This has been quite a month!

First of all, I finally held in my hands a copy of my new book How We Love Now; it has been eighteen months since I finished it, and at last it is real. The scary part is that it will soon be in the hands of actual readers, and while I am anxious to hear if it resonates with other women, I am less anxious to hear if it doesn’t, which will undoubtedly happen.

More good news in connection with the book is that I have been invited to speak about it by several of The Transition Network (TTN) chapters around the country starting in San Francisco (where my talk is also sponsored by Civic Ventures and Coming of Age: Bay Area). When I began writing about Second Adulthood just after the turn of the century (I love the sound of that!), one of my first stops was a TTN meeting. The organization was just getting started, and the energy and vision of its founders, Charlotte Frank and Christine Millen contributed greatly to my understanding of what was going on with women. Under the current Executive Director Betsy Werley, TTN has gone national. There are now fourteen chapters and I look forward to meeting members all over the country.

Another big deal this month was an invitation to speak at TEDxWomen, as part of a conversation entitled “Rebirth” which was livestreamed to a hundred locations around the world and to millions over the Internet. Jane Fonda, whose wonderful new book is called PRIME TIME: Making the Most of All of Your Life, put together the panel which included: Laura Carstensen, founder of the Stanford Center on Longevity, who reported on her studies of happiness and aging. She has found that people (both men and women) in their fifties and sixties are much happier overall than people in their thirties and forties. I certainly am.

I talked about The Fertile Void and got great feedback, including a mention from Rosie O’Donnell (who – true to form – liked that I described the prelude to the Fertile Void as “the fuck-you fifties”) in an interview on Huffington Post, where, coincidentally, I am now blogging regularly.

I also spent a few days in San Francisco at the Civic Ventures Summit, where the Encore Movement really established roots among the many activists for positive aging who were there. Founder Marc Freedman is dedicated to using the organization to galvanize activists to work toward changing societal assumptions and individual experiences of work and life after fifty. We were all inspired by the five winners of the Purpose Prize – for social entrepreneurs over 50 – who told their stories.

And Ms. – my true alma mater – turns 40 in 2012, and is still going strong under the ownership of the Feminist Majority Foundation. The seventeen years I spent there truly changed my life; for one thing, it was there that I began to explore – personally and professionally – the issues that still matter to the women I write about. Stanford University is sponsoring a panel discussion about the magazine, where I will join the current editor Katherine Spillar, feminist bloggers, and former editors on January 26 to reminisce and look forward.

The spirit of Ms. lives on in our lives, in the magazine itself, and – in my opinion – in the Occupy Movement, which has taken over the country. Check out the amazing (though long) video, narrated by a song about democracy written and performed by Leonard Cohen.

Here’s to a great year for all of us – and democracy too!

**For Information on Events and Interviews – Click on the NEWS!

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I joined the Board of Civic Ventures in 2009, and one of the most inspiring elements of their mission is the discovery and celebration of outstanding social entrepreneurs in the Encore stage of life. The winners of the Purpose Prize have been selected from hundreds of nominees, and having had the honor of being one of the judges, I can tell you that the choices were tough to make; there were many resourceful and courageous candidates for this year’s prizes.

The Purpose Prize is the nation’s only large-scale investment in people over 60 who are combining their passion and experience for social good. Sherry Lansing, CEO, The Lansing Foundation and Chair, Purpose Prize panel of judges has said, that: “The Purpose Prize isn’t a lifetime achievement award. It’s an investment in what these encore innovators – all over 60 – will do next.”

Meet the 2011 Winners of the Purpose Prize – five people who will receive $100,000 each – for improving their communities and the world. Watch their videos here…

Jenny Bowen

Winner of the Purpose Prize for Intergenerational Innovation, sponsored by AARP – Bowen is uplifting the lives of thousands of Chinese orphans

Randal Charlton

Charlton promotes entrepreneurship in Detroit as a means to create jobs and revitalize the struggling city.

