Fifty Is the New Fifty: Ten Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood » (Bargain)

Suzanne Braun Levine is the author of three previous books. She was the first editor of Ms. magazine, where she worked for seventeen years. She was also the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. A nationally recognized authority on women, media, and family issues, she lectures widely and has appeared on major television talk shows, including Oprah, Charlie Rose, and Today.

Suzanne Braun Levine follows her groundbreaking Inventing the Rest of Our Lives with fresh insights, research, and practical advice on the challenges and surprising rewards that await women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. Rich with anecdotes, this book captures the voices of women who are confronting change, renegotiating their relationship, and discovering who they are now that they are finally grown up. Levine's own warm, wise, and humorous voice makes this guide encouraging, enriching, and empowering.

Fifty Is the New Fifty is about survival, joy, and camaraderie, and it proves that fifty is its own wonderful stage of possibilities and promise.

Publishers Weekly

In a time when How Not to Look Old is a bestseller, and the women who came of age during the 1960s are now in their 60s, outspoken women's movement veteran Levine (Inventing the Rest of Our Lives) advises women 50-plus to reject the desire to recapture youth and acknowledge their great good fortune in arriving at a point where they can creatively enhance the rest of their lives. Citing Madeleine L'Engle's observation, "the great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been," Levine uses this book to air and explore her own feelings, and those of other women, about moving from the "Fuck-You Fifties" to a pleasanter, stress-defusing outlook characterized by a growing ability "to not take lesser things too seriously." She offers a 10-step strategy for avoiding a descent into "The Fertile Void," where late-midlife women find themselves in a state of confusion and lost self-confidence. The self-help lessons are nothing new: "be your age, not your stage"; take responsibility for your physical and emotional life; "accept that you are not who you were, only older"; use what you already know. Advertising-style jargon and nonsensical slogans get in the way of an otherwise promising positive message. (Apr.)

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Acknowledgments v

Lesson 1 Fifty Is the New Fifty 1

Lesson 2 Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes 22

Lesson 3 No Is Not a Four-Letter Word 42

Lesson 4 A "Circle of Trust" Is a Must 63

Lesson 5 Every Crisis Creates a "New Normal" 85

Lesson 6 Do Unto Yourself as You Have Been Doing Unto Others 104

Lesson 7 Age Is Not a Disease 125

Lesson 8 Your Marriage Can Make It 145

Lesson 9 You Do Know What You Want to Do with the Rest of Your Life 160

Lesson 10 Both Is the New Either/Or 180

Bibliography 191

Web Sites and Organizations 195

Index 207