Empowerment

I had the best intentions. In 2022, I was writing articles for Sixty and Me and enjoying interactions with new people I’d met through this platform. I was just finding my stride when my husband had a medical emergency. He needed brain surgery as soon as possible. We’d been married more than 40 years at the time, and I went into automatic mode…

Each October, I am reminded of my two bouts with breast cancer. My first bout was 25 years ago, just months after the World Trade Center towers fell to the ground. My second bout was only two years ago, at the age of 70. So in 25 years, I’ve had two breast cancers and two mastectomies and reconstructions…

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…