The Transition Network
Washington, DC/June 5th

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.

Suzanne Braun Levine
Huff/Post50

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.

By Suzanne Braun Levine

Valentine’s Day celebrates loving and being loved. But, for much of our lives, the festivities commemorated a kind of Romance that our own relationships could only approximate – a sticky sweetness that the classic heart-shaped box of candy symbolized.

When I wrote, “Fifty Is the New Fifty. Sixty, I hasten to add, is also the new sixty, and seventy the new seventy. And the women who are the new fifty, sixty, and seventy wouldn’t want it to be anything else…” I knew that we are a different generation than our mothers.
And, we are pioneering change for women in a new stage of life…

We Can Only Learn from Each Other
When the first copy of my new book FIFTY IS THE NEW FIFTY arrived from my publisher, my emotions were mixed. On the one hand the book embodies the long-awaited launch of my ideas into the public conversation. On the other hand, it makes me vulnerable to the public’s response. Curiously, though, I feel somewhat less vulnerable this time out than when INVENTING THE REST OF OUR LIVES was published several years ago.
This is due in part to the fact that I was …

At the start of our multi-decade marriage, my husband and I had a Noah’s Ark social life. In the evenings anyway, we went out with other couples; single friends were for lunch. Around the time that I stopped performing such housewifely functions as putting the very heavy bedspread on the bed in the morning (to lug it off again only hours later), I got up the nerve to make an occasional dinner date on my own – usually with a woman friend and usually on a night when my husband …

We refer to childhood friends as “people we grew up with.” The phrase conjures kids coming over after school, giggling in my room, raiding our refrigerator, endorsing my annoyance with my little brother, knowing my parents in their prime. There is a special intimacy about that shared history, and whenever I run unto Someone I Grew Up With, I count on that special bond to bridge the years.
We certainly didn’t register at the time that we weren’t just growing up alongside one another – we were helping each other make …

Like most of you I am sure, I keep a file of juicy tidbits and quotes picked up from random reading. I especially love it when I find something that confirms what we know, but can’t prove about ourselves. Here are some recent favorites:
The increasing use of both sides of the brain for cognitive processes – bilateral brain involvement – can support a more balanced perspective on life that draws on both our logical, analytical powers as well as our nonverbal, intuitive capacities…..Evidence for this kind of development comes from …