Thousands of women in their fifties, sixties and seventies are living – and defining a totally new love narrative. Whether they are already experiencing intimacy or joy – and great sex! – or need the inspiration and support to go for it, readers will be energized and motivated by the stories of new ways of loving in How We Love Now: Sex and the New Intimacy in Second Adulthood…

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE IN LOVE NOW?
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS…

The kinds of love we can experience in a lifetime are limited only by imagination and circumstances. Yet for too many women the notion of finding or reinvigorating intimate relationships at midlife seems preposterous; they have bought into the conventional wisdom that menopause is the last stop on the road to loneliness and decline.

They need to hear from the increasing number of other women who are living — and defining — a totally new love narrative. Their stories are fresh and surprising. By the time she reaches the empowering stage of Second Adulthood, a woman’s wants and needs are different, and the women in this book are fulfilling those unfamiliar desires — in both flesh and spirit. Not only are they still lusting and loving as they age, they are enjoying it more than ever…

The first thing they tell me is that they are amazed by how unexpected this new aspect of their lives is. “I can’t believe that I am telling you this…” or “I can’t believe I am doing this…” Some report that are astonished to be finding the Real Thing–at last. Others delight in the rediscovery and reinvention of what has been there all along. There are those who are celebrating a different option – the freedom they are building into their relationships or the simple fun of “no strings attached.” The common thread is the surprise and wonder at the new dimensions to their own capacity for love. That expansion of possibilities extends from new frontiers of sex to profound commitments to people and projects that – although they make not get the dopamine flowing – feel very good indeed. My goal in this book is to map that unexplored territory.

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS – Anecdotes women have shared with me give a glimpse at the range of love stories out there…

“I have fallen in love–with a short, balding, and very shy guy,” a fifty-two-year-old bride tells me with a tinge of disbelief.

“I don’t mind the way I would have in the past that he has only a GED while I have two master’s degrees; he has a Ph.D. in life experience.”

“All the things you worry about when you haven’t dated as long as I hadn’t dated–about sexual intimacy, about being attractive–none of that happened. Your body just kind of takes over.”

“I was happily married for forty years, but when my husband died, I found myself becoming increasingly drawn to other women. I just found the intimacy so easy.”

“You may be shocked, but I have discovered the joys of one-night stands. I need a rest from ‘relating.’ And the sex is great.”

“I’ve come to realize I’m more comfortable as a ‘serial monogamist.’ I enjoy running my own life, on my schedule and when we get together, it’s like a holiday that never ends! It’s time we broke out of the married-or-single mind-set to realize that there are all kinds of relationships in between”.

“Now when I consider the prospect of being in love, I am most intrigued by the possibility that I could actually be who I am…with someone who gets me.”

“Our love has mellowed into a deep bond of friendship and shared life experiences. Yes, romance is still there. But the relationship is not rife with the up-and-down mix of emotions there was in the beginning of our marriage. Rather, there’s trust, safety, love, and mutual support that only the years can bring.”

I also heard stories of commitment, affection, intimacy and trust that expand the definition of love itself.

Copyright © Suzanne Braun Levine, 2011

As psychologist Jane Adams put it:

“Whether you’re single or married, widowed or divorced HOW WE LOVE NOW will remind you of how many opportunities for getting as well as giving love already exist in your life, and how many more await you in Second Adulthood.”

For additional information and interviews, please contact:

Louise Braverman
Associate Director, Viking/Penguin Publicity
PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
375 Hudson St., 4th Floor
NY 10014

Direct: 212/366/2752
Louise.Braverman@us.penguingroup.com

Click Here to Pre-Order
ON SALE DATE: JANUARY 2, 2012

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.

But when the late ‘60s/early ‘70s rolled around, we’d had enough of the lackluster, ladylike role. We wanted to shine ourselves and, after years of open battle with the opposite sex, we started doing just that. Yet, although we began to occupy positions of power, the early childhood messages of proper female behavior persisted—one of the most stubborn being the nearly universal hesitancy to toot our own horn.

I addressed this issue in a recent post where I suggested using winning examples as a way to toot with comfort. But this problem is so pervasive and widespread that I turned to my favorite observer of the female experience after 50, Suzanne Braun Levine, for answers.

