Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

by Alexandra Potter

Never married, with no children, and without the sense to have bought property in the nineties, for a large part Nell Stevens seemed to

stumble through life. Unlike all her married-with-children friends, she went through a variety of relationships and a series of terrible online dates, which provided grist to the mill for her podcast, but resulted in what she perceived as failure.

had both determination and an ability to laugh in the face of it all, and in the last year of her life she made new friends and found new paths that led to unexpected joy. Her feelings of things not working out as she’d planned, time running out, and having a life that didn’t resemble that of any of her friends (or those portrayed on social media) and a body that no longer resembled ...

the recent production of Monty Williamson’s award-winning play, which she edited, and the successful Monty’s Mini Libraries project, of which she was a cofounder, saw this forty-somet...

she also found what had eluded her for so long: real true love, with Edward Lewis,

Yet despite her yearlong battle to turn things around, the cause of death for this forty-something fuck up was not failure, but falling in love with her life. A life that, on her deathbed, she explained she only discovered when she was brave enough to embrace it.