By Mary Eileen Williams
Feistysideoffifty.com

Women over 50 have wrestled with a lifetime of mixed messages. In our formative years we were taught the virtues of adhering to the1950’s & early ‘60’s standards of conformity. That meant being “ladylike” and fashioning our futures based on the June Cleaver/Donna Read models of matrimonial bliss.

By Suzanne Braun Levine

I am thrilled to announce that my “papers” – the boxes of stuff that I always meant to sort our and never did – from my years at Ms. Magazine (1972 – 1989) are now in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s Archives at Smith College. Along with other collections from those exciting days, including Gloria Steinem’s papers, they should be accessible soon. My papers from my time as (the only woman) editor of The Columbia Journalism Review will be there too.

In “How We Love Now” I talk about the difference between care-giving and care-getting, by which I mean the necessity of watching out for one’s own needs even if it means asking for help (and we all know how hard that is!).

As a model for one kind of care-getting I describe the Caring Collaborative created by The Transition Network (TTN).

“A new study that finds testosterone declines in proportion to nurturing fatherhood is mind-blowing in many ways that are meaningful for family life and our understanding of fatherhood.

I was afraid that the findings would be used against nurturing men, taunting them with loss of virility and status along with “loss” of testosterone, so I hope you will all share this supportive analysis with all those women and men who are trying so hard to reinvent parenting on kinder, gentler terms.

By Suzanne Braun Levine

I have always hoped that one day I would see someone reading one of my books on the subway. In the fantasy I go over and ask them how they like the book. They say “I love it!” and I say “I wrote it!”

That hasn’t happened yet, but it would be the peak experience in the progression of my book from the privacy of my own manuscript out into the world. Now, I am very proud of what I have written; I do want people to read it – and, needless to say, love it. But I know that won’t happen unless I put myself “out there” too. …

By Suzanne Braun Levine,
Women’s Media Center
In 1963 Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique identified The Problem That Has No Name—a soul-destroying malaise and sense of uselessness that beset the woman who had bought into the “mystique” of perfect wife, homemaker, and mother. Because she wasn’t happy, she thought something was wrong with her. The second wave of the Women’s Movement gave a name to that problem and countless other experiences that women were afraid to discuss.
Everything changed in the seventies and eighties, and an unintended consequence of the revolution in women’s roles …

David Greenbaum,
Potter & Co-Founder
The BlueStone Gallery

“I strive to create pieces of enduring beauty,” says the renowned potter, David Greenbaum. “Clay is a glorious, humbling, sensuous, messy and most marvelous medium of expression.”

Mary Eileen Williams, author
“Land the Job You Love!”

One third of job seekers are now over 55!

How are we doing?

By Karin Lippert, 67
July 26, 2011

Are we the most engaged and empowered generation of women over 50 in recorded history? Most days it certainly feels like it. Not only are we 37 million strong, but our generation is the first to truly embrace second adulthood and celebrate our ‘Pride of Age” birthdays.

By Suzanne Braun Levine

Back in 2000 my first book Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First came out. In it I talked about men who desperately wanted to be more involved with their families and do more of their share at home but were constrained by the workplace culture and the prevailing image of how a Real Man prioritized his work and family. One told me that he was so afraid of getting caught leaving his office at 6:00 p.m. and being thought not committed to his work that he parked in a distant corner of the parking lot. Another told me that when he went to the playground with his baby daughter on a weekday, people assumed one of two things – that he was unemployed (a failure) or a sexual predator.