Nancy Sanford Hughes

Hughes helps save people in the developing world from catastrophic injury, even death, by replacing the traditional open cooking fire with an efficient stove.

Wajiru Kamau

Kamau helps African immigrants – especially teenagers – adjust to a vastly different life in the United States.

Edward Mazria

Mazria is driving the building sector toward dramatically reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

To learn more about Encore Careers, visit: www.encore.org.

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.

Since then a lot has changed. My neighborhood is full of fathers pushing strollers or wearing Snugglies or wiping a messy chin at all hours of the day and night. But a new study – by the prestigious and reliable Families and Work Institute – reports that they are paying a price. Men trying to balance work and family have become victims of what they call “The New Male Mystique.” They are stressed out trying to fill a new model of masculinity that is just as oppressive as the Master of the Universe model was twenty years ago – a combination of loving dad, conscientious (and still ambitious) employee, and supportive and responsive husband.

Is this bizarre turn of events just another example of the “be careful what you wish for” retribution? I don’t think so. For one thing, those men are still doing less of the household tasks and childcare than their wives, so in that department, we are still wishing. But I think the stress that now crushes men as well as women who are trying to maintain family life and a serious work life at the same time is due less to impossible role expectations than to the workplace itself.

A lot has changed in our culture, but the shape of our work life has barely shifted off the classic 9-to-5 time frame and the drive-to-the-top career trajectory. Technology has made it possible to work from home and to work all night instead of all day, but flextime, job-sharing, family leave and childcare policies have barely made a chink in the structure. The message remains: when it comes to balancing family and work, there is not enough time to go around – deal with it. We are all on our own.

Parents are not the only sector of the population whose efforts at achieving a meaningful life that combines – in Freud’s words – “love and work” are being stymied by the hidebound workplace; the new generation of Second Adulthood men and women are caught in the same bind. Another recent report – this one from Louis Harris for SunAmerica and Age Wave founder and renowned gerontologist Kenneth Dychtwald – describes another group afflicted by the work-family bind. Entitled “The SunAmerica Retirement Re-Set Study,” it finds that people over fifty intend to work way past the traditional retirement age. Some because they find the work itself rewarding, others because their finances require it, and nearly half (!) of them because they expect to have to help support “aging relatives, adult children, grandchildren, and siblings.” Yes, adult children, including those for whom – I’ll wager – Having It All hasn’t worked out.

Like the young parents, they too would welcome options that would enable them to participate in the working world on more nurturing terms. “Most Americans want increased flexibility in retirement with the opportunity between periods of work and leisure,” says Dychtwald. Of those, a significant group are struggling to find an enriched kind of work for the next chapter, a job that enables them to earn a living and also give back to society, in what Civic Ventures, the think-tank that is devoted to supporting and encouraging this choice, has identified as an Encore Career, one that combines “purpose, passion, and a paycheck.” (Check out their website Encore.org for more on this new movement). Perhaps one byproduct of their efforts to open new categories of work that contribute to society will be an opening up of the workplace itself.

Right now the parallels between these first and Second Adulthood generations are cited as examples of conflicting interests. Older workers, the argument goes, are “sucking the oxygen out of the atmosphere.” Any job we find is one that a younger person will be denied; any social support we get for our stage of life is one they won’t get for theirs – and will have to pay for later. Seeing the situation as a food fight over the same pieces of pie makes it impossible to join forces to enlarge and enrich the pie. As I see it, support for family responsibilities and the opportunity for productive work are not mutually exclusive spheres but a mutually inclusive intergenerational cause; we all – parents and grandparents – can become a force for social change that will bring about a more humane balance love and work.

RESOURCES:

Families and Work Institute (FWI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that studies the changing workforce, the changing workplace, the changing family and the changing community.

