Middlescence

Janie at Midlife Slices is a visiting blogger today. Wherein she gives us a look at her view-with-a-bite of midlife AND a new term for the midyears.

When Allison asked if I'd be a guest blogger on WomenBloom, I happily said yes. Then she said I could blog about something especially for WomenBloom or I could use an older post I particularly liked, and that's when I started chewing my fingernails to the nub and rethinking my decision. Yikes, what to do? After reviewing all my older posts, I realized I didn't "particularly like" any of them so I had to write something new, but what?

I was throwing different subjects around with my husband when I asked him this question. "If mothers of young children are called young mommies and midlifers with all their children grown and gone are empty nesters, what are midlifers who still have young children and grown children called?" He laughed and said..."tired?"

He might have been kidding but it's true. And I'm still asking, what are we called? Anyone? There are lots of us, ahem....whatever you'd like to call us, still attending summer league baseball games, junior high football games, basketball, school events and the likes. Some were empty nesters but were suddenly thrust into the role of raising their grandchildren. I sit in the stands of a sporting event and look around at how young most of the other parents look and then I remember, oh yes, it's me that's out of place in this scenario.

Besides having a 13 year old at home, there's much more to my midlife baggage when you add in 12 grandchildren, 92 and 93 year old in-laws, an 83 year old dad and a 27 year old daughter with a chronic illness. What's the big deal about midlife? I'd just like to HAVE a life, period.


I know I'm not alone as I juggle midlife demands and I think our numbers are steadily growing, so this got me wondering about actual statistics and here's what I found.

(note the sound of crickets) Did you blink? You mean you missed the statistics?

That's right. There aren't many statistics out there for what I was looking for. Sure, I can find how many typical midlifers there are and what our median household income is but nothing I could sink my teeth into and really run with. But I did find other interesting tidbits that I thought I'd share.

It seems midlife is that time of one’s life when we wonder what the first half is or has been about and where we are going during the last half. Last half? *blink blink gulp* Sociologists call this period of disequilibrium "middlescence". Webster’s defines middlescence this way.

mid•dl•es•cence–noun: the middle-age period of life, esp. when considered a difficult time of self-doubt and readjustment.[Origin: 1960–65; b. middle and adolescence]

Self doubt and readjustment? No wonder the word is a combination of adolescence and middle. Great, now we get to deal with the bad and ugly of both worlds while grasping desperately for the good.

The Harvard School of Public Health says Boomers, mid 40s to late 50's, fall into five general categories: Strugglers 9%, Anxious 23%, Traditionalist 25%, Self-Reliant 30% and Enthusiasts 13%. It was disheartening to me to see that over half of us aren't self-sufficient and I'm puzzled as to why that is. We weren't given the world on a silver platter like the Millennial generation so what happened? Maybe we thought we were bullet proof and invincible? Maybe we simply weren't paying attention and thought Woodstock would go on forever? If anyone has the answer to this, please share.

I don't know who Peter Drucker is, but as quoted by Harvard SPH, he makes a good point with these sad, but true words that unfortunately apply to many midlifers:

"When we look back on this era from 100 years out with the perspective history affords, this age will be known not for the internet or biotechnology but for the first time in history we have options of what to do in the second-half of life and were unprepared for it."

Thus, for the first time in history an intentional look at midlife makes sense for an entire adult generation. We need to address the obvious issues such as balancing work and family responsibilities in the midst of the physical and psychological changes associated with aging and believe you me, those physical and psychological changes blindsided this ole’ gal and I'm scrambling to get my bearings and back on solid ground while I have the chance.

I think back to the first time I ever thought about midlife and it was a cold slap of reality that I promptly filed in the back of my brain deep enough I hoped it wouldn't resurface. I was in my early 40's and enjoying a movie of which I wish I could remember the name, but unfortunately I can't.

Anyway, this mother and daughter were arguing about something and the mother used midlife as an excuse for something that was obviously upsetting to her daughter. The daughter rolled her eyes and said "oh please, Mother! How many 120 year old people do you know of out there?"

