When Dame Kelly Holmes stood on the podium with medals around her neck at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics in Sydney and Athens, her beaming smile hid a deep unhappiness that would continue for years.
Because despite finding international success as an award-winning athletics champion, being honoured with an MBE in 1998 for her services to the military and a DBE in 2005 for her services to athletics and enjoying a top-flight TV career, Kelly reveals in this week's Second Act podcast that she didn’t find true happiness until she was in her fifties.
“I only personally feel like I've had two or three years of real happiness,” says Kelly, 55, who reveals in the emotional chat with Ateh Jewel that she had episodes of self-harm and suicidal thoughts before eventually coming out as gay in 2022, aged 52.
“It’s been three years where I as a person changed, but only two years where I'm in this position where I feel every day is going to matter,” she says. “I'm waking up positive, and every day I'm going to do the best I can to make my life fruitful and keep evolving.”
The freedom she feels from living her true, authentic life has given her a new vigour as she approaches her sixties.
© Visionhaus/Getty Images“The next ten years can be even better. If you're in a good place, you want to make the most of it and grab every day with the best opportunity to feel happiness, because I definitely haven't had that in the past.”
A few years after her mother, Pam, her closest ally, died in 2017, Kelly had a breakdown. “She always wanted me to just be me. She knew how much I was suffering with my mental health, because I was so scared of people really knowing the true me. “[When she died], I wasn’t living [my life] because I wasn’t being the Kelly Holmes I wanted to be. I was self-sabotaging to the point where I didn’t want to be here.
“My proudest moment is being strong enough to want to carry on. I chose life.”
Now she has found her “freedom”, and in her work as a motivational speaker she is passionate about helping other women in midlife find their second act, whatever that may look like.
“I think life is a journey. [Your] second act is a freedom to be truly yourself, to be in the present and to know your value, your worth. That’s what I want to share with people.”
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HELLO!'s Second Act is a newsletter for women in midlife and beyond. It's completely free to sign up and is a one-stop-shop for advice and inspiration on the issues our Second Act community have told us matter most: health, relationships, travel, menopause, divorce, careers, finance and more.
