A conversation with Suzanne Braun Levine on “Reinventing Love, Relationships, and Intimacy in Second Adulthood” is being sponsored by the DC Chapter of The Transition Network and Civic Ventures, a nonprofit think tank on Boomers, work and social purpose, that publishes Encore.org for people interested in encore careers, jobs that combine personal meaning, continued income and social impact.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Time:  7:00 to 9:00 p.m. (Doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Location: 1331 G Street, NW Conference Center, Washington, DC 20005*
Cost:      $10 TTN members (members must log in)
               $15 nonmembers
               $20 at the door (cash & checks only)

Contact: ttn.dcarea@gmail.com

For Information and to Register for the event, please visit…

TTN/DC – WHO WE ARE

In 2004, several women from Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland – all of whom learned about TTN independently – began meeting and talking about whether such a group was needed and wanted here. In January 2005, they held a dinner to introduce their friends, colleagues and acquaintances to The Transition Network and President and Co-Founder Christine Millen. And so TTN-DC began, as an informal offshoot. By the summer of 2006, with a core of perhaps 50 interested women, the decision was made to become a legal chapter. Today, the Capital Area Chapter, as we officially are known, is the largest outside the New York Metro area, and the fastest growing.

Our women come from the District, Northern Virginia and Maryland. We extend as far east as Annapolis, north toward Baltimore, west into Loudoun and south into Prince William. Our members and guests hold professional jobs that literally go from A to Z (accountant to zoologist). They represent every sector — arts, big and small business, construction, defense, education, government, journalism, law, marketing, medicine, nonprofits, social services and, yes, zoos. They are well-educated and well-traveled. They are interesting and interested in navigating transitions, finding new jobs, careers, volunteer opportunities, hobbies and friends.

Another Upcoming TTN/DC Event:

Womenade Circle 3rd Annual Potluck Fundraising Dinner…

TTN/DC is also assisting local, low-income women by lending support to a potluck fundraising event sponsored by Womenade Circle, a DC metro area non-membership “giving circle.”

There will be an opportunity to browse the Artisan Bazaar for crafts created by women graduates of Empowered Women International (EWI), and others, an opportunity to help a great cause, and enjoy great food and camaraderie.

For additional information or to register for the June 10th event or donate only, visit www.womenadecircle.org.

OUR MISSION

The Transition Network is an inclusive community of professional women, 50 and forward, whose changing life situations lead them to seek new connections, resources and opportunities.

Through small group interactions, programs and workshops, members inspsire and support each other to continue a life of learning, engagement and leadership in the world.

As a national organization, The Transition Network is a voice for women who continue to change the rules.

www.thetransitionnetwork.org

Like many women in midlife, I find Mother’s Day as much a reminder of a fraught relationship as a celebration of motherhood.

Even if we are not caring for our mothers, and even if we rarely spend time with them — even, as in my case, they are no longer alive — the emotional status of our relationship with them is a major factor in our ongoing reinvention. The intimacy between a woman and the woman who gave birth to her has its own unique mix of physical, psychological and gender forces within each of them. No matter how independent and grounded we have become in everyone else’s eyes, in our own we are barely out of our teens in relation to her. Any attempt at resolution is a replay of the adolescent struggle to establish a strong and independent identity without stretching the bonds of love too far.

Making those adjustments is especially discomfiting for a generation that never resolved the tensions between the rewards and sacrifices of love and motherhood.

When we were young and outraged, our efforts to rectify historic injustices obscured the fact that those efforts put us in direct conflict with the very women whose abuse we thought we were avenging.

As social psychologist Terri Apter observes about us, “Their mothers had, as they saw it then, bequeathed them a defective feminine nature. They had colluded with a society that restricted and even punished their efforts as self-correction.”

Just think back to the wardrobe rebellions we undertook against the feminine establishment. My mother was a fashion plate; I was a drab dresser. She was the one who wore short skirts, girdles and stockings. I wore jeans and boots. She looked pretty good; I not so much. But that was the point.

Over the years women of my generation have mellowed and a less judgmental worldview is now possible, even in relation to our mothers. We have a second chance to listen to her story with empathy, this time, not rancor.

Until my mother began to fail, I had convinced myself that I had “outgrown” her years ago. I felt so uncomfortable with the “femininity” she practiced that even in the years when we had marriage and children in common, I doubted we spoke the same language. As she got weaker, though, she seemed more innocent, less defiant, and I began to wonder about what she wasn’t telling me when I wasn’t telling her more than the bare minimum about myself.