Suzanne shared both her insights and her personal struggle with tooting in our 15-minute conversation. Yes, Suzanne, a woman of notable accomplishments (Founding editor of Ms. magazine, the only woman editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, author of a number of best selling books, and frequent guest on major media programs) has trouble tooting, too!  She even wrote about her own lack of tooting temerity here on her website.

So what are we to do? Tooting our own horn is tied to feelings of self-worth and personal power. After all the advancements brought about by the women’s movement as well as the feisty hormonal changes of menopause, you’d think we gals would have this one nailed by now. Yet it seems like an ongoing struggle to be straightforward and state our strengths and accomplishments with ease.

How do you line up on the tooting issue? Can you toot like a trouper or is your own horn woefully silent? Suzanne and I would like to know. Please weigh in with any tips or ideas you might have for your fellow tooters and tooter wanna-bes. We’ll all be grateful for your thoughts.

Who knows? Once we get this handled, maybe someday the women of the feisty side of fifty will gather together and sound off with one great, triumphant toot. It would certainly be a welcome and long overdue reverberation; millions of horns vibrating loudly—sharing all of our remarkable achievements with open pride. In fact, what are we waiting for? It would be a “toot heard ‘round the world!”

And now for a bit of tooting of my own–I just started blogging for the brand new Huff/Post 50. Please take a moment to check out my post: “Five Keys to Beating the Age Factor.” I’d love hear your comments.

Are we the most engaged and empowered generation of women over 50 in recorded history? Most days it certainly feels like it. Not only are we 37 million strong, but our generation is the first to truly embrace second adulthood and celebrate our ‘Pride of Age” birthdays.

Among the national organizations creating a road map for our generation and a voice for women who continue to change the rules is The Transition Network (TTN). Founded ten years ago, TTN has become a national community of women – 50 and forward – who support each other as they continue a life of learning, engagement and leadership in the world.

TTN is a community of vibrant women with chapters in thirteen locations around the country – from New York to California (http://www.thetransitionanetwork.org).

Last week, I had the wonderful experience of being with TTN New York City members at their 10th Annual Dinner – a joyous celebration of their continued growth as a national organization, commitment to the Caring Collaborative and Milestone Birthdays.

Four Special Stories from the Evening’s ‘Pride of Age’ Celebrants:

Madeleine Payamps, 60
Thursday, May 26 – was my 60th birthday. I celebrated by leaving a corporate job that was no longer fulfilling. Although I could have just settled in for another five years or so, I knew I would never be able to quiet that deafening voice inside my head that kept asking me, “Is this it?” So, instead of being frozen in fear of the unknown, I chose to take a huge leap of faith to pursue my passion — coaching women in transition — just like me. Without even realizing it, I’d been preparing for this moment for many years. Our finances are solid, I’m healthy and fit, and I’m ready for the next big thing! Life without a cubicle? Bring it on!

Rae-Carole Fischer, 65
The best part of turning 65 is now I have a ½ price Metro card, I use it to take the bus down to the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. When I arrive I can buy my discounted movie tickets without fear. I am told they “card you” to make sure you are really as old as you say you are! In the past I would be afraid of being “carded” and denied a discount ticket because I was under 65. Oh, the embarrassment of being denied that ticket…

The saddest part of turning 65 is that young people offer me their seats on public transportation. Besides that I am a happy camper!

About TTN: I first heard about TTN while I was reading the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal in 2008. My husband was extremely ill and I knew that our time together was finite. I suddenly realized that I would be alone for the first time in a long time and the article mentioned the Caring Collaborative …a way to connect with women who could be there to help me and where I could offer my experience to others who were caregivers for someone they loved…

It took a minute to get on the website and five minutes more to join the organization. A very wise decision on my part.

Sherry Dworsky, 70
I was an Executive Search Consultant, headhunter, for 25 years and specialized in corporate human resources for 10 years. I worked with top corporations, traveled around the country and met diverse and wonderful people. For me, the question one day became – Do I want to be sitting behind this desk, satisfying as it is, when I am 70? What comes next in life?

And now I am 70, no desk, new friends, new work, time to play. It took a couple of years to find this next new path… part time work, job search consulting, volunteering and TTN. Through TTN I have found a community of women who share a passion for new goals, intellectual curiosity and a virtual place to find the voice of our generation, along with a desire to make this next part of life the best.

