We were especially excited because we’d seen her husband countless times, as a regular in both film, stage and TV. But while she’d been offered few roles in films and TV, this was our first opportunity to see what she could really do.

My friend had a promising early start as an actress. The daughter of a well-known thespian family, she’d had made her mark with her own commanding presence and mellifluous voice, securing major roles in theatre, TV and film, notably playing Shakespearean drama at the Royal Shakespeare theatre and a role in the West End.

After she and her husband got married and decided to have children, my friend, like so many women, had to make a stark choice. She knew that she couldn’t devote herself fully to both career and children, particularly as her job required her to be away or on-stage night after night for weeks at a time.  After she and her husband had two lovely daughters, for several decades, she parked that brilliant early career, promising herself that she’d get back to it at some point.

She was an extraordinarily devoted mom and wife, and now that her two girls were grown and married, one with children of her own, it was time to dust off the dream and to see if there was any possibility, at this late stage, of making it come true.

She began getting a few more minor roles, but then came the offer of a major part in a play.

She was admittedly terrified. The part was big – requiring that at one point, she’d be speaking on stage for most of an hour. She had to be funny, craven and likeable, all at the same time. After all this time, could she pull it off?

She not only pulled it off, she was absolutely sensational, with perfect comedic timing – deliciously wicked, funny and even wise. All that talent, just waiting to explode out of her again, seasoned and deepened by maturity and experience. Thankfully, the play was filmed because her part offers her an outstanding showreel.

As we met up afterward and drank to her success, I began thinking about women and the stories we’re told about having it all. Or not being able to have it all, having to choose between career success and family.

Women tie themselves into knots of guilt, attempting to build a career while their children are small, torn between the anguish of being away from them a good deal of the time and trying to maintain their tenuous footing on the slippery career ladder.

Or they give up work, and then bitterly resent the shift of power in the relationship or lose the confidence they had as someone with an identity in their own right.

The problem is societal -  two incomes are largely a necessity to make ends meet – but also cultural: the fantasy that women can have it all.  All we see in the newspapers or on social media are so-called role models of women essentially running companies, who also happen to have nine children and juggle it all with apparent ease.

Those are not role models. They are extraordinary and highly unhelpful exceptions.

Women can have it all – but, in my experience, just not all at the same time.

I know of many women who have devoted their lives to their families, and now that the children have grown, have a hard time letting go and figuring out how to fill their cavernous days. Or others, trying to assuage grown children, who resent the fact that their mothers are finally getting out of the kitchen and into the world.

Then there are other friends of mine, who’ve had fantastic careers but who now suffer troubled relationships with their children, who are still burning with anger for the lack of time they believe their parent had for them.

I thought about the similarities between my friend’s journey and that of my own.  In my twenties, I’d had a lot of early success in writing and journalism.  After my first book, The Baby Brokers, was published I’d appeared on several big national television shows, testified before Congress and even had a film made based on the book, with Lynda (Wonder Woman) Carter, starring as a character based essentially on me. (Bad jokes about superwoman costumes etc abounded.)

Then after I came to the UK, I got married and had two daughters.  And while I never stopped working (we’d needed the two incomes), we created our health newsletter so both of us could work at home and be there as much as possible for our children’s needs.

Bryan once remarked that through all the years our girls were small, with the journalism we were doing in our newsletter we were, essentially, knitting – building a beautiful big quilt with easy to perform, well-practiced strokes.

Once the girls were older, I dusted off my own dream and wrote The Field, which essentially started my life’s work at the age of 50.  The other books followed, and I plan for more to follow still (my new book will be out next year – more on that later).

Now that my daughters are grown, I am free to speak and write around the world.

My point is that life is long, and that women – indeed parents – can have it all, as long as they do it sequentially.

So, my point to all of you is simply this: it’s never too late to make a comeback.

There’s still time.

In my own mind, I’m just getting started.