Category: Second Adulthood

Cyma’s Pick’s: The Newly-released
“How We Love Now”

By Cyma Shapiro, founder
MotheringintheMiddle.com

“You’re Not Who You were Only Older,”
Suzanne Braun Levine

I haven’t written a book review for Mothering, yet, since I believe our readers are a widely diverse group of women representing many ages, interests and ideologies. So, when I received How We Love Now, I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, other than read it.

JOINING AN EXCITING CONVERSATION: Jane Fonda’s Panel on “ReBirth” at TEDxWomen

By Suzanne Braun Levine

Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday of the year – no gifts to worry about, the chance to collect people you love from all corners of your life, and the best food ever!

This year, while the leftovers are still tasty, there is yet another event I am looking forward to: I have been invited by Jane Fonda to join a panel she is leading at the TEDxWomen at a one-day bicoastal event on December 1 at the Paley Media Center in New York, + Los Angeles.

“Horn Tooting — The Sequel”

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.

“Writing about Me, Ourselves, and You”

By Suzanne Braun Levine,
“Happy Anniversary,
SheWrites.com™!”

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.

SELF- INVENTION – The Bond Among Women of All Generations

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.

“NEED A WOMAN OVER FIFTY FEEL OLD?”
An Editorial by Jane Addams, 1914

Introduction by Louise W. Knight, author
“Jane Addams: Spirit in Action”

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

SECOND WEDDING: Hope Springs Eternal

By Joyce Ellen Weinstein

During the late 1960’s and into the 70’s I was a commercial textile designer working in the garment center in New York City to support myself and two children.

My boss at that time, the woman in white, was getting married for the second time.

Retirement Ambivalence: Who’s Afraid of Getting Off the Career Track?

By Ruth Wooden President, Public Agenda & Chair of the Board, Civic Ventures There’s a new chapter required in The Etiquette Handbook:  “What to say to someone who is retiring.” I can’t get over some of the things people have said to me after a routine announcement that I plan to retire as President of […]