I did some quick math on my fingers and thought...Oh holy crap! It dawned on me if midlife is a halfway point, then I was more than likely already a midlifer. I shook my head to try to clear that thought out of my brain, but it wouldn't budge no matter how much I tried to pretend I'd never heard those words, so I buried my head in the sand and kept repeating I will always be young, I will always be young, I will always be young.

I stand up and admit I was unprepared for midlife and I'm clambering to catch up to where I feel I need to be right now. I think it's imperative that we find significance in our second half of life even knowing we have no idea how long the second half will be. Mainly I want to wake up in the morning with a greater anticipation of the day ahead and not want to bite the head off a snake because I'm so frustrated when I look in the mirror and a stranger is staring back. But I also want to reflect back on these middle age years and know I did the best I could and have no regrets.

The important thing is to find significance in our second half of life and make the most of those years for our own sake.

Live your life and forget your age.
-- Norman Vincent Peale

Happy Trails Y'all!

EveryWoman And Sex And The City

I think I’m the next to the last woman in the country to see Sex and The City. Better late than never, I say. I finally saw it and I’ve been racking my brain to figure out what I could say about it that was brilliant, and profound. I mean it’s not really a brilliant, profound movie is it? If you’re up to here with commentary on it, I won’t hold it against you if you stop right here. No spoilers here though if you decide to read on and you’re one of the few who haven’t yet seen it.

The truth is I liked it a lot. It wasn’t always that way.

I was a slow convert to being a fan. I did not watch the show during its original airing, I felt it was beneath me somehow, way too popular. I only caught it later in reruns and even then I thought those girls were awful, awful and shallow. I know I’m being a hard ass, give the girls a break, they were 30 somethings, girls just want to have fun, for God’s sake!

But, slyly and insidiously, they crept under my skin until I would catch myself on Wednesday evenings arranging my schedule to watch the latest rerun. Still telling myself they were terrible, but going out of my way to watch the show. Unh hunh. By the last episode, I had melted and was proud of all of them for showing discernible and quite respectable personal growth.

Their fashion-saturated, hip hanging out, cocktail sipping, glamming it lives are just irresistible. How could you not be seduced by it? Weeellll...that’s a different post, so onward.

Why do they have such universal girl appeal, to young and more mature alike? It IS the girlfriends for life thing, no doubt about it. Where would we be without our girlfriends? And, I think it’s because, despite their completely unrealistic lifestyles--it would take several tens of thousands of monthly dollars to live in NYC the way they do—still, at bottom, they are just regular girls like the rest of us trying to figure out love and life. Making just as many mistakes as the rest of us, suffering heartaches just like the rest of us, struggling to maintain their sense of identity in the face of these crazy, mystifying things we call relationships.

Granted they are doing that more glamorously and beautifully coiffed and coutured than the rest of us could hope for, but nonetheless....

That’s as brilliant as I could get, sorry. So now, let’s turn to the completely girly, gossipy part!

I mean, the clothes! The stupendously fashionable, clothing–as-art, over the top clothes made my mouth hang open at every scene change. I’m not a fashionista by ANY stretch, but honestly, I LOVED THOSE CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES!! If I ever manage to look even remotely fashionable, I usually run out of steam (and money) at the accessorizing stage of things. Which is why nobody would ever mistake me for even a fashionista wannabe.

The girls all looked absolutely FABulous, even better than in the TV show, didn’t ya’ll think? It was gratifying to see Kim Cattrall play the hottest 50ish woman on the screen in recent memory (Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair was a close second). I think they must have put all four through a 6 month daily training regimen prior to even beginning to shoot. What would it be like for your JOB to be working out with your trainer 2 hours every day, getting your hair done, visiting the aesthetician for a little Botox, and all the rest? I'll certainly never know :)

Anyway, enough of that. Bottom line is, I can forgive the outrageously unrealistic, glam lifestyle portrayal and impossible stereotypes of beauty they present, because the bottom line is, those girls manage to pull at our heartstrings.

They couldn’t do that if they didn’t have something of the Every Woman in them.

The Midlife Gals: This Is Not Your Mom's Middle Age!