Ravelle Brickman, 75
It’s hard to believe, but I will be celebrating my 75th this summer. What a strange thing to happen to someone who is still — in her own mind at least — somewhere around the age of 19.

Because I have always thought of myself as much younger than I am, I did not actually acknowledge — let alone embrace — my true age until five years ago, when I decided to “come out” at TTN’s ‘Pride of Age’ ceremony in 2006.

Admitting — to myself as well as others — that I was 70 was a great shock, from which I am still recovering. However, the shock has been ameliorated by the fact that other women in TTN, who also look young, are roughly the same age. Moreover, they are also, like me, still working in one way or another and still leading incredibly active lives.

Now that I’ve admitted to being a septuagenarian — even the word sounds grim — I have one more thing to laugh at. The truth is that nothing has changed. If anything, I feel happier than I did at 55 or 60. I am certainly better off, and more optimistic about everything that life can offer.

Of course, I’m lucky. I’m in good health, full of energy, with four fabulous granddaughters, interesting work — some of which actually pays the rent — and a busy life that allows me to keep learning new things.

I owe much to TTN, both for its credo of celebrating age and for its cadre of like-minded women, all embarked on the same adventure and all with the same positive outlook on life.

At the end of the evening, it was clear to me that TTN membership is the best gift we can give ourselves. Being part of a vibrant community of women has never been easier. Find out more about The Transition Network, locate a chapter in your city or start one, and celebrate your next ‘Pride of Age’ Birthday at a TTN event.

Visit TTN and learn more:

http://www.thetransitionnetwork.org
http://ttncaringcollaborative.org

“It took a minute to get on the website and five minutes more to join the
          organization. A very wise decision on my part.” — Rae-Carole Fischer

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. As one woman said to me after having the same then-and-now photo revelation, “We’d better start appreciating ourselves now or we will look back in a few years and wish we looked as good as we did then.” It’s time to get rid of this second guessing about our appearance, and try to accept that even if our bodies don’t look as good as they once did, we can feel better about our Selves than we did back then.

Many of us have had body image problems all our lives. Most of us have body image problems now that our bodies are changing. Some of it is due to growing up in a culture where women were supposed to be beautiful, and thin and doll-like. That made it impossible for me to appreciate how I looked as opposed to how models and celebrities and role models told me I was supposed to look. (There is some consolation in the certitude that those same models and celebrities are sagging now too.)

One way to look at the current situation is that the pressure is finally off. In the same way as we are reconsidering our expectations in many areas of our lives, women tell me of changing their standards for what they expected from their bodies; one woman put it this way, “You know I’m into ‘fit’ now as opposed to ‘fat.’ I may not look as glamorous, but I can put my suitcase up on the rack on the airplane. I get so much satisfaction out of feeling strong and fit that I don’t focus so much on skin tone and all those things that you can’t do anything about.” My trainer tells me that she has noticed that when her clients turn fifty or when they go through menopause, or become grandparents, they get serious about being healthy and fit; they aren’t so much exercising for appearance as they are for long-term health and for feeling strong. The body image is internal. I often laugh at myself because I used to look fit on the outside and I was nothing but flab on the inside, now it’s the reverse.

We all have good days and bad days, and there’s no getting around that. But we have a new source of healing humor. I have had some of my best laughs with my friends when we get together and someone announces that she’s discovered a new decrepitude. First of all it’s a relief because we’ve probably noticed it on ourselves and not wanted to pay attention to it, but also the camaraderie is infinitely supportive. What I hate are the put-downs, the birthday cards and snide poems that make cruel fun of our looks; when we laugh at those, we are laughing at ourselves, not with each other. For me, there is a big difference between the sort of empowering laughter, and the humor that is, to me anyway, a continuation of the self-disgust that we grew up with.

The pressure is off in other areas too. Including sex. We used to be encouraged to see other women as rivals, so we always had to compare ourselves to them and try to be sexier, or more beautiful or thinner. Now that we are, for the most part, all on the same side, the self-doubt can be handled differently. Many of the women I have interviewed for my next book How We Love Now have told me that when they find a right relationship in their fifties and sixties it’s amazing how un-self-conscious they feel when they get down to the sex part, that they just feel accepted for who they are by themselves and by the other person. What they are focusing on is not how they look, but on how they feel, on what will give them pleasure and their partner pleasure rather than on how they look.

