Empowerment

There is a quiet assumption in our culture that life follows a predictable timetable. We are expected to learn when we are young, build a career in middle age, retire around 65, and then gradually withdraw from the world of ambition and accomplishment. I do not believe that timetable serves us well…

For much of my life, I thought families came with black sheep and white sheep. The white sheep were the ones who fit in. They followed the rules, made the family proud and somehow understood what was expected of them. Then there was the black sheep. The difficult one. The disappointment. The one who didn’t quite fit the family picture…

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…

The mirror does not lie. But it does not tell the whole truth. At 60 or 70, the mirror can become an interrogation. Who is this? I asked myself this question and I know many women do too. Since I don’t use social media much, I’m not in the habit of making comparisons… but self-criticism, I’m very, very good at that!

My father was a big man in just about every sense of the word. He was a big, redheaded Irishman who weighed well over 200 pounds and had played professional football for the Pittsburgh Steelers back in the leather-helmet days. Then he had me. I topped out at about five-foo-nine…

As we grow older, we often think about maintaining strength in our legs, heart, and muscles. But there is another kind of strength that deserves attention: the strength of our speaking voice. A strong, clear voice helps us communicate, participate socially, speak up in medical appointments, enjoy conversations, and feel more confident in daily life…

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…

Every decision is the difference between death or life. So choose wisely. When you hear others talk about life and death, life is usually first and then death. I chose to turn it around. Because death seems to be the choice of the masses. Why? Because death doesn’t require a challenge. Life requires a challenge. This article will focus on decision making that influences our choices that result in death or life.

Self-confidence is all about believing in yourself and your abilities. It is a type of useful knowledge about yourself, usually based on experience. Self-confidence is that general positive feeling about yourself that can involve several components…