Whoo hoo! I have to just tell you about my friends, the Midlife Gals!

We bumped into each other by accident in cyberspace several months ago as the three of us middle aged women were trying to figure out the derned blogging/social networking thing. Well, after an email exchange or two and realizing that, as luck would have it, we lived in the same wonderful city of Austin, Texas, I knew I had to meet these two wild ladies!

We met for lunch, bonded and became fast friends. These are two funny, SMART women. They are poster girls for WomenBloom’s mission of highlighting the fact that we are NOT living our Mom’s Middle Age! At least we don’t have to :)

These late 50s gals didn’t know what a blog was a year ago, but they decided they should have one. Did I mention they were smart?? They figured out the blogging thing AND the video thing with a vengeance. They were featured in MORE magazine a few months after getting started, were finalists in SXSW Interactive’s On Network Project Greenlights award, and have got PAYING blogging/video gigs with a large health network site.

This morning, as I sat down bleary-eyed to sip my cup o’ tea and read my newspaper, there they were!!! Featured in the Austin American Statesman’s Masters Of Their Domain section that features cool websites.

HELLOA!!! All this adds up to some pretty groovy press for what midlifers can learn and accomplish. I love it! If these two aren't helping change the perception of middle-age, I don’t know what or who is!

KK and SalGal, keep on keepin’ on, sistahs!

And now, for your viewing amusement....

Cougaring: Older Women On The Prowl

I like to think of myself as a pretty hip 50 year old but there are times when I realize that there are, er, a few gaps in this hipster’s knowledge base.

So, I’m at a party this last weekend and I was introduced to a new concept…’cougaring’. I had the vague feeling I had heard this term floating around but I was flat-footed and clueless when two middle-aged women began talking about it with glee.

For those of you who, like me, need some elucidation, a ‘cougar’ is an older woman who dates younger men. The term refers to the ‘older’ woman who has reached some professional success, who is fit and powerful. Get the feline allusion?

Supposedly the way this works is that she fulfills the young man’s fantasy of being tutored by a sexually experienced (and assertive) older woman. And, he fulfills her…well, I think we all know what he fulfills for her. Think Samantha from Sex and The City and you’ve got the picture.

This has some biological basis according to some. Women hit their sexual peak in their 40s while men hit it in their 20s.

Well then. Sounds like a match made in heaven!

While I can certainly appreciate the stamina and sexual intensity a 28 year old would bring to the bed, I’ve always wondered…what in the world would you talk about after the sex? Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always found that life has a way of kicking you around a bit, or a lot, in your 30s and 40s. It’s when a man learns that he isn’t bullet proof, and he gets a bit of patina and experience on him that things begin to get interesting.

Like any good blogger, I turned to YouTube for further research on the subject.



Nice, am I the only one who thinks this is bizarre?? Clearly, Samantha and the women attending Cougar Camp aren’t placing great emphasis on stimulating conversation. It seems to me they are mostly wanting to turn the tables on men and use their professional success and looks to assert their power. That’s OK if you’re into that sort of thing I suppose.

Most of us middle-aged gals out there, however, haven’t got that particular kind of power. We don’t look like we just walked off the catwalk, nor are most of us pulling in the 6 figures necessary to exert financial power. I think a bit of caution is called for.

Nothing wrong with an age difference, but I think it’s not that easy for women to have easy sex for sex’s sake.. We do tend to want a deeper connection ya know. Seeing any relationships for what it is is the key. And, that isn't always easy.

One of the women who was telling me about her cougaring experiences had begun her story in a cocky, braggadocio tone. But, as the conversation went on, she became quieter and quieter. She finally admitted she’d just given up, the young guy was being kind of flaky, wouldn’t call back, clearly wasn’t looking for that deeper connection. I got the feeling ‘given up’ went deeper than this particular man.

She sadly wandered off and I didn’t see her again.

Midwives And Doulas To The Dying

I spent part of last weekend at a conference for women called Remarkable Women. It was very well organized and clearly the organizers put heart and soul into it.

While I learned some great things and met a lot of wonderful women, one of the sessions made a particularly strong impression on me. It was about the concept of midwives and doulas to the dying.

