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
In a society that worships youth, my wrinkles, white hair, sagging breasts and flabby upper arms render me unacceptable. The anti-aging industry to the rescue! If I go in for plastic surgery, facial fillers, hair dye, beauty creams and medical supplements, I can defy nature, while stuffing the pockets of the anti-aging fat cats, on target [...]
Pat Taub
Thursday morning I woke up to the news of the new Texas abortion law, which denies abortions to the 7,000,000 women of child-bearing age in Texas. I was stunned and terrified. As I sipped my coffee, I reflected on my own abortion in the late 1970’s. I was married with two young children and had just taken a job as Director of Counseling [...]
Pat Taub
Texas Abortion Law Like most women across America, I have been stunned by the new Texas abortion law, which the Supremes upheld. This horrible piece of legislation makes an abortion illegal after 6 weeks– most women don’t even know they’re pregnant this early! It gets worse: any Texan who knows of a woman seeking an abortion [...]
Pat Taub
Research has found that older women are discovering that age has unanticipated rewards. Setting aside the usual physical symptoms like arthritis, decreased flexibility and stamina, the older woman sparkles in new ways. She frequently finds herself more content and more confident, while still full of dreams. Eager to capture individual [...]
Pat Taub
I feel like I’m living inside the song, “Stop the World I Want to Get Off,” as I reel from our climate crisis, Afghanistan’s unraveling and a new Covid surge. Mary Oliver to the rescue! I pull one of her poetry books from my shelf, find a quiet place to stretch out and start to read. Oliver’s poems are balm for my soul. They settle [...]
Pat Taub
Friday the 13th Today is Friday the 13th, a date long regarded as signifying bad luck. However, this wasn’t always the case. In the Neolithic period, when many societies were goddess worshipping, Friday the 13th was sacred. It was known as “Venus Day,” because it represented the 13 lunar moon cycles and the average female has 13 [...]
Pat Taub
I have to make a confession: I have been a bad climate citizen. While I have been moved to the core by this summer’s record smashing heat, wildfires and floods, in response, I have done little more than wring my hands and exchange feelings of despair with friends. This weekend I read the book, All We Can Save, which hit me like a ton of [...]
Pat Taub
Over a recent Sunday brunch with two single women friends both, like me, in their ‘70’s, the conversation turned to sex, but not in the same way it did when we were decades younger, sharing juicy tidbits about our sex lives. This time the conversation centered on how sex had lost its appeal. One friend, B confessed to having lost interest [...]
Pat Taub
I recently received an email from a WOW reader, who confessed to being angry about aging: “I hate getting old. I hate the wrinkles, sleep problems and bouts of loneliness . . . I hate having aged out of the dating scene.” The reader’s complaints carry a universal ring in our ageist and sexist culture, which presents a formidable [...]
Pat Taub