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.

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 …

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.

I was so touched by the note and poem I received from my friend Sean Strub – a feminist in good standing as well as a major AIDS activist – that I want to share it. He found the poem when he was going through his mother’s papers after she died recently. The short story he mentions, The Yellow Wallpaper, is a feminist classic, written in 1892; about a woman who is kept housebound by her husband and slowly goes mad.

Sean’s mother’s aversion to the word “feminist” is an example of the familiar “I’m not a feminist, but……” syndrome – a woman who walks the walk but doesn’t feel comfortable with the talk. It is clear to me – and to her son – that Janey was a feminist in spirit, which is where it counts. — Suzanne Braun Levine

By Suzanne Braun Levine

Recently I came upon a photograph of myself in my first bikini (it was really a two-piece, compared to what goes as a bikini these days) and I was struck by how good I looked. That thought lasted about two minutes until I realized that when that picture was taken, I thought I looked fat and bulky; I was not happy to be looked at. Then I realized that I feel the same way today. Fat and bulky. Plus, wrinkled and saggy. What a waste, I thought, not feeling good about my body back then. And just as much of a waste feeling ashamed of it now.

By Suzanne Braun Levine

Esther M. Broner, who died this month at 83, was a true woman of valor – generous to her friends, nurturing to her children, and devoted to the dignity of women. She wrote 11 books of fiction and non-fiction – all with a mystical subtext, was a philosopher, a witch (the good kind), and a believer in ritual.

A Summer Poem
By Joyce Ellen Weinstein

Seeking the Buddha Nature in a Kayak

Gliding parallel the shoreline
Nanoseconds of now

By Suzanne Braun Levine

One thing about being an older mother is that you are constantly reminded of the truism that age doesn’t really describe the shape of a person’s life. Nor does our place on the family tree, the generation we are assigned to at birth. When my daughter was born I was 44, old enough to be her grandmother. When she went to school, I was old enough to be her teachers’ (and her friends parents’) mother. At the same time my contemporaries had long since forgotten about coping with babies and young children – they were on to the joys of grandchildren. My most meaningful cohort was other women with children my children’s age, but not my age themselves.