There is a scene in the movie “It’s Complicated” – directed by Nancy Myer — that takes place the morning after the Meryl Streep character has just slept with her ex, played by Alec Baldwin. He waddles off into the bathroom looking… his age, while she gets up smiling and starts wrapping herself up in the sheet. He is confused. “But we were naked last night, what are you doing this for?” And she replies, “We were lying down then.” That line embodies (get it?) the kind of good-natured acceptance of how her body looks with gratitude for how it works.

Finding material to write about is not always easy. One route is the memoir, which is built on revealing material you know well. Or you can write about something you don’t know well but would like to learn about. I combine the two by weaving some – but not all – of my own life story with answers to the question “What’s going on with women?” I have spent most of my professional life chronicling that transformation of women’s lives at different stages, and the experience has, in turn, inspired and empowered my own. Every time over the past forty years that I posed the question “What’s going on with women?” the answers were different.

I first became curious about something “going on” was back in the seventies when I was editor of Ms. magazine. Our readers were high school students and grandmothers, home-makers and rebels but if there was one driving editorial principle behind that breakthrough journalistic adventure, it was that if one woman was experiencing something, it was certain that other women were too, only they were not talking about it; the magazine needed to tell such stories and open up the conversation.

When in my early fifties I began to feel dissatisfied and restless that faith in shared experience led me to suspect that there was “something going on.” I checked it out with other women, and sure enough, they felt it too. Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood was the result of my search for understanding and reassurance that I wasn’t crazy – or under some menopausal spell – and neither were the hundreds of women I talked to. (I have always loved a T-shirt I saw once that said, “This is not a hot flash. It’s a power surge.”) After that book came out, other women who were in the process of navigating that transition came forward, and described their versions of our shared experience. The more we shared, the more I began to see some guiding insights that would be helpful to anyone negotiating the bumpy road to the new stage of life. For me Fifty Is the New Fifty: Ten Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood was a kind of personal stock-taking based on what I had learned form other women’s discoveries and disappointments as well as my own.

My newest book (due our next Valentine’s Day) – How We Love Now: Sex and The New Intimacy in Second Adulthood - is a deeper exploration of the new stage of life we are defining as we go along through the all-important lens of love. And sex.

In this case there was another dimension to the “What’s going on?” challenge: Not only was I exploring my own hang-ups and choices, and not only was I gathering experiences from other women, but the women themselves were hearing what they were saying about themselves for the first time. In many cases – especially in the context of sex – they hadn’t dared put into words, even to themselves, why they were doing what they were doing or longing to do.

“I can’t believe I am telling you this. I must be crazy” was a common exclamation. I knew – and they need to hear – that they weren’t crazy or alone, that what they were concerned or curious about was on the minds of countless other women. I write to enter into a supportive conversation among women like them – on the page.

– Suzanne Braun Levine

Happy Anniversary, She Writes!

”She Writes is a community, virtual workplace, and emerging marketplace for women who write, with over 15,000 active members from all 50 states and more than 30 countries. Leveraging social media tools and harnessing women’s collaborative power, She writes is fast becoming the destination for all women who write.”

www.shewrites.com

Seeking the Buddha Nature in a Kayak

Gliding parallel the shoreline
Nanoseconds of now
And
Fleeting instances of the present
Come to pass
Along with skeletal shaped shoots
And clusters of seldom cut caryopsis
Advancing and retreating
Teasing the mind and eye
Making common cause
The competition
Between anticipation and now.

Joyce Ellen Weinstein
June 2011

Joyce Ellen Weinstein finds inspiration in the personal and emotional as well as the interaction developed through self, family and community, all of which are parts of making the whole of her unified body of work.

To learn more about Joyce Ellen Weinstein and her work, please visit:

Joyce Ellen Weinstein – fine artist
www.joyceellenweinstein.com

BlueStone Gallery
104 East Ann St…
Milford, PA
www.bluestonegallerymilford.com

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.

In other words, for most of my adult life I have belonged to no generation – or all generations. If anything defined me it was in the trajectory of my life, not where I was in the timeline of my life. Therefore, even though the teachers were half my age, their insights about my child and their expertise about teaching made for a very intimate and respectful relationship. They had acquired an understanding of children in their short lives that I was in need of at that parenting starting point in my long life.

