Happiness is experienced everyday in so many ways. Last night as I hopped from gallery to gallery open house events, looking at great art, drinking wine, eating catered food, running into old friends and making new ones.

This morning on my walk, photographing the traces of last night’s snowfall in neighbor’s gardens.

Aroma’s from the kitchen that whisk me back to Mom’s kitchen when I was 9…

You have said it all and said it beautifully! For almost every woman I know, the years past fifty have been the most rewarding, most self-fulfilling, and the most creative of her life. Freed from many of her earlier obligations and armed with a decided sense that she doesn’t have to please everyone all the time ( a younger woman’s malady for sure), she is ready to express herself in ways she never could have dreamed when she was younger. It’s almost as if the physical absence of creativity (your body can no longer reproduce) brings about a birth of psychic creativity. Margaret Mead named this phenomenon decades ago when she coined the term, “menopausal zest.”

No, we do not grow less happy as we age. If we have our health, if we are open to new ideas, if we have the courage to step past our comfort zone and take some risks, the world will open to us like never before. And, yes, I’m adding a great big smiley face to that!!!!