I’ve just turned 50 – a fact that feels completely insignificant and also, somehow, incredibly important. And I guess to me alone, it’s both of those things.

I keep walking around saying ‘50’ to myself to see how it feels; it feels good, and normal, and huge, and nothing – all at the same time. I want to be able to hold the number in my hand somehow; to feel its weight and its shape.

One of the many benefits of turning 50 is feeling liberated from what other people think and knowing that, most of the time, they’re not thinking about you anyway.

Here are 50 other things I’ve learnt in my half century…

1. Your life will change in ways you never expected, and that is unfathomable and often terrifying.

Remember that this is exactly as it should be because, before anything else, you are a human being. Change is at the core of your existence.

2. The most important relationship you will have in your life is with yourself.

Do not resist this idea as self-indulgence, since it’s in knowing yourself truly – the light and the dark – that you will create stronger, more powerful relationships with the world around you, and especially with other people.

Clover Stroud has learnt that the most important relationship you will have in your life is with yourself

3. To love and be loved is the greatest privilege in life. When that opportunity comes, do not waste it or miss it by worrying that there’s something more somewhere else, but embrace it and actively live it. Give yourself to it completely.

4. Giving up drinking will not reduce your life, but instead will expand it in hundreds of ways you can’t imagine until you really commit to it.

Sobriety will lead you into a place of much deeper creativity and give you stronger relationships with the people you love.

5. If you have misgivings about a fringe, don’t get one cut.

6. The most important thing you can do as a mother is love your children and communicate this love to them constantly.

What they eat, where they go to school, whether they play a musical instrument or are good at sports are all irrelevant compared to them feeling an absolute, unquestioning sense of your love.

7. For the perfect cup of tea, put one bag of PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea – for strength – in a cup along with one bag of lapsang souchong – for its smoky flavour – then add boiling water, let it sit for a minute then fish the bags out and add milk.

8. Do not be confused by the idea that novelty and the unknown makes for good sex.

Instead, know that sex in a committed, deeply familiar relationship is the absolute opposite of boring, and know that sex really can keep on getting better throughout your life.

9. You can get quite far in your life without ever opening a spreadsheet.

10. If you are weighing up the options, have the baby. Definitely have the baby. Motherhood has broken me and made me; it’s the best and hardest thing I’ve done.

11. When you get to 40, start lifting weights – and build lifting weights into your life as a habit.

12. After someone you love very much dies, do not feel guilty about the strange and unforeseen way your own life might expand in completely unexpected ways. Understand that your soul and psyche are allowed to inhabit this new place.

 It’s not a betrayal of the person you have loved and lost, but instead a strange kind of gift that comes with the extraordinary pain of grief.

The death of my sister Nell broke me but also reassembled me with strength I didn’t know I had.

13. Green and pink are always great together: on walls, on clothes, as ink, on balloons or in a bunch of flowers.

14. Most things work out OK in the long run and a lot of things you are worrying about now will likely become completely irrelevant soon.

15. Every stranger you meet is also wrestling with night-time anxieties every bit as big and dark as your own.

If you are weighing up the options, have the baby. Motherhood has broken me and made me; it’s the best and hardest thing I’ve done, says Clover, pictured with one of her children 

Clover with her five children, her eldest, Jimmy and Dolly, who are now in their early 20s,and her youngest, Dash, Lester and Evangeline

Don’t assume that anyone you meet has got their life sorted, since all of us have fears that cannot be felt by anyone other than ourselves.

16. It’s really OK not to like gardening.

17. The pleasures in your life will not come from material things. You will find the deepest joy from your relationships with other people.

18. Almost everything you need in life can be bought second-hand.

19. Try to live somewhere that has a bath since it’s like liquid Valium for stress relief.

20. When the short term feels stressful, try not to think further than the end of the day. Be confident you can make it through until then, and then confident you can make it through the next day. Soon things will be different.

21. Running a marathon will give you a very strong and powerful kind of high you didn’t think possible without artificial stimulants and will be worth absolutely every single moment of the toil of training.

22. Grief will re-arrange and even end relationships and friendships you thought would last for ever.

It will completely change the landscape of your life. Don’t beat yourself up over this – everyone reacts to loss and death in different ways, and how they react has nothing to do with you.

23. Always have a rummage in a free book stall – they are full of surprising wisdom. Especially good are those in train stations or old telephone boxes.

24. Tend to your best female friendships like they are plants you love and care for: nourish them, give them sunlight and nurture them if they are flagging.

Women silently carry a lot of the burden of life, and we need each other, so make time for the phone call, the date or the message telling that female friend, ‘I love you, you’re doing brilliantly’.

25. Start volunteering for something you believe in, even if you think you don’t have time or are at your limit.

It’s a way of casting a vote of confidence in the goodness of the world and feeling good, too.

26. A homemade picnic is always a good way to spend an afternoon, even when it’s raining, and a Thermos of tea is an essential part of it.