For example, why did she send me a copy of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique soon after it came out? Was she trying to tell me what her life was like? Was it a call for help? Or was “Women’s Lib” simply the latest of her protest causes?

Why didn’t I ask?

As I reviewed other such incidents, a solitary and brave woman began to emerge. My heart goes out to her. I admire her. I accept her. At the same time I have come to see something more meaningful to me than my (albeit justified) gripes: she did the very best she could, which is all any of us can do.

According to Apter, if we can replace “the impulse to complain about our inheritance with the need to understand it, “we can accept our own femininity — which we can do when we feel strong enough to mold it to our own values and needs.”

Especially with our mothers and especially now, establishing mutual freedom without neglect, acceptance without pity, devotion without guilt, is the way forward.

Comments from two friends at Huff/Post50:

Nadine B. Hack
“Suzannne – As always, you touch on the most primal issues so
eloquently! Having thought I’d worked through everything I
needed to over more than six decades, with my dad’s death a few
months ago I uncovered a whole new layer of work I still have
to do to release myself from triggers my mom – and only she -
can activate. To see her as she is and me as I am is an
ongoing discovery and I love reading this piece among all the
mush about wonderful mothers. It is, indeed, a wondrous
relationship as you explore so aptly. Brava! – Nadine”

ASFerris
“i love suzanne.” 

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James is number one on the New York Times best-seller list — an unusual slot for a pornographic novel. And it has gotten there by word of mouth. Have you heard about it? Have you read it? Are you thinking you might? In my conversations with women all over the country in recent weeks, the answers are variations of yes.

Not that the plot matters, but it’s about an innocent college student and an incredibly attractive and very rich man, who also keeps a bondage chamber. Seduction, submission and sex are the formula for a publishing category called Romance, which is the most profitable of all ($1.4 billion). As one Barnes and Noble clerk told New York Magazine about his customers, “It’s always older women, never younger than 30. … In the five years that I’ve worked here, I have not seen a single man buy one of these books.”

I can understand the turn-on of fantasizing about a godlike suitor who desires us madly; beyond anything he has ever known. What goes on in his “Red Room of Pain” is more a matter of taste. But why are women my age — including many of my friends — not only reading it but talking about it?

It’s the talking about it part that interests me, because as I travel around the country meeting with groups of women to discuss my latest book How We Love Now, the subject of sex inevitably comes up, and when it does, the consensus is that while many women are having great sex and many others are having sexual problems, we are not sharing our experiences the way we do on most other topics. Many in those audiences express the wish that they could talk more freely with their partners and share this part of their lives with close friends. “Having said that,” one added, “I still don’t know where to begin.”

There are obvious reasons for this reticence — discomfort with the subject, concern about betraying partners in conversations with friends, feeling foolish about having an interest in sex “at our age.”

It is in answer to the last inhibition that Fifty Shades of Grey comes in. I think that one reason we are reading it is because whether or not we are currently in a sexual relationship, we want to confirm that our juices are still flowing. There is enough unbonded — “pure vanilla,” Grey calls it — eroticism in the book to do that.

By talking about the book, we are also able to gauge whether other women are exploring the same territory. “I’m reading 50 Shades of Grey” is code for “I still have sexual feelings; do you?”
But once that curiosity is shared, it is still hard to move on to frank talk. At least among ourselves. Every time I blog about how we aren’t talking about sex, I get hundreds of anonymous comments. They go on and on in a real conversation — informative, compassionate, honest, detailed, and funny. For the moment, anyway, that’s where people can really let their hair down.

A recent blog elicited a challenging statement that offers some reasons why we don’t talk about sex — and why we should:

People under 50 don’t talk about sex much either; they say only what is socially acceptable in their circle of friends and what they believe the others want to hear.
We all have sexual desires we “shouldn’t” have.
We are all judgmental of the sexual behavior of others.
We all tend to question our own sexuality.
We all hold views and beliefs about sex that are strongly abhorred by others.
Sexuality = vulnerability.
Is it any wonder, then, that we are reluctant to discuss it socially except on the most superficial basis?

Read Comments at…

Three books that fall on this continuum which overlap, while still standing solidly in their own sphere are:

• Naked At Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex by Joan Price
• How We Love Now: Sex and the New Intimacy in Second Adulthood by Suzanne Braun Levine
• Prime Time by Jane Fonda

Price drills down on sexuality after 60, leaving no stone unturned. Solitary sex, nontraditional practices and relationships, moving forward after divorce and breakup, sex after illness, and painful sex are some of the topics covered. Encompassing the concerns of men and women, straight and gay, she informs readers early on that “sex might not feel or look the way it did when our hormone rush propelled us into jet-stream sex, but it can be highly arousing and satisfactory.”

