A fresh start after 60 years: "Microblading my eyebrows gave me the confidence to change careers"

When Linda Parker turned 60, she made a list. For the past 30 years, she had cared for others, first as a carer for her father, then as a single mother to a daughter. Now she wanted to have fun for herself. The first thing she wrote was "microblade eyebrows".

Before her birthday, she had looked in the mirror and seen a face she says I had "barely recognized. I had no eyebrows. I had completely lost them. I felt pale and invisible. She has no idea "where or when" her eyebrows disappeared - they must have gradually disappeared - but she thinks stress may be to blame.

Microblading involves tattooing hair-like strokes, "little tiny cuts with a tiny little machine," says Parker When she told her daughter, Lara, about her plan, she told her to be careful. "Until the day before, I thought, 'I'm not sure I'm doing this,'" Parker explains. is prepared for the pain, but the discomfort was less than she had expected.

Her new eyebrows were "the first positive step" towards a new mod e of life. The swelling quickly subsided and the scabs fell off. That small step sparked several big leaps.

"Having eyebrows back gave me the confidence to apply for another job," Parker says. At the time, she worked as a learning support assistant for children with special needs; she had sought a teaching job after her partner left when Lara was three months old. By then, she had cared for her father, who had suffered a severe brain injury, for 10 years until his death. She learned she had a knack for compassion.

The job she saw advertised at an arts center in Guildford was very different. "It was for the customer experience team: getting tickets, selling ice cream. I thought they'd probably say, 'She's too old. We won't take her. In the interview, though, they asked when she could start.

"I'm now trained in stage door protocol: meeting famous people, organizing keys and cards. gave my mojo back," she says. "I look forward to every shift. It's very energizing. You follow the opinions and viewpoints of different people. She also continues to work in a school. “I come home and I can be completely overwhelmed, but as soon as I get to the theater they are such a lovely crowd. And it gave me the confidence to try other things too.

"Other things" include salsa dancing, wild swimming, and stand-up paddleboarding. Other hits on her list include "getting fudge that takes" and trying to make a difference - she shared her home with a Ukrainian refugee.

Really has a pair of defined eyebrows sparked so many changes? "I definitely wouldn't have done any of this otherwise," Parker says. At every cut-off age, she says, there's a natural tendency to think, "This piece has passed me by, now what's going to happen?" She didn't want to accept that "nothing exciting is going to happen now". The eyebrows allowed “[to] look in the mirror and think, 'I'm never going to get rid of the wrinkles, but I have a more defined and expressive face. I look what I would call normal again.'"

Parker was 42 when Lara was born, so her 60th birthday coincided with the 18th of her daughter." I guess that was part of the catalyst as well," she says. "I thought it was time to put a little more fun into life. It was fun raising him. We have a great relationship. But as a single parent, you are still responsible.

"I didn't want her to think I was sitting at home like a sad bag of nothing do."

Parker says she "grew up in a time when women and older people didn't stand a chance." More than anything, eyebrows were a promise. "I'm not going to be defined by what I thought I couldn't do when I was younger," she says. "I've proven to myself that limits and barriers are often internal - and people are kinder than you think when other people try something new."

Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after 60?