10 Years Younger star Nicky Hambleton-Jones opens up about how her mother’s advanced dementia pushed her to embrace life in her fifties, inspiring a bold new outlook, career comeback and a vow to chase adventure while she can.
Nicky Hambleton-Jones shares how her mother’s advanced dementia has pushed her to seek more adventures
This Morning stylist Nicky Hambleton-Jones has opened up about how her mother’s advanced dementia has changed her perspective on life – and how it has inspired her to live more boldly than ever before. The 54-year-old fashion expert, who recently returned to screens in the ITV show’s Drop A Decade segment, said witnessing her mum’s decline has given her a renewed sense of urgency to embrace new adventures.
“My mum has advanced dementia, which gives me that sense of urgency,” Nicky explained in an exclusive chat with OK!. “There’s nothing I won’t do any more. Before I’d be too scared, but now I’m like, ‘Let’s go river rafting, let’s go climb a mountain!’ I’m having more adventures than I’ve ever had.”
Rather than being daunted by midlife, Nicky said she’s choosing to see her fifties as a time to live more fully. “People dread the big 5-0, then you realise the world doesn’t freeze over. You still look the same, you still feel the same,” she said. “But you do realise life is short, so if there’s something you want to do, you’ve just got to get on with it.”
Nicky’s new mentality didn’t come easily. The former 10 Years Younger host said it took her time to rebuild her confidence after being unexpectedly dropped from the Channel 4 makeover series and replaced by Myleene Klass — an experience that she said made her feel like “a failure.”
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“When that happened, it was a shock. Everything evaporated overnight and I felt like such a failure,” she tells us, “I fixated on people seeing me as a loser. It took a lot of time to reprogramme that and it doesn’t happen overnight.”
Despite the setback, Nicky refused to let that moment define her. Determined to bounce back, she threw herself into rebuilding her career and confidence – a process that began, she says, with “Getting up every day, putting on my lipstick and dressing for the person I want to be.”
The South African mum-of-two – who shares Ben, 15, and Georgina, 12, with husband Rob – said her return to the spotlight was far from easy. “I was terrified. I didn’t sleep the night before and I was shaking the whole way through it,” she admitted of her comeback on This Morning. “But the other option was to do nothing, so I told myself to just do it.”
Nicky has channelled her journey into a new book, Bolder Not Older, which aims to empower people to embrace fashion and self-confidence at any age. She’s also open about dabbling in cosmetic tweaks like Botox, but insists her goal isn’t to look younger – just to look and feel her best. “I don’t want to look ‘done’,” she said. “I just want to look good for my age.”
