Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood is a smart, funny, and informative road map for a generation of women who have already changed way women think of themselves and are now confronting uncharted new territory, Second Adulthood. As they approach their fiftieth birthdays, they move out of the roles of their first adulthood – daughter, wife, mother, employee, volunteer, grandmother, all-around self-sacrificing nurturer – and begin building new identities, new relationships, and new roles in the culture. The 37 million “boomer” women are creating a new social movement at the same time as they are discovering a new frontier within themselves. Yet, despite the numbers of women on this journey, each woman often feels that she is traveling alone.

They drive themselves crazy with the question: "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?" at the same time, they feel a surge of power and joy when they try out the answers.

Drawing on personal stories, cutting-edge science, up-to-date trend analysis, woman-tested wisdom, and her own brave, sometimes painful and sometimes very funny struggles with life after fifty, Levine reassures her readers that they are not alone and not at all crazy. They are on the verge of a new life experience that is both a personal journey and a stage of maturity that they are defining as they live it.

Levine’s message to them is: you are not who you were, only older. Second Adulthood women are really are different—both inside and out. She explains what scientists and sociologists and behaviorists are finding out about what is going on in mature women’s bodies, psyches, and spiritual selves. No wonder making the transition – which she describes as a journey from “The Fuck You Fifties” through the “Fertile Void” to “Recalibrating Your Life” – takes time, more time than busy, multi-tasking women have been used to devoting to themselves.

The book helps readers find the answers to the three big questions each woman is wrestling with: What matters? What works? What’s next? If Dr. Spock defined this generation as they were growing up, Suzanne Levine is doing the same for women as they get a second chance at adulthood.