It seems to me that we ‘do’ death so badly in this country for the most part. We take such care for births, baptisms, confirmations, bar/bat mitzvahs, anniversaries, and weddings, but we somehow have a much harder time giving the same attention and intention to dying. A lovely funeral comes a little late for the loved one who has passed on.

That is why, when a friend recently told me about a friend of hers who was training to support terminally ill people and their families, I was deeply touched. This goes way beyond hospice care. Making dying as intentional and loving a process as possible seems so important to me and I was very eager to learn more.

Deanna Cochran is the certified hospice and palliative care nurse who conducted the session. She is part of a growing movement to help manage the emotional, spiritual, and palliative care needs of a dying loved one and his or her family. I spent only an hour with Deanna but I can see that she is following her calling. What a loving and supportive energy she gives out.

Here are the 3 things I learned that are important to offer to those with a dying lvoed one, among others:

Be conscious of the primary caregiver’s and the dying person’s comfort zone. You must be tuned in to their needs and leave your own discomfort and baggage behind.

Shut up and listen. Being silent can be the hardest work of all. But that provides the sacred space for them to go as deep into their pain as they choose.

Advocate for physical relief of symptoms. This is called palliative care and it’s a relatively new concept (I have to shake my head over this) to the medical community for the most part. Deanna is very clear that there is NO reason for someone who is dying to suffer physically. There is always something that can be done to alleviate pain and discomfort. You may have to contact a number of physicians to find one who will work with you on it, but they are out there.

There is much more, but I simply encourage you to go to Deanna’s site to learn more about this very important and sacred service. We also have a WomenBloom article on palliative care written by Dr. Sue Bornstein, former Associate Director of Baylor Medical Center’s Palliative Care Program, if you'd like to know more about how the medical community is thinking about this.

Are MIddle-Aged Women Embracing Social Media?

My good friend and social media guru, Tom Parish, and I fell into conversation the other day about social networking and us midlife gals. Tom has a social media consultancy that helps enterprises like BMC Software incorporate social media into their business strategy, both internally and client-facing. So, he knows a thing or two about the trends in this space.

I was pondering just how engaged women roughly mid 40s to early 60s were, and would be, with blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, and the like. Obviously, this isn’t a homogeneous group, and there are plenty of women in this age group who are blogging and using these other media. But in general, I think this is new territory for a majority of us.

From the women I talk to, we as a group are still more comfortable with magazine style websites than blogs, email than RSS, reading others’ comments than adding our two cents’, and using the web as a tool rather than a pastime. I had breakfast yesterday with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long while, who says the personal nature of many blogs is off putting to her. TMI, she says. I’ve been told the same by others.

Tom acknowledges the truth of all that, and points out that it wasn’t that long ago that the idea of us women regularly using this thing called the Internet to shop, sell stuff we didn’t need anymore, find the love of our life, find others dealing with similar life issues, and read consumer reviews before making a major purchase would have been incomprehensible.

Many of us have gotten comfortable with certain aspects of Web 2.0 and Tom guesses that more and more of us will find our way to other social media. We may be slower to hop on board, but in time we’ll get there as we see the opportunities for connecting and sharing with like-minded women with common experiences and interests. .

It’s mind boggling even to me the way the web facilitates connections that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. I’m collaborating with a fellow blogger, Karen over at Midlife’s A Trip , on some things and we were laughing the other day that we’ve never actually met. But the social nature of the web has allowed us to connect around our common interest of how midlife women are redefining what it means to be at the center of life.

I hope it is as Tom predicts. I see how fast the world is changing and I see that those who do not keep up by at least being familiar with these things and understanding their implications can be left behind. I don’t think we women can afford to be behind. I want WomenBloom to be a part of helping midlife women get up to speed.

I do see points of light. My 73 year old Mom isn’t one to embrace change. But even she has used Craig’s list, and I actually convinced her to post in the WomenBloom forums.