Having communicated via a questionnaire with readers of her books and blog, Price chose the recurrent themes as her subjects. She then interspersed individual stories culled from her correspondence with advice and facts from specialists.

One of Price’s key takeaways is that it’s important to revive desire and to make time for sex. Top on her list is getting over not looking the same as when you were a 20-something. She cites research pointing out the health benefits to sexual activity (solo or coupled), including:

• Hormones released during sex decreases the rate of breast cancer
• Sex can alleviate chronic pain, including migraines
• Protection against heart attack and stroke
• Immune system bolstered
• Sex can protect against depression
• Sex can reduce stress and increase self-esteem

Price explains the physiological aspects of achieving orgasm as women age stating, “We get less blood flow to the clitoris and vagina, and the vaginal walls get thinner.” For this reason she is a strong proponent of sex toys for women, single or partnered, as they “can mean the difference between orgasm or not.” Price is also definitive about taking responsibility for your own sexual health through masturbation, applying the “use it or lose it” philosophy to pleasure and comfort.

Read More…

MARCIA G. YERMAN – Reporting. Reviewing. Reflecting. Writer on women’s issues and Co-founder CultureID in 2009, a social community with the stated mission of “creating a nexus between activism and the arts.” Has been writing for The Huffington Post since 2007; involved with the Women’s Media Center and many other projects.

www.mgyerman.com

Late last night I gathered up my courage, as I must each time, and called the 800 number to access the voice messages responding to my personal ad.

Just composing the ad took approximately two psychological years of my life. What me? Do this? No way.

Until three friends met their husbands through the personals and I kept attending weddings in which the couple shamelessly, joyously, gratefully shared the truth. They met through the Washingtonian ads.

I told myself something like this: After all, they’re expensive so they must be self-selective, and worth something special. Not just anybody will spend a couple hundred dollars on personal advertising, to catch that someone special — that needle in a haystack — for exchanging vows, a blissful honeymoon period, and eventual negotiating the decision on which way the toilet paper should be dispensed … should the paper unfurl from the top or from the bottom?

“No messages,” the recorded voice said without pity or care. “Your mailbox is empty at this time.”

Momentarily devastated that in the privacy of my own home, I felt rejected — unloved, unlovable and hopeless. Then I dialed the number of a friend, rehearsing the funny anecdote I was going to share with him. I told him the story, and he disappointed me by sighing sadly instead of laughing.

Read More…

Ruth Neubauer, MSW, LCSW – Psychotherapist; Teacher of Psychoanalytic concepts; Faculty, Washington School of Psychiatry; Photographer; Writer.

Psychotherapy/Adults, Couples; Journal to the Self® Workshops in small group settings. rneubauertherapy.com

My cousin Mark Schwartz is mentioned in How We Love Now as one of the folks who reconnected with a college sweetheart and found happiness at last. Before that, though, he was married and divorced twice and developed a web site – suddenbachelor.com – for midlife men in the same boat. Recently he has become a blogger on Huff/Post50, where I also blog.

His latest article – “Aging: America Needs to Address The Coming Hordes”- is a very strong and thoughtful appeal to start a real conversation about alternative living arrangements for aging parents (and, soon, ourselves)…

I read a recent USA Today article, the thesis of which was this: American cities, build your arks and get ready for a flood of aging boomers. If this “back third” of our lives is to be anywhere near as good as the first two, I submit it’s time to apply some proactive American “can do” to how the old can live rather than pursue more of the same old approaches.

You ever see the South Park “Grey Dawn” episode? That’s the one where a horde of old people get behind the wheels of their cars mowing down scores of South Parkers until the citizenry rises up and deprives the elderly of their licenses, only to be thwarted by the AARP. The addled death car drivers are finally defeated when the kids cut off their food supply. Haven’t seen it? That means you are a mature post-50 adult. I am not. Mature, that is.

But there’s a lesson in all this. Old people are horrible drivers. Actually, no, that’s not the real lesson. To me, it’s that maybe the elderly shouldn’t be encouraged by bad alternatives to stay in their houses for decades — like my esteemed parents — and then be forced either to pretend they aren’t old and get behind the wheel to get places, or to go to a nursing home or some other depressing place. The lesson for me (probably only for me) from this awesome episode is — to quote the venerable Kevin Costner (or his movie at least) — “if you build it, they will come.”

