In our increasingly unsettled times, I treasure my close female friends who offer support and solace for navigating the road ahead. When I told a friend I was blogging about women’s friendships, she good-naturedly commented, “If grown women had pajama parties, they wouldn’t need therapists.” She was referring to the close connections [...]
Pat Taub
To all in despair over T’s Big Bad bill with its cruel cuts to health care and food stamps in favor of record increases to ICE and the military, along with T’s nonstop support of Israel’s ever escalating genocide in Gaza, let me offer a different perspective. If you just focus on the headlines, you’re missing the cracks, where [...]
Pat Taub
I have a friend who’s been telling me for years that she’s going to take Italian lessons. Another friend has a long-standing dream to visit Japan. For just as long, every time I pass an art supply store, I revisit my dream of taking up watercolors. We’re members of the late-in-life dream club whose engine is stalled. But it doesn’t [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL After pouring out my heart to a dear friend about my anguish over the Gaza Genocide, I asked her, “What are you thinking and feeling about all this?” “I feel exhausted,” was her honest, sad reply. “I get it,” I told her. We all only have so much capacity for family, friends, community, and political activism. [...]
Pat Taub
My heart is heavy as I take in the reality that Gaza is uttering its last breath. Israel is forcing starving Gazans further and further south luring them with food drop-offs, which have become death traps. To date 400 Gazans have been murdered rushing for a bag of flour. The handwriting is on the wall. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza is imminent. [...]
Pat Taub
Molly Jong-Fast’s new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother” conjured up memories of the 1981 film, “Mommie Dearest,” where Faye Dunaway played Joan Crawford, Hollywood’s narcissistic abusive mother. Jong-Fast is writing about her famous mother Erica Jong, author of “Fear of Flying. Jong, while narcissistic was not physically abusive, [...]
Pat Taub
Fashion commentator Emily Chou observes “Every time you dress, you’re making choices and even an “I-don’t-care” message is a clear statement.” We all want to be thought of in terms of our ideas and talents, but because we live in a visual culture, it’s almost impossible to avoid having others form a first impression based on [...]
Pat Taub
When I think about what has made my life meaningful, it’s come from those experiences where I woke up. Events that rocked my world when I was confronted with truths that ran counter to how I was living my life. As a young woman I was awakened as a result of living through the Viet Nam war and the second wave of Feminism. As the Viet [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by LISA SAVAGE Yesterday I read a novel that took me back to the fierce experience of becoming a mother under late-stage capitalism. Claire Kilroy perfectly captures the despair and precarious state of infant mothers where there is no mothering for them. The protagonist of SOLDIER SAILOR is at the end of her rope and very nearly [...]
Pat Taub
More and more older women are discovering a new voice: one that embraces a newfound freedom. Sharon Blackie, author of Hagitude, contends that women tend to lose their inhibitions as they age. Aging often ushers in a new confidence. Many older women describe themselves as not the same person they were 20 or 30 years ago. Living through [...]
Pat Taub