There is a strange cultural contradiction that happens to women as we age. By 60, many of us have accumulated decades of experience: careers, marriages, divorces, caregiving, loss, reinvention, financial decisions, friendships, mistakes, resilience, and more than a few hard-won lessons. We know things we did not know at 30, and we know them not because we read about them, but because we lived them…

Women are judged long before we ever understand what judgment is. Our bodies are evaluated, ranked, compared, whispered about, laughed at, or picked apart – often by the very people who claim to love us. And then, as if by some cruel joke, after decades of scrutiny and self-surveillance, we are suddenly told we’re invisible…

There’s a question I’ve been carrying around with me lately. What if joy isn’t something we find? What if it’s something we become available to? For most of my life, I believed joy was largely a matter of circumstance. It arrived with good news, vacations, falling in love, a new home – things like that. […]