Jill Clayburgh's life so closely paralleled mine, I feel as though a part of me lived a little through her and died a little with her.
I know I'm never going to probably see the Taj Mahal or, you know, climb Mt. Everest, but I can still maybe influence peoples' way of thinking by a story that I do, by something I learn about the world.
We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.
Like everyone else in the first weeks after the tragedy of 9/11, I was looking frantically for some way to help.
It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there's a whole second adulthood!
One of the ways we women often handicap ourselves is thinking that once we've made a decision or a commitment, we can't change.
I keep returning to the central question facing over-50 women as we move into our Second Adulthood. What are our goals for this stage in our lives?
I'm a liberal, but I think there's so much that the private sector can do and does do.
Adapting to our Second Adulthood is not all about the money. It requires thinking about how to find a new locus of identity or how to adjust to a spouse who stops working and who may loll, enjoying coffee and reading the paper online while you're still commuting.
Career-driven millennials are strategic about working obsessively while they are single and earning enough money to afford advanced education. Most are patient enough to wait until 30 or later to develop their dream.
There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.
You have a new role: family caregiver. It's a role nobody applies for. You don't expect it. You won't be prepared. You probably won't even identify yourself as a caregiver.
Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.
No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness.
In rough times, pathfinders rely on work, friends, humor and prayer. They develop a support network.
I found the happiest woman in America is between 50 and 55, is happily married, has made significant progress in her career, and lives in a community where she can easily exercise outside. But the most important single thing was she had her last child before she was 35.
I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.
Married at 23, a mother at 24, and blindsided by divorce at 28, I found myself struggling, like many young women I meet today, to strike a balance between my personal life and my career.
It seems like, to me, somewhere between 30 and 35 is a really, really good time to turn your eggs into babies.
Spontaneity, the hallmark of childhood, is well worth cultivating to counteract the rigidity that may otherwise set in as we grow older.
