Why do we suddenly have the blues when yesterday we felt wonderful about life? How could we write three chapters in our novel in two days, and the next week just stare at a blank page? Why do we suddenly have no interest in going out with our best friends, when last weekend we had the greatest time ever with them?

As I age, I feel my brain slowing down. I don’t always have my snappy comebacks anymore. I know exactly what I want to say, but the word won’t be delivered to my brain. Especially those nouns! Oh, the nouns. And don’t get me started on proper nouns! Toward the end of my teaching career, my students started supplying me with the word they thought was going to be next in my sentence. Sometimes they were right…

I recently returned from a visit to Southern Africa. The experience was beyond all expectations. Because the game reserve was private, they have strict rules about the number of vehicles that could be near an animal. The animals are never fed. They have become habituated to vehicles. It helps that they have been safe from hunting and poaching for several generations…

I recently finished reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It is an unusual novel because the story unfolds through letters, emails and other correspondence. While reading it, I began wondering whether I was still carrying regrets or punishing myself for decisions I made years, perhaps even decades, ago…

Somewhere around 60, a strange thing happens: the world stops asking what you’re going to be when you grow up, and quietly assumes you’ve already decided. Nobody checks in anymore. Nobody hands you a manual for this stretch the way they handed you baby books and parenting blogs for the first one…

Feeling stuck after 60 was the last thing she expected on the afternoon she closed the biggest deal of her year. Everyone around her was celebrating, and she could not understand why she wanted to leave. The conference room erupted before she had finished closing her laptop. The client had said yes. After three months of negotiations, revised proposals…

Have you ever spent a night in fitful sleep, had disturbing dreams or just awakened at 3 am with a mind so active you had to take a sleeping pill? Or are those just redundant questions? As I’ve gotten older, now in my mid 70s, I’ve noticed that it’s darn…

It used to be that the comparisons we made were limited to the people who lived nearby or those whom we saw daily. Today, comparison has become constant background noise and a full-blown obsession for many. It’s woven into social media, television, conversations, family gatherings, and even what we tell ourselves…

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…

Many women in their 60s have experienced decades of caregiving, responsibility, and emotional labor. Some are still care-giving for parents or grandchildren, even after their own children have left the nest. A good portion decide to trade full-time employment for a less demanding schedule or even choose to take the plunge directly into full-time retirement…