Suzanne Braun Levine
Huff/Post 50

As any woman who has lost her mother does, I think of her especially on Mother’s Day. In fact, I think I will always consider Mother’s Day her day, not mine. And when I think of her life, I also remember the gift of her peaceful death.

When she died at 94, I felt sad, of course, but also relieved after several years of slow decline during which no matter how I tried to give her what she needed, I was one degree of deterioration behind in caring for her. And I felt grateful — grateful to her for the loving and gracious way she took her slow leave, and very grateful to the hospice team that guided our last months together. Thanks to them, she died at home, smiling to the end.

My Post-Fifty Posse

We are five former Ms. magazine colleagues who have been having dinner together once a month for over 20 years. We like to try new places, which is a good thing, since I am not sure we would be welcome back to a restaurant after a visit. We generally sit there for three or four hours, order an assortment of appetizers, laugh uproariously — and pay with five credit cards!

A Mini Blog Tour
For My Ebook

You Gotta Have Girlfriends is a traveling “circle of trust “- of love and support – on the Internet shared by my girlfriends. Join me to celebrate our post-fifty posses and ourselves on the blogs and websites of my pioneering girlfriends. — Suzanne

“Suzanne Levine takes us beyond the frontier of our own expectations and into a new and hope-filled stage of life.”
– Gloria Steinem

You Gotta Have Girlfriends!
by Suzanne Braun Levine
Huff/Post50

My first ebook – You Gotta Have Girlfriends – A Post-Fifty Posse Is Good For Your Health – came out this week and I’m sharing the news on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Huff/Post50 has a feature that I’ve written – with a slide show of personal photos, movie clips and famous quotes on friendship. I hope you will visit the page, and Comment, Tweet and Share it – widely!

By Ann Voorhees Baker
Women at Woodstock 2013

So happy to be able to share this great news on my site! I love my radio programs with Eileen on “Feisty Side of Fifty” radio and am glad I will seeing her the West Coast (July 28-31,2013) and East Coast (October 6-9, 2013) Women at Woodstock retreats for women 50 (or so) & up — Suzanne Braun Levine

Huff/Post 50

You might say it’s the time of year for silver belles. Vogue’s Vicki Woods, a journalist who has written cover stories for the fashion mag on Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Jessica Parker, is the latest high-profile figure to go gray. She wrote about her decision in a recent post:

by Karin Lippert
Huff/Post50

“To this day, it’s one of the ways I define myself: I worked at Ms. It’s my badge of pride,”
Hagar Scher

We came together to celebrate our collective pride and three generations of connections as a “family.” To remember the conversations we started with each other that became articles, sparked a dialogue with our readers – with women everywhere – and transformed our lives and theirs.

By Suzanne Braun Levine
Huff/Post50

Like most women my age, as the years accumulate I get more and more selective about who I consider real friends, while at the same time, more and more committed to those who form my “circle of trust.” The trouble is that paring down my inner circle can be hurtful, guilt-making, and very hard to initiate.

I practice the “drift” technique — fewer calls and dates, slower responses to e-mails — hoping that distance and silence will dissolve the tie.

When I got to the end of the Mall where the stage is, my friend and AIDS activist Sean Strub was there waiting to greet me. So was Jennifer Morton of POZ, who had finally managed to find out where Charlie’s quilt was; what’s more she had brought it to the front of the whole exhibit, right at the stage. What a doll!

It more beautiful than it looks in pictures; there is so much more artistic detail. It was lovely to be able to look at it up close and among so many touching and imaginative panels.

By Suzanne Braun Levine,
Huff/Post50, GAY VOICES

When my brother Charlie died of AIDS in February 1985, the epidemic had barely begun. The disease, first reported in 1981, had come out of nowhere, and no one had any idea what caused it or how to treat it. But there was plenty of uninformed panic and prejudice.