Ellen Galinsky, President and Co-Founder, co-directs the National Study of the Changing Workforce, the most comprehensive nationally representative study of the U.S. workforce and is the author of highly acclaimed Mind in the Making.
www.familiesandwork.org

Age Wave, founded by Kenneth Dychtwald, Ph.D., is the world’s leader in understanding the effects of an aging population on the marketplace, the workplace, and our lives.
www.agewave.com

SunAmerica Retirement Re-Set a nationwide survey, developed in collaboration with Age Wave and conducted by Harris Interactive, of Americans age 55 and older that takes an in-depth look at the shift in attitudes and actions toward retirement.
retirementreset.com

Civic Ventures is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. Civic Ventures’ Encore Careers campaign aims to engage millions of people in encore careers – combining personal meaning, continued income and social impact – to produce a windfall of talent to solve society’s greatest problems.

Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures, has been recognized by Fast Company magazine three years in a row as one of the nation’s leading social entrepreneurs. His new book The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife was hailed by The New York Times as “an imaginative work with the potential to affect our individual lives and our collective future.”

Encore Careers combine purpose, passion and a paycheck.
www.encore.org

Some of the most inspiring Encore stories come from Civic Ventures Purpose Prize winners and fellows, people in their 60s who are tackling society’s toughest problems.

The panel discussion – “In Search of Purpose, Passion and a Paycheck: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life” – is sponsored by Civic Ventures, which runs The Purpose Prize, and the New York Chapter of Coming of Age, a program that helps people 50-plus explore their futures while strengthening communities.

Suzanne Braun Levine, author of Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood and Fifty Is the New Fifty: 10 Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood, and the first editor of Ms. magazine – will moderate the discussion.

If you’re in New York on June 29, join us at the New York Public Library for some inspiration from four Purpose Prize honorees, who will talk about how they transitioned into Encore Careers (details below).

The Panelists:

Carole Artigiani, founder, Global Kids – A former educator, Artigiani now prepares urban youths to become global citizens.
Mark Goldsmith, founder, Getting Out and Staying Out – A former marketing executive, Goldsmith now helps young men plan for life after prison.

Emira Habiby Browne, founder, Center for the Integration and Advancement of New Americans – A Palestinian immigrant and social services professional, Browne provides support services to new immigrants.

Daniel Luhata Shungu, founder, United Front Against River Blindness – A former professional at a pharmaceutical company, Shungu now works to wipe out a disease that causes blindness and severe socioeconomic problems in the Republic of Congo.

The Encore Careers Campaign and The Purpose Prize are initiatives of Civic Ventures, a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. Each of the panelists has been honored by The Purpose Prize, which provides awards of $100,000 to people, age 60 and over, who are creating new ways to solve tough social problems. Find out more at
www.encore.org/prize

Special thanks to The S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation for underwriting this event, and to Coming of Age NYC, an initiative created to help people 50+ explore their futures, promote a 50+ connection and contribution, and build stronger nonprofits and communities.
comingofage.org

The FREE Event will take place:

Date: Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Time: 4:00 – 6:30 p.m.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building – South Court Auditorium
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018-2788
For more information: 212-340-0951

Stefanie Weiss is Vice President for Communications at Civic Ventures and Director of Communications for Experience Corps. For several years, she wrote a column called “Midlife” for The Washington Post Health section. She worked for 16 years at the National Education Association (NEA), and co-authored the book, Protecting the Freedom to Learn, published by People for the American Way. Visit her blog at www.encore.org

Shift Happens. It’s probably happening to you right now

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My big shift started when I retired last year, and it’s still going. I’m not sure where I’m headed, but it’s been a pleasure to hit the pause button while I ponder. Lately, certain life moments have hooked my attention, turning points that mark shifts not only in the world around me but in the way I view it.

In l968 I graduated from college on the day Bobby Kennedy was killed. It stunned everyone. Our commencement march turned into a funeral procession, complete with bitter rainstorm to mark our passage into the real world.

Three years later I was living in St. Louis, where I joined a bridge club that never played bridge. We’d deal the cards in all earnestness, but then they’d sit in a little puddle in front of us while we did what we hadn’t realized we’d meant to do: build the women’s movement.

1983 brought me my one and only child, which fundamentally shifted by whole orientation. And just five years later, I got my first CEO job and I was (if possible) even more terrified. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to act as if I knew exactly what I was doing.