Huh? Build what? Nursing homes? NO. Nursing homes are where the imaginations of the businessmen and governments that create them, and the old people who become their inmates, go to die. No, instead build something much cooler — a place for the old to live, not to die.

Yes, there are assisted living places for people with money. But I hate the term assisted living. It sounds like life support, somehow. What I’m thinking of is a way to embrace this back third of life. Which leads to a more general rant: We have become a reactive rather than proactive nation in everything but the financial industry’s inexhaustible industriousness in finding new and dodgier ways to skim money from the economy. Where’s the spark of real creativity and can-do, applied not only to our decaying society generally, but more specifically to how aging boomers can live?

My thesis of American society is: We started with the spark of freedom and now after the conflagration that created this country and sparked two centuries of progress, we are left with the embers of that original America, a country now dominated by avarice, prejudice and cowardice. Cowardice? Yes, the cowardice of hiding behind untruths and distortions, not facing up to the facts. Global warming? A hoax. Loving the springlike February weather, BTW.

Economic inequality? Not nearly as important as making sure a black president doesn’t send his big government into my trailer to take my guns and make me accept black people or women as equals. The inevitable process of aging? Put it in a closet with the other skeletons, I would rather delude myself I’m young with the help of surgery, dietary supplements and a place for old people to go where they’re not in my face all the time.

In other words, and here’s the chance of my actually returning to the point: We have become a reactive nation and that’s as evident in our handling of old age as it is in our reactions to other seismic trends.

How do we react to old age?
Read More

Suzanne Braun Levine,
Huff/Post50

A few weeks ago my 25-year-old daughter mentioned that the first of her friends was pregnant. “It’s weird,” she said. To which I replied, “I know. In my experience, having a friend get pregnant was much more disruptive to the friendship than having one get married.”

I was reminded of that conversation when I saw the new movie Friends With Kids. Charming as it is, I was disappointed that the movie didn’t really address the stresses between friends who never have kids and those who do. I have been both.

For the first 20 years of my marriage — until I was into my 40s — I was the one who dreaded being handed a baby and tuned out baby talk. My friends and I managed to find neutral territory; since most of them went to work, we could meet for lunch and we had other things to talk about besides the kids. What was going on with their children was of interest to me only to the extent that it was going on for my friend. But it wasn’t the same for either of us. Others simply disappeared from my life — for a time at least.

Then I became the friend with kids to my friends without and got the other side of the picture. I bugged my parent-friends for advice, but babies were so long in their past that they often couldn’t remember what to do. I felt unappreciated by my childless friends, who didn’t seem to be paying attention to such a meaningful and stressful change in my life. I finally understood why a father-friend of ours was so outraged when, in our childless phase, my husband said he was getting interested in “having the experience” of parenting. As if that even began to describe it.

Of my many close and long-time friends who never had children, I don’t know how many would have liked to had things turned out differently or weren’t able to, and how many would say it was a choice. Now we are all past the child-rearing days (though the parenting goes on forever) and I am wondering how it is for those who have no children at our age. And why we have never discussed it.

Read More…

By Suzanne Braun Levine

This year is the 40th Anniversary Year of Ms. Magazine. Hard to believe, and for those of us involved in that history, it is very moving to remember those early years. The birthday events began at The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University on January 26th as part of a four-month long celebration of feminism.

Organized by Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin the Winter Quarter series of more than 25 events – exhibits, talks, screenings, an essay contest and symposium — was sponsored by 35 departments. I participated in the opening weekend events. I was on a panel – Women in the Media – with former Ms. editors Marcia Ann Gillespie and Helen Zia and current Executive Editor Katherine Spillar, and young feminist bloggers Shelby Knox and Miriam Perêz. Gloria Steinem delivered the keynote address: Ms. at 40 and the Future of Feminism.

It was a great celebration of how far we have come and an inspiration to keep making change.