Good gracious, can blogging be far behind?? :)

The Late 50s Job Search Challenge Revisited

Yikes, as luck would have it, the day after my post about job search challenges for 50 somethings, a friend sent me a link to an article on CNNMoney.com called Out Of A Job And Out Of Luck At 54. It confirms my last post on the job search challenges us midlife women (and men) face as we hit our 50s.

This article paints a grim picture. Consider they say, among the unemployed age 55 to 64, nearly 42% had been fired or laid off, up from 32.2% a year ago, according to federal statistics for April. According to AARP, it took those age 55 and older an average of 21.1 weeks to land a new job in 2007, about five weeks longer than their younger counterparts, according to AARP.

We are apparently viewed as expensive hires, salary-wise and health cost-wise. Those finding jobs are taking lower pay, and many simply are told they are 'over-qualified'.

All this at a time when many of us need to be stashing money away in 401Ks and savings for retirement.

The other point of the article which speaks to the conclusion I came to after my lunch with Kate McLagan at Right Management, is that many of us have rusty job search and networking skills. We aren't knowledgeable about how to work with the online world of job searching and how to craft effective resumes and cover letters.

Getting help with these things is the best advice I can offer. Don't wait until you've been through weeks of searching to figure out your skills are rusty.

And, another helpful resource is a list AARP has published, Best Employers for Workers Over 50. They also have a list of 6 Tricky Interview Questions For Older Workers that addresses that 'over-qualified' gambit.

Awareness is the first step to being prepared. I'll be continuing to address this subject.

The Late 50s Job Search Challenge

I know a couple of women, late 50s, who are having trouble finding jobs. Both have much work experience, a healthy personal network and seem like very capable people. One took off a few years to care for elderly parents and has been looking for a job now for well over a year. The other quit a job a year or so ago and has been looking since then. Both have had interviews where it was down to them and someone else, but no sale. Needless to say, they are getting discouraged.

This troubles me. A lot. After all, it could be any of us. Why is it that they are having trouble?

I am working on some articles on the topic which will be showing up on WomenBloom over the weeks to come, but I wanted to comment on a lunch conversation I had yesterday with Kate McLagan, VP for Client Services for the Right Management company in Austin, Texas about this issue of older women having a hard time finding employment.

I came away realizing that it takes quite sophisticated job search skills these days to have success. Ladies, ladies, ladies. This issue is partly a societal thing, but a significant responsibility is on us to stay current if we want to be relevant.

Kate points out that job search strategies are a much different beast than they were a mere 5 years ago. That made me wonder how many of us 50 somethings are up to date on our job search skills. And let me tell you, ‘job search’ encompasses a huge number of skills and competencies. I realized shortly into the conversation I wasn’t as current as I should be.

Some of the pearls of wisdom I gleaned:

• Basically a job search is now a sales and marketing campaign with you selling yourself.

• You don’t get a job with a resume. But, there is an art to making networking work for you. Find help with this to keep from wasting time.

• You have to begin by getting your verbal and written strategies/materials in place. This includes distilling your particular gifts into 3 or 4 ‘diamonds’. If you skip this step, you can count on doubling the time it takes to find a position.

• Too many times, we are ‘trying to get a job’ rather than figure out what our role in the company could be. We are aiming at some box defined by a job description, rather than thinking about (and helping the hiring manager see) the broader picture of how our particular gifts fit with the organization’s goals.

• We need to understand broader trends that are driving change in our industry to keep ourselves current.

There is more but the basic idea is we need much more sophisticated skills these days to find work than many of us have. Or, many of us realize we need.

For my two women friends, it has been from 3 to 5 years since they engaged in their last job search. Things have changed. Get help.

New Thinking About Retirement

I’m a looking to the future kind of gal. As if I don’t have enough to worry about in the present, I like to worry about the future too.

So, I do wonder what retirement is going to look like for us Boomers. I mean, our options, and frankly, our expectations are so much different than our parents that there is no telling how many different ways this will look. There are lots of us without kids, lots of singles, most of us with families scattered all over everywhere, many of us doing phased or ‘not at all’ retirement, and most of us feel strongly we ain’t goin’ to no nursin’ home, at least as many of them exist today. For those of us with no kids and single, we wonder about practical things like who will be checking in on us to make sure we haven’t fallen and can’t get up.