Since I left my midlife career and entered this entirely new stage of life–what my friend and colleague Marc Freedman calls “the encore years”– I’ve had many conversations that take me back to the early days of the women’s movement. At the time we felt marginalized, underutilized and alone. It’s the same now for many of us who have finished our midlife careers but don’t exactly know what’s next. We have to get together and talk about it, no?

I’ve enjoyed being in a state of rest and renewal as I think about what’s next for me.

Whether it ends up being two weeks, two months, or two years, I know I’ll find my next step — and when I do, I’ll be ready for it. What’s important is that we can be there to support each other through this transition to an entirely new stage of life.

When “Shift Happens” to so many of us at the same time, we can find ways to talk about it, to prepare for it, and, most of all, work together to create a brighter future for those who come after us.

Shift Happens — it’s my new motto. Maybe it’s your motto, too?

Are you part of this big demographic and cultural shift? Are you no longer young but decades from being old?

Send the “Shift Happens” e-card and start the conversation:
http://action.encore.org/send-an-e-card

For more information, visit:
www.civicventures.org
www.encore.org/thebigshift

What is so special about Marc Freedman’s new book, THE BIG SHIFT is that it shares a vision for a new stage of life that will be rich and full for both the people entering their fifties and sixties and the society at large.

It also shares stories of people who have entered that Encore stage. I always think one story is worth a thousand words. Here is Anne Nolan’s from THE BIG SHIFT…

Anne Nolan, President of Crossroads
Providence, R.I.

When I went to work for the corporate world many, many years ago, it was exciting, and it was new, and I was doing things I’d never done and learning things. And it was incredibly exciting. But over the years I lost a sense of purpose. I wasn’t quite sure why I was doing it.

I mean, I knew why I was working. I was working for the money. I simply became more and more emotionally distant, and it was less fulfilling. Still, the president of the company was a wonderful man, and we did good work – we cleaned up the environment. But I didn’t clean up the environment. I was in corporate.

Then, one day in 1999, we made the decision to dissolve the company. It was the right business decision to make, definitely. It’s not easy to say this, but I guess I wasn’t invested enough to really feel any grief about its being over. I did receive a year’s salary as severance, which gave me the opportunity to say, “OK, what’s next?”

That year of reflection was an important part of my journey. Three months into the year, it just kind of hit me that I couldn’t do another corporate job. I don’t think I was really ever cut out for the corporate world.

I mean, I’m a product of the ’60s, for crying out loud. I need to feel passionate about my work. I need to do something that makes me cry, for good reasons, and I hadn’t felt that kind of commitment or passion about a job in years and years.

I was never a walker before that year, but I started walking every day, six or seven miles along the Blackstone River and canal. It was a form of meditation for me. I often had what-if-I-win-the-lottery thoughts, which I’ve had for 20 or 30 years now, ever since I’ve been buying tickets.

I always have the same fantasy, that if I won the lottery, I would start a not-for-profit dealing with homeless families. I also want a house on the ocean, but it was just one of those what-if-I-win-the-lottery things. I can’t afford a house on the ocean, and I thought I couldn’t afford to run a homeless program.

One day, I realized that I was being really stupid, that I had been working for money for so long, and it was time that I worked for passion, and I just had to make the money work. Was I going to spend the rest of my life making money and being unhappy or not making money and being happy?

That’s what it got down to. I was just so sure about my decision. I knew what I wanted and wouldn’t listen to anyone who discouraged me. It was like, “Get out of my way, honey, because somehow I’m going to do this.”

A number of people told me that I should go to a little place called Travelers Aid in downtown Providence. I had never heard of it, and in my mind it was something in a bus terminal. But eventually I called the woman who was president and asked if I could have a tour.

On the day of my appointment, I turned into the building, and I opened the door and – true story – I started to cry. I was overwhelmed by the humanity of the place and the people and the pain.