“When I first organized a symposium at Yale on the 10th anniversary of Ms. magazine in 1982, everyone marveled at the fact that such a brazenly feminist magazine had managed to last 10 years. It not only survived 30 more years, but it thrived, playing a vital role in helping two generations enlarge the canvas on which women and men can paint their lives. Feminism has profoundly reshaped the social, political and cultural landscape over the last four decades.”
– Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Highlights from the weekend:

Videos
Keynote address:

• iTunes Film of Gloria Steinem’s Keynote Address
• YouTube

The Panel Discussion on iTunes:

• Ms.at 40 and the Future of Feminism: Panel Discussion Film on Stanford iTunes

Discussion Guides & Articles by Students:

• Ms. at 40 and the Future of Feminism Discussion Guide
• Ms. at 40 and the Future of Feminism: Panel Discussion Guide
• Steinem awakens young and old, encouraging “outrageous acts.”
• The privilege and cost of activism

Suzanne Braun Levine,
TEDxWomen.org

Last December in New York City, Suzanne Braun Levine captivated the TEDxWomen community with her frank, humorous and insightful words on womanhood and aging.  Ms. Levine has one of those stops-me-in-my-tracks resumes: the first editor of Ms. magazine; an editor of the Columbia Journalism Review; a producer of the Peabody Award-winning documentary She’s Nobody’s Baby: American Women in the Twentieth Century; a web maven, with a thoughtful and resource-filled website of her own, who blogs on many popular sites; and the author of numerous books, including the recently released How We Love Now: Sex and Intimacy in Second Adulthood.

Wanting to hear more from Ms. Levine, we asked her to answer a few questions to share with the TEDxWomen community.  We’re thrilled she said yes!

In your TEDxWomen talk, you spoke of The Fertile Void, the time in a woman’s life between her first and second adulthood.  Calling it “a life transition as profound and far-reaching as adolescence,” you shared how The Fertile Void is a time to ask ourselves who we are, what matters to us and how we can be engaged in the world.  How did you come to the term The Fertile Void?  What are the signs one has entered it?  And when do you know you’ve left it?

I have been moved and gratified by the way the term “The Fertile Void” has entered the conversation about aging. Actually the term is a Taoist concept that describes a step in the process of change, when everything seems lost and nothing yet found. That is where we find ourselves as we make the transition from adulthood – a well-documented and well-scripted stage of life – to Second Adulthood – a totally new life experience being defined by living longer and healthier lives and by arriving there as more confident and experienced women (men get there too, but not along quite the same route).

The tricky thing about making this transition is that it takes longer than we would like and, worse, it is all about unknowingness. We multi-tasking magicians, who are used to making a list and checking it twice, find it maddening to be falling down an Alice’s Rabbit’s hole of self-doubt and bewilderment. We find ourselves lost in a void, but the essential insight is that this void is fertile. At an age when so much attention is being paid to women’s lost biological fertility, this spiritual fertility can give birth to a fresh and strong and fulfilling chapter in our lives.

Like adolescence, that other very tumultuous transition that it resembles, Second Adulthood is about reinvention. Margaret Mead once said that adolescence is no less than “the birth of the soul.” The Fertile Void is, I believe, where the soul is reborn.

Read interview…

The Transition Network special event in Columbus, Ohio promises to be a really fun evening. The group has asked Pat Wynn Brown, creator of the “Hair Theater” and an Ohio Treasure, to join me on the program. We’re having a conversation about “Reinventing Intimacy After 50” and then, the audience will have time to share stories and ask questions.

I am going to report back here on this program, and some of the other TTN events happening this spring. HOW WE LOVE NOW has started a new national conversation about intimacy which I have also blogged about on Huff/Post50.

Central Ohio – Columbus, OH – Event details:

Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM (Doors Open at 6:30 PM)
Location: First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Rd, Columbus
Contact: Suzanne Kull
Phone: 614-374-3935
Email: smkull@att.net

Members $15.00/NonMembers: $20.00
Register for this Event…

About Pat Wynn Brown – “She is an Ohio Treasure…”
“We Tell the Stories of our Lives through the Evolution of our Hairdos!”

Pat Wynn Brown contributes more than insights, entertainment, warmth and humor – she does shows to raise funds for wigs and hats for women and girls in need – those who have lost their hair during chemotherapy. She’s helped nearly 700 women and girls.

Her shows are about the Love/Hate Relationship we have with our hair! Men love the show as much as women – they have hair issues too! And, they support the women and girls in their lives who have gone through chemotherapy. Everyone laughs a lot.

Pat’s motto: Do good for yourself and others!

Hair Theater® – “Beauty School” – If Your Hairdos Could Talk!
www.HairTheaterBeautySchool.com

To see her in action, watch this wonderful, warm and laughter-filled video on YouTube:
http://bit.ly/GGgUsJ
Enjoy!