Throw in the mix that if the statistics are to be believed, it seems as though many of us are expecting a champagne retirement on a beer budget. Social security benefits account for 90% of income for 4 out of 10 single retirees, and 2 of 10 married couples. Women’s incomes lag significantly behind men’s too, so we may be more likely to find ourselves in a low retirement income situation. Hmmph.

So what do you suppose all that adds up to?

Scott Burns is a popular personal finance columnist who just wrote an interesting column that may be one answer to this dilemma: economies of shared living. Or, in the vernacular, shacking up with other folks to stretch your dollars.

He says our expectations of a house of our own, our own bedroom, our own car, our own phone/TV/computer, etc. makes living quite expensive. Gulp, what’s he going to say next? Yep, you guessed it.

Just sharing shelter costs with 3 other people dramatically increases your available income. If you think about sharing a car and other major expenses, you’ve begun stretching a meager income significantly.

This may not be for everyone, but I think it is very worth considering not only from the financial aspect, but the social aspects as well. And, I think it goes beyond just retirement thinking and has applications to pursuing a passion, or reinventing your life.

I am currently experimenting with the house sharing thing. Last year, I wanted a big change so I rented out my house and moved in with a relative stranger. It has worked out so much better than I could have hoped. Did I give up some privacy? Yes. Are there perks? YES! Not the least of which is the money I’m saving in living expenses that has allowed me to undertake my midlife women project, WomenBloom, which I LOVE! It has not only stretched my dollars, but it has opened my life up to new friends, new ideas and a richer life.

I mean, I’ve learned how to roast a chicken, compost, raise tomatoes, and make killer soups. My housemate is very wise about money so I’ve learned lots there. And, it’s not a bad place to hang out as you can see from the photos.

Is that worth giving up a little privacy? OH YEA!

Point is, I’m very curious about the different ways, now and 20 years from now, I can make my life as interesting as possible, as cheaply as possible. I think that is going to require some creative thinking outside the box about what we think we need. And perhaps letting go of old thinking about what is necessary for living an interesting, satisfying life.

Midlife Women Go To The Movies

It isn’t too often you find a movie produced by youth-worshipping Hollywood that is an intelligent portrayal about women in the middle of their lives. There are some to be sure, Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson comes to mind. Love Actually’s vignette with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman struck a poignant chord of realism.

And who can forget Calendar Girls with the tremendous Helen Mirren? The story of a group of women in Yorkshire, England who pose nude, in all their middle aged glory, to raise money for their local hospital certainly helps break the ‘invisible at 50’ stereotype. It was the line from that movie “"the flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire… the last phase…is always the most glorious” that helped inspire the ‘blooming’ theme for WomenBloom.

I was very excited when Melissa Silverstein contacted me to let me know about a new movie about midlife relationships and love called A Previous Engagement. Melissa’s blog, Women and Hollywood, covers films about women as well as accomplishments of women directors, producers, etc.

The movie stars Juliet Stevenson. She is a terrific actress who starred in one of my favorite quirky movies of all time, Truly Madly Deeply. In A Previous Engagement, Ms. Stevenson is playing a woman who, decades earlier, had made a mutual promise with her then French lover to rendezvous in Malta years hence. With 25 years having passed, and with her husband and his girlfriend in tow, they keep their promise to each other. Having seen several of Juliet’s movies, I expect this to be a strong, intense performance.

Hmmm, I’m realizing that 3 of the 4 movies here are English. Maybe the English really buy into that ‘most glorious last phase’ business. And why not, makes perfect sense! I’m not sure Hollywood could say the same thing.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Hollywood as The Boomers settle squarely into their 50s. We have plenty of money to spend, and we are redefining so many things about what it means to be ‘middle aged’. You would think it would be inevitable that we would see these changes reflected in the movie theaters. But maybe not. Hollywood’s twin, the music industry, has fought digital music and new models of delivering it every step of the way.

Can Hollywood afford to ‘keep on keepin’ on’ the way they are, or will they incorporate the changing demographics into their line up? Only time will tell.