Only now that I am way beyond bonding with other parents of young children and just one more “older woman” have I become aware of the ageism that abounds in our culture and the way our accumulated years divide us. More than once I have been chatting with a young man and catch his eyes floating away over my shoulder. I am rarely asked what I “do” although I am still doing it. And “dear” has become a put-down in my dictionary.

Having experienced the intergenerational community of those years when the age of my child was more meaningful than my own, I don’t want to lose that in my Second Adulthood, the new stage of life that we – older mothers, empty nesters, childless-by-choice friends, women in the process of starting over – are all defining as we live it. We are demonstrating that self-invention is a life long process. That is a starting point for a bond among women of all generations.

But there are obstacles to finding common ground. One is that we are not in the same place at the same time often enough. That’s fairly easy to remedy. The technological barrier is a little harder to work around. Women my age talk of a culture gaps in the workplace; for example, we older workers are used to stepping into a colleague’s office to touch base.

To a younger woman, the face at the door is an intrusion; e-mail is the way to go. Technology also enables young women to meet and share and protest in ways that we have a hard time keeping up with. If we are going to “sit down over a cup of coffee” – virtual or not – we will have to meet (or tweet) them half-way.

I believe that women young enough to be our daughters (but aren’t) want to connect with us as much as we want to connect with them. I experience it personally in the tense alliance between waves of feminism. We Women’s Movement types complain that the younger ones have abandoned the cause; the younger ones resent what they perceive as our assumption that we defined the cause for all time. The mass marches that we associate with activism have been replaced by on-line mobilization and actions that we have been slow to sign on to.

Yet when we do engage each other over the issues, they want to know what it was like for us; they want to test their ideas out and get knowing – but not condescending – feedback. And they want to know how it is for us now.

At first I was surprised when a young woman would come up to me after a bookstore reading with two copies of my first book Inventing the Rest of Our Lives – “one for my mother and one for me,” they would say – but I came to understand that they wanted to read about their own futures. They understand that we are opening up possibilities that they can look forward to taking advantage of when they get there. Together we can be nourished by a community of women, which has no age requirements for entry.

I’m not big on change. Most of us aren’t. That becomes a bigger problem the more choices we have and the more restless we feel. Second Adulthood is about choices and restlessness and trying something new, but that means change, and many of us get stuck at the edge of the diving board.

And some of us get a push, which at the time seems like the worst day of our lives. In my work that happened to me twice. The first time the magazine I loved was sold and the new owners wanted to bring in new blood; otherwise I would have stayed on forever – slug that I am – and missed out on the rest of my career. The second time, after several years of tension with the publisher, I was asked “to step down.” Being fired is one of life’s most devastating experiences; how can you go out and sell yourself when you have just been pronounced a failure? In my case I also had to face the fact that I was at the end of the road in terms of magazine editing – there simply weren’t any left that I was right for.

My well-meaning friends peppered me with ideas, most of which had to do with writing. After all, writing and editing are both word jobs. What they didn’t understand was that the way I saw it, editing was about making someone else’s ideas better, and writing was about having your own ideas and putting them out there. I had gotten all the way to my fifties without feeling I had anything to say. Because I felt I had no other choice – because I was pushed – I began to explore what I wanted to tell people. That was – as many people who are dislodged from one kind of work say – the “best thing that could have happened.”

What’s more it couldn’t have happened any earlier. By the time I was fired I was well into the delicious “I don’t care what other people think” stage of reinvention. The reward of that liberating defiance is that you begin to believe “I care more what I think.” A lifetime of listening for what other people thought, felt, needed – listening for other voices – had muted my own. But having to write – having to express my own ideas, with conviction – has, over a decade later, has enabled me to speak up, speak out, and say what I know. Change, however unwelcome at the time, turned out to be a gift.

Somewhere along the way someone called my attention to the W.H. Auden’s poem “Leap before you look”; it has helped me understand the paralyzing power of risk-taking by suggesting that “fear” and “change” can be dealt with separately. The first line is “The sense of danger must not disappear”; that is where the joy of discovery comes from. The concluding line is “Our dream of safety has to disappear.” We learn that lesson every day. As we experience aging, we understand two things: that there is danger ahead and that we need to let go of the notion that if we give our all, we can make safety happen. Which is why the best place to be is in the present. So leap!

