooking, working, and living her life on her own terms.

The absolute best gift of getting older is realising you cannot control how other people interpret your story.

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People are going to misjudge you, talk about you, or project their own insecurities onto you no matter what you do. So why waste energy trying to manage their opinions? Live your life, laugh loudly, wear the bold outfit, post the silly photo, and let them talk.