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 [...]
Pat Taub
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 [...]
Pat Taub
Currently I’m teaching the course, “Women and Aging” at Portland, Maine’s senior college. The first day, as we went around the room introducing ourselves, one woman defiantly exclaimed, “I hate being old. I hate my lined face. I hate not being able to move as well as I once did. I hate being too old to date because men my age [...]
Pat Taub
While New Year’s Eve is the traditional time for making resolutions, autumn is my new year. Autumn’s entry into the darkness of winter beckons me to soul-search and reset my compass for the coming year. This call is reinforced by having a fall birthday–one I proudly share with Jimmy Carter. This year I decided to do more than [...]
Pat Taub
I have friends who insist the women in their families didn’t provide examples of independence and/or positive aging. This observation can be skewed by the fact that our mothers and grandmothers didn’t live in our enlightened era where women are consciously aging with an awareness of ageism and sexism, and where the anti-aging industry [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL “Barbie” is the Talk of Summer 2023. I saw this hyped movie as a break from move-in housework, as I’ve just transitioned to the Barbie heartland of Southern California. Some laughs and a mild satire of the iconic doll were all I expected. Instead, my mind was blown by this ambitious dive into the representation [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by LISA SAVAGE Around where I live people grow food starting in earnest this time of the year. No matter what our religion or political persuasion, once the soil is warm and dry enough, we all of us poke in some seeds. Some years it rains so often that the seeds fail to germinate and instead rot in the ground. It’s not great [...]
Pat Taub
Aging can be so challenging for the older woman that it’s a wonder any of us enjoy a happy old age, but it’s within reach once we learn to recognize thinking patterns that box us in. It’s natural to indulge in thinking about good times in the past. Romancing the past can be problematic when it becomes obsessive and obscures the reality [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL “Here’s the check, sweetheart.” The handsome young waiter laid the little tray on the table. Seating me at a booth, he had started with, “I guess it’s just the two of us.” I felt a vague annoyance. Now, after his calling me “sweetie” twice before, annoyance was turning to anger, a familiar emotion [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JORINDE VAN DEN BERG As I climb the three flights of stairs up to our condo, I think to myself, “Neither dragging up my groceries nor my weary old bones is something I will miss when we move into our single-level home in the 55+ community next month.” Recently, I have started feeling as if my powers are waning and I can [...]
Pat Taub