Resources:

AARP
http://www.aarp.org

Encore Careers
http://www.encore.org

The Transition Network
www.thetransitionnetwork.org

Catalyst
http://catalyst.org

Center for Women’s Business Research
http://www.nfwbo.org

Count Me In
http://www.count-me-in.org

Retirement or What Next?
http://www.retirementorwhatnext.com

SeniorNet
http://www.seniornet.org

Women@WorkNetwork
http://womenaworknetwork.com

By now it should come as no surprise that our foremothers did know a thing or two, but it is always stunning to come upon words of wisdom that are totally relevant today.

My friend Louise Knight, who has written the definitive biography of the reformer Jane Addams recently passed along the essay below. What is stunning here is how these words written almost a century ago speak to the current conversation about Second Adulthood or the Encore stage of life (just check out www.encore.com) in which we have an opportunity turn the wisdom, expertise, and confidence of our pre-fifty years – what Addams calls “moral energy”- to making our world a better place.
– Suzanne Braun Levine

“Need a Woman Over Fifty Feel Old?”
An editorial by Jane Addams
Ladies’ Home Journal

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was 54 years old when she wrote this essay at the invitation of the editors of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which in 1914 was the nation’s most widely read women’s magazine. At the time, Addams was the most famous and admired, as well as the most politically accomplished, woman in the country.

Two years before, she had seconded the nomination of former president Theodore Roosevelt as the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, and she regularly testified before and lobbied state legislatures and Congress on behalf of such progressive legislation as banning child labor, providing women with the vote and the eight-hour work day, and, in the case of Congress, defeating proposed immigration restrictions.

In 1914 she was serving on the board of the NAACP and the Women’s Trade Union League, was as a member of the Executive Committee of the National Progressive Party, had just stepped down as a vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and within a few months would be elected president of the Woman’s Peace Party and the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace. The readers of the Journal knew that Addams was herself an example of a woman over fifty who, to say the least, did not feel old.

– Louise W. Knight, author, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action (W.W. Norton, 2010) and Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (University of Chicago, 2005), website: www.louisewknight.com

“One of the most remarkable changes in the lives of women in this country has been the postponement of old age. Chiefly because they had nothing else to do, our grandmothers, after their children had been reared and safely launched into homes of their own, expected to give their remaining years to a general oversight of the households of their sons and daughters and to the upbringing of their grandchildren, confirming both as nearly as possible to their own excellent although somewhat inflexible standards.

It is useless to deny that this admirable and highly domestic occupation occasionally led to difficulties. A vigorous woman, accustomed to the cares of a large household in which her word was law, when deprived of an absorbing occupation could not all at once reduce herself to a negligible quantity, and the traditional “mother-in-law” was quite as much of the victim of circumstances as was the cherished family upon whom her unused energies were expended.

The easy assumption of old age under the circumstances is readily understood, for when the individual valued herself largely as a repository of wisdom and tradition it was quite in character to don a cap, and to sit, knitting innumerable pairs of stockings, where she might easily be consulted. Almost any family album will reveal these sweet-faced women, a fold of linen over their placid breasts, a cap upon their smooth hair, whom we are happy to claim as our grandmothers, and yet if we knew their exact ages, in almost every instance we would be surprised to discover how young they were, many of them scarcely fifty years old. They assumed that life was over for them at the very time their husbands were still in the midst of business and professional activities, often receiving their highest honors and rendering their most distinguished public services after they were fifty years old.

We regret the passing of these charming women and we certainly deplore those women of seventy years occasionally seen rushing from one social function to another, attired in modish gowns, with picture hats surmounting their elaborately coifed heads. Although so dissimilar it is nevertheless true that both types of women are without adequate activity. The former dissembled a placidity which certainly they could not have felt in every instance; the latter continue a round of vapid occupations which they fear to drop lest they be faced by insupportable leisure. Both are obviously without absorbing interests.

