On this Thanksgiving, I pondered the fact that I’m grateful for you, my friends at Any Shiny Thing (sometimes I type it wrong and it comes out Any Whiny Thing, and that’s good, too). [Read more…]
Thankful I’m Old(ish)
Wise Women Speak
The discontent of youth passes when you realize that the music you are hearing is not about you, but about itself.
-Germaine Greer
Melitas Forster, at 94 our blogger emeritus
This week I want to celebrate the joy of being not-young. [Read more…]
Backstabbing Women, Part 2
I’ve spent my life denying it, but now that I’m older, I have to raise the white flag. Women can be backstabbers. Before you respond in horror, let me explain. [Read more…]
Boomer Achieves Lifetime Dream
After wishin’ and hopin’ and plannin’ and workin’ and prayin’…
After earning a self-created, home-cooked degree in How To Write A Novel (with a minor in How To Build a Platform)…
After writing and throwing away hundreds of pages that just weren’t quite good enough…
After years of answering my friends and family: “Almost!” and “Pretty soon!”
Two big things happened.
I discovered a passion for the topic of aging powerfully, and
On July 17, a date that would have been my mom and dad’s 63rd wedding anniversary,
I published my very first novel!
Dakota Blues is about:
- midlife reinvention,
- the quest to find meaning and empowerment in the second half of life,
- the need to feel a connection with our ancestors,
- dealing with the issues that hit without warning as we age,
- whether we’re too old at a certain point to start something new,
- whether it’s selfish and ungrateful to want more, and
- finding the courage to change later in life.
Or, putting words into pictures, here’s what you’ll find in Dakota Blues (available now in paperback, and on Kindle in the second week of August, +/-):
I can’t tell you how much this means to me, to have reached this goal, and to have done it at fifty-eight. This is a time when many of us are rethinking our lives, and wondering whether to break through the age limitations placed on us by an earlier set of beliefs.
This is what we’re supposed to be doing, folks: chasing our dreams like there’s no tomorrow, excited as kids, refusing to lie down and let the culture of low expectations steamroll us. This is how to live in the second half. This is how to live, period. That’s what my character, Karen Grace, struggles with, and that’s what Dakota Blues is about.
I hope you buy a copy, and if you do, I hope you love it enough to add a rating to the Dakota Blues page on Amazon or Goodreads. Ratings mean everything in this online, digitized society, where there’s far too material to sort through without help.
Thanks for standing by me while I struggled. I hope I can do the same for you someday.
PS Today is the fourth anniversary of my father’s passing. I hope he can see what I’ve done. I miss him more than I can say.
Love,
Lynne
Getting Old is Fantastic!
Anna Quindlen, Author
Anna Quindlen is 59 years old, and she thinks the same way I do, so today, I’m going to borrow from her new book to make my own points about age. [Read more…]
After 50, No Positive Milestones
If you’re post-menopausal and (one hopes) female, you’ve probably got at least as many years left as the number you spent raising your kids. Men, a little less but still plenty. What milestones might you be looking forward to in this, the second half of your one precious life?
Here’s what the culture tells you to expect:
- You’ll lose things: bone density, skin tone, hair (except where you don’t want hair. There, you’ll get lots of it, overnight and without warning), memory, energy, friends, loved ones.
- You’ll need lots of pills.
- You’ll decline further and die.
Society has no expectations of you in the second half of your life, in contrast to the first:
- You’ll get teeth! You’ll stand upright and walk! You’ll enter school!
- You’ll get your license! Prom! Graduation! First job!
- Marriage/kids/career/anniversaries/grandkids!
- Retirement!!
Then what? Uh oh. See above. So that sucks. What to do, what to do?
Here’s what I recommend. We’re an independent bunch, right?
Let’s establish our own awesome, middle-age-and-older milestones to which one can look forward with delight. If you lived in a different culture than one in which we do (the Hollywood-defined one in which, as Steve Almond says in his profoundly thoughtful introduction to Cheryl’s Strayed’s new book, explosions/shiny tits comprise our personhood), you might not have to do this, but since you do, you may as well revel in the freedom to make things up. So, what milestones might, in your ideal world, beckon to you in the second half of life?
Here are some ideas to get you started, and then I hope you’ll contribute.
IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE, ONE IS EXPECTED TO AT LEAST MAKE AN EFFORT TOWARD ACCOMPLISHING THE FOLLOWING:
- Women will develop a new and highly personal sense of style, characterized by three essential elements: fashion, comfort, and making young women envious.
- Pursuit of your grand objective is expected. Whatever dream you’ve blathered about for the past fifty years or so – travel, a sport, painting, starting a business, writing, reading, thinking, teaching, computer expertise, living fulltime in an RV, photography, dance, singing, escaping – you’ll be expected to make major moves in that direction.
- Your overriding political interest will change from your own good to the welfare of the country and planet. I.E., larger than yourself.
- Your kids will see you as an example of how to live powerfully in the second half. (They won’t pity you, as in this sad little article.)
Listen, people. We’re old; we’re awesome – those lines in your face speak of hard-won experience. How about we tap into our power instead of giving it away by worshipping at the altar of a culture that tells us that if we’re not fertile (women) or kickingass/takingnames (men), we’re pointless?
Please share your utopian dreams with us.
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