27. Take a trip somewhere alone, even if a friend is offering to come with you or the idea scares you.

Your solo status will force you to interact with people you’d never talk to otherwise, and make you embrace opportunities you’d almost certainly miss. The conversations and connections you create as a solo traveller will very possibly change your life.

Travelling alone to west Texas in my 20s without a doubt helped make me the person I am today.

28. Sign up for a club that forces you to do something new with your body which potentially makes you feel uncomfortable – like improv or singing – as the experience will create new shapes in your life that come from being right outside your comfort zone.

29. The habit of creativity is something you can build into your life, by gifting yourself time and space to paint, draw, write or make music.

Like all habits, it gets stronger the more often you do it.

30. Don’t be ashamed of paying someone to install a new printer or put up curtain rails if the experience makes you feel overwhelmed, depressed and anxious. These are normal feelings that DIY or tech support can trigger – some of us are just not made for it.

31. Never stop asking other people questions about their lives. Since most of us love talking about ourselves, you’ll learn so much from hearing someone else’s story.

A curiosity about the world and other people will deepen your relationship with everything, including with yourself.

32. Buying a ping pong table is an easy way to invest in joy and skipping is a good way to get fit.

33. Moving to a new country will not mean that you become a new person. We are ourselves – wherever we go.

34. Remain true to yourself and what you believe in, even when you feel foolish or alone.

Developing your voice, your beliefs and your vision is a more rewarding way to spend your days than doing something to please or impress others.

35. Telling lies about anyone, including yourself, is one of the most deeply destructive things you can do and has repercussions well beyond the lie itself.

Always speak the truth, even when that truth is painful or casts you in a light you don’t like.

36. You’ll probably never understand the rules of the card game Uno, but surrender to it as an exercise in giving children a sense of control over their parents. Play it with them often – they really love it.

37. When you are going through hard stuff, allow yourself to feel all the emotions. Create time and space for yourself to be with these feelings alone, without having to explain them to anyone else.

It will give you the confidence to know they will move through you, not sit inside you festering, and on the other side you’ll find a bigger capacity for joy.

38. You can make a really good dressing which will make almost anything taste delicious by blending roasted or boiled carrots with sesame oil, some yoghurt, lemon juice, salt and a few spoonfuls of tahini. It might sound surprising, but the carrot is a really good base for the dressing and it keeps in the fridge for ages.

39. The hard and sad things that will occur are not a sign that life has gone wrong, but instead evidence that life is happening to you.

Clover, with daughter Molly says: 'Time goes very quickly. Fifty years? That’s nothing. Grab it before it’s all gone’

Remember, you have an incredible capacity to survive and thrive because you are much, much stronger than you think.

Losing my mum and my sister has taken me to places in my psyche I never knew were there.

40. Don’t feel guilty about having a rest in the middle of the afternoon when you get the chance, and always sleep in at the weekends if you can.

The ability to stay asleep in the morning rapidly diminishes in mid-life and, frankly, you should sleep while you can.

41. Definitely wear the bikini when you are young and go on wearing it as long as you want to. Our bodies are amazing and go on being amazing all our lives.

42. Trust your gut instinct. You can save a lot of worry and a huge amount of wasted action by going with what you know is right, so learn to listen to your instinct and have the confidence to act on it when it’s telling you something, even if the message is quiet.

43. If you have any skill or know a craft – gardening, cooking, meditation, creative writing, public speaking or woodwork (the list is infinite) – that might be useful to other people, find a way of teaching that skill.

There’s huge satisfaction and joy to be gained in teaching, both in seeing other people flourish having learned something from you, and also in the way teaching deepens your own understanding of the skill you are passing on.

44. Walking for about 50 minutes is a good way to process your emotions and help you feel better when things seem bleak.

45. For an extremely fast and delicious dressing for some roast chicken, mix together a few big spoonfuls of pesto; some mayonnaise; plain yogurt; black pepper and basil leaves. It’s especially good stuffed into white rolls or a baguette and eaten outside – ideally on that picnic you promised yourself.

46. When you share your own story with other people, especially those parts of yourself most clouded in pain and shame, you will almost certainly have inadvertently handed that person a small light which might well enable them to see more clearly.

Writing about my life isn’t always emotionally easy, but if it helps people feel less alone and allows us all to connect then it’s all worthwhile.

47. Every space in your home is improved by a bunch of flowers – including, or especially, one picked yourself from a verge or a hedgerow.

48. Candles will make any space nicer, especially your kitchen table, and charity shops and thrift shops are a surprisingly good place to find them. Expensive scented candles are a bit of a waste of money.

49. Allow yourself to sit with pleasure, just as you allow yourself to sit with pain. When good things happen, or even just moderately pleasing things, let yourself inhabit that space, before rushing on to deal with the next anxiety or problem.

Acknowledge pleasure when it happens, and be sure to witness joy with the people around you. When you are having fun, say to yourself and your kids or friends or partner, ‘This is great, I’m really enjoying this’.

50. Time goes very quickly. Fifty years? That’s nothing. Grab it before it’s all gone.