It was just this awful building with a dirty stairway going down into a basement. And at the bottom of the stairs there was a desk, and the place was packed with people. I mean packed, men and women and some very sick people and some crazy, inebriated people, and people who were terrified and people who were just terrifying.

And I was terrified on top of it all. I couldn’t talk I was so overwhelmed by what I saw.

I met the woman who was president, and she took me on a tour. She asked me to join the board that day and then said, “But I need to tell you that at the end of the year, I’m leaving.” And it was like, “Yes, OK, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” I just knew it was the job I wanted.

I joined the board, and five months later, when the president’s position became open, I applied. I almost didn’t get it. Another candidate had a lot of experience in the not-for-profit world, and the story I’m told is that the committee voted for her, but the chairman of the board at the time changed his vote. The rest is history.

It’s been nearly 10 years now, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. We changed the name from Travelers Aid to Crossroads. We do a lot of housing now and we’re statewide, and we deal with all kinds of issues that we weren’t dealing with before.

I want to continue to grow the organization, do more housing, do more job training. I have no plans to leave for a while, that’s for sure. I love my world here very much, and I love this organization. I have learned so much. And mostly what I’ve learned is to appreciate my life so much more.

I’m making all this sound like it’s wonderful and grand, but the one part that hasn’t been easy is the financial part. It’s been very hard to adjust to making half of what I was making. I thought I would simply do less and learn to economize and cut back and blah, blah, blah.

The first year I managed okay, but I went through a lot of savings. And then I started living off the equity in my house, which, given the housing market, is pretty much gone now. Let me just say that I’m still trying to figure this out.

At the same time, I wouldn’t change my position for anything. It’s just so enriching. There’s no way I could ever go back to the corporate world – ever, ever, ever.”

Anne Nolan has been president of Crossroads, the largest homeless service organization in Rhode Island, since 2001.

Excerpt from: THE BIG SHIFT by Marc Freedman (Public Affairs; Pub. Date: April 5, 2011, $24.99). For more information, contact: emily.lavelle@publicaffairsbooks.com, 917-849-6010.
Available at Amazon.com

www.civicventures.org
encore.org

Photo Credit: Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

Ever since the June, 2009 White House hosted an event salute to social innovators who are in their Encore Careers, Civic Ventures www.civicventures.org and Encore.org have been in the news.

On March 3, 2010 The New York Times (by Elizabeth Pope) reported on “Matching Life Experience With New Careers:”

“HEALTH navigator? Conflict coach? Pollution mitigation outreach worker? These emerging jobs aren’t household terms yet, but they are a natural fit for older people looking for new career opportunities, said Phyllis Segal, vice president at Civic Ventures, a nonprofit research group based in San Francisco.
“Many of today’s new encore careers build on multiple work and life experiences, so they are a good match for older adults who’ve spent decades in the workplace,” Ms. Segal said.”

[To read more, click here]

And most recently, The New York Times praised the work of Marc Freedman, who started Encore Careers and initiated the pilot program for baby boomers to transition into second careers (March 19, 2010, by Sarah Kershaw): “Ready for Life’s Encore Performances”:

“IN the back room of a neighborhood restaurant here (Palo Alto, CA) a small group of men and women in their 50s gathered recently to mark a milestone. “I feel like when historians look back and think about this salmon lunch at MacArthur Park, they’ll see this was a real turning point,” said Marc Freedman, who started a pilot program for baby boomers to transition into second careers.

These 10 executives had all left their high-paying jobs in the private sector and joined the pilot program, and this was their formal graduation. They had taken a step familiar to some high school or college students: take a year off to regroup, rethink and figure out what they want to be when they grow up.”

[To read more, click here]

As Marc Freedman has said, “In tough economic times, we need more creative solutions to long-standing social problems. It’s reassuring to note that as America ages, we have creativity in greater abundance. Purpose Prize winners show that experience and innovation can go hand in hand, that inventiveness is not the sole province of the young.”
Please join me in saluting these wonderful organizations.
For more information, please visit:

www.encore.org

www.civicventures.org