Happily there is another type of woman between the ages of fifty and seventy years of whom every section of America has its shining examples; first discovered perhaps through church sewing circles and missionary societies, although the widely spread Woman’s’ Christian Temperance Union organizations had much to do with enabling her to find herself. The Woman’s Club movement has also been a great factor in developing the powers of women who are over fifty years old. Many of them learned to write papers, to address audiences, to preside over meetings, to organize committees for the first time after they had passed that age. The women’s clubs also gave to thousands of women their first sense of responsibility in regard to public education and civic reform. It was largely through the efforts of these older club women that kindergartens, manual training and domestic science were introduced into the public-school system of America. In many cities these women were also the pioneers in agitating for public playgrounds and vacation schools.

These same elderly women who, in their youth, had been sheltered from any knowledge of crime and the ways of criminals, and who would have considered it most unladylike even to refer to a “disreputable woman” [a prostitute], were often responsible for securing matrons in the police stations, teachers in the jails, the establishment of juvenile courts and the abolition of vice [saloon, gambling, drug-dealing and brothel] districts. These women are now in no small measure responsible for municipal concerts, for crafts and trades schools and for exhibitions for the encouragement of local artists. In their girlhood they knew no exercise more violent than playing croquet, no dietary more rigid than preserves and sponge cake for supper, no notion but that all diseases were Heaven-sent, and that a certain number of children must inevitably die in infancy, but they are now agitating for public gymnasiums and municipal baths, for pure-food laws and a clean milk supply; they are quite tigerlike in insisting that all children shall be protected from contagious diseases through school nursing and medical inspection, and they have come to consider a high death rate among infants a disgrace and a reproach to the community. . .

One woman of sixty whom I know is most widely useful in many church activities, not only in the local circles of her denomination but also as president of a State organization. Her husband died several years ago, her children are both married and living in two distant cities. It would be hard to imagine a more desolate life than hers might be did she not have an outlet, not only for her splendid energy, but also for her social gifts and her affection. Her small but charming house does not give an impression of emptiness, but it is as if it were the center of beneficent activity, a place where a woman dwelt not alone but surrounded by the affection of countless friends. It would be absurd to say that if she had remained “quietly at home,” exchanging social amenities with her neighbors, her life would have been so filled with satisfactory interests..

Another woman over fifty years old [Florence Kelley] is the executive head of a National organization [the National Consumers League] which has for years urged and secured better conditions for working women and children, both through legislation and voluntary effort. She has moved from one difficult piece of social organization to another until probably no one else in the United States is more conversant with the conditions surrounding working women and children in every part of the country, and with the laws which have been enacted on their behalf and with the efficiency of their enforcement. . . .

That weariness and dullness which inhere in both domestic and social affairs when they are carried on by men alone will no longer be a necessary attribute of public life when such gracious and gray-haired women become a part of it, and when new social movements, in which men as well as women are concerned, naturally utilize woman’s experience and ability.

Ever-widening channels are gradually being provided through which woman’s increasing moral energy may flow, and it is not too much to predict that in the end public affairs will be amazingly revivified from those new fountainheads fed in the upper reaches of woman’s matured capacity.”

– Jane Addams
Ladies Home Journal
October 1914, Vol. 31 page 7.

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We each have our personal demons that show up in the middle of the night shrieking a litany of worst-case scenarios: What if I don’t have enough money to support myself? What if that nagging ache is something really serious? What if I can’t figure out what to do next? What’s wrong with meeeeeee?

They can drain our waking resolve.

Here’s my advice – underscored by the point that there is no right way to deal with fear, taking risks, work, speaking up, relationships…and the changes in second adulthood. The only constant and Life Lesson is: “Nothing Changes, if Nothing Changes”:

Tell your Demons To Shut Up!

I had a friend who literally did that–out loud!–whenever she awoke full of doubts and self-pity. Another woman dismisses those panicky voices with a sarcastic “Thanks for sharing.” A stern”mommy voice” may come in handy here.

Engage Just One Demon.

The conversations that take place in the dark of night of the soul can be transformative. Single out just one of the fears that bring on a cold sweat. And stare it down. Finding a new financial adviser to review your “dire” situation, switching medications for a chronic medical condition, or instituting a weekly let-it-all-hang-out lunch with two or three open, lively women should silence at least one of the voices of doom. At least temporarily.

Next, we’ll tackle Risks and Work…

Copyright © Suzanne Braun Levine, “Fifty Is the New Fifty: 10 Life Lessons for
Women in Second Adulthood” (Viking/2009).