WOW: Women's Older Wisdom
WOW

March 2024
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Practicing Kindness to Overcome Despair

Despair has become my unwelcome visitor.  Every time I read about the deteriorating conditions of life in Gaza my stomach churns. Tears come easily. This weekend I took myself to task, realizing I better come up with a strategy ASAP [...]

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family10

Writing A Eulogy And Finding A Poem

GUEST POST by JANE SESKIN I was about to cross the street when I looked to the right and saw my friend riding toward me. I knew it was Ann from her distinctive red bicycle helmet. She pulled over to the curb. We caught up on personal news and the state of the world.  I left the encounter smiling. She was an energetic woman in her late 60’s [...]

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It’s Not Me, It’s Us

GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN Life-changing wisdom can come to us by surprise. I worked with the novelist and New Yorker editor Writer William Maxwell in his last decade.  After he had died, I read that he had brought his fiancée Emmy to meet his father in 1945.  His father, a somber man, was delighted, and advised his son, “If you [...]

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Aging Like A Wise Woman

Over coffee, a friend suggested that I write a blog offering guidelines for meaningful aging.  This week I’m taking her suggestion to heart. Here’s what I came up with: Honor Your Failures Reframe your “failures” as risks you took where you stuck your neck out.  Examine them for the lessons they presented and move on where you promise [...]

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COME TO THE CABARET

GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN Every day, I encounter deaths and illnesses: people I know and admire.  Someone is no longer there.  My first response is a horrified helplessness, emotional paralysis.  But I cannot live in fear and premature mourning. Because I am not morose by nature, what bloomed in my mind today was whimsical and introspective, [...]

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How Did You Get to Where You Are?

GUEST POST by SHIRLEY DELONG Remember when the only way to figure out how to get to a place you’d never been before was to use a paper map? If you were like me, you’d write down all the road names in order, each left or right turn you had to make, approximate mileage and some landmarks to help you know you were on the right track. Or depending [...]

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Humanity In A Dark Time

Every morning I watch Democracy Now for updates on Gaza, and weep. It feels important to be a witness to this genocide happening in real time. I force myself not to look away from the traumatized children, covered with ash, sitting on the ruins of their former homes, crying aloud as their thin bodies tremble. I see humanity in the exhausted [...]

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Coping with Loneliness

“I do pretty well living alone, but on days when I crave companionship, it becomes depressing.”  “I’m too embarrassed to reach out to friends when I’m feeling lonely.”  “My family sees me as a strong woman, so they don’t realize I get lonely and would like them to contact me more.” “I wish there were places, other [...]

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Competitive Grandparenting

GUEST POST By ANONYMOUS* In a clear sign of the sickness engendered by the long reign of patriarchy in Western culture, grandparenting is now seen as a competitive rather than collaborative endeavor. Despite research confirming the long-held notion that children with at least one grandmother alive are far more likely to thrive than those without [...]

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