Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood » (Reprint)

SUZANNE BRAUN LEVINE is a writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues.

The first editor of Ms. magazine helps women address the three crucial questions of second adulthood: What matters? What works? What's next?

New brain research is proving it: Women at midlife really do start to see the world differently. Some 37 million women now entering their fifties and sixties—a unique generation—are refashioning their lives, with dramatic results. They have fulfilled all the prescribed roles— daughter, wife, mother, employee, but they're not ready to retire. They want to experience more. Suzanne Braun Levine gives us a fun, smart, and tremendously informative road map through the challenging and uncharted territory that lies ahead.

“Levine takes us beyond the frontier of our own expectations and into a new and hope-filled stage of life.” —Gloria Steinem
“I found so many resonances with my own experiences in this book… It will have a huge impact and will clarify so many things for so many women.”—Carol Gilligan, Ph.D., author of In a Different Voice and The Birth of Pleasure
“Suzanne Braun Levine made me understand why I always envied older women . . . life just gets better—more outrageous, more radical, more passionate, less fraught, wiser, deeper, and kinder.” —Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues
“A you-go-girl manual for the menopause crowd.”—People

Publishers Weekly

Levine has a message for aging boomer women: if you're feeling out of sorts, confused, in a rut, there's nothing wrong with you: you're just entering your "Second Adulthood," a time, she says, when women can remake themselves. Levine, Ms. magazine's editor for 17 years and now a contributor to More magazine (and author of Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First), draws on the latest research on hormonal and other physical changes women begin to go through in their 40s, and draws on 50 in-depth interviews she conducted with women in their middle years to show how they can improve their lives. Levine's subjects describe a time of confusion (the "fertile void") that led them to re-sort their lives, revise priorities and make new decisions about work and intimate relationships. Samantha, for example, left an alcoholic husband after decades of marriage. Joanie, a traditional wife and mother, renegotiated her marriage and bought herself an apartment in New York City, becoming a fund-raiser for a dance company. Although Levine did interview some women with fewer economic resources and she discusses the importance of financial planning, much of the self-discovery stories will resonate best with women who are financially comfortable. Her gung-ho go-rappelling-off-the-mountain tone may grate on some women while inspiring others. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Acknowledgments ix
Getting to What Matters: Letting Go and Saying No
1. You're Not Who You Were, Only Older 3
2. Second Adolescence
A Second Chance at Growing Up Strong 25
3. Defiance
Speaking Up, Speaking Out, Speaking Your Mind 40
4. The Fertile Void
Taking Your Time 56
Finding Out What Works: Recalibrating Your Life
5. Reconsidering Work and Beginning to
Recalibrate Your Life 81
6. Rediscovering Your Passion, Facing Your Fear 106
7. Redefining Intimacy
Love, Sex, Friendship, and the New You 123
8. Confronting Adversity 149
Moving On to What's Next:
Making Peace and Taking Charge
9. Health, Beauty, and What You Cannot Change 179
10. Generations: Graduating from Our Child and
Parent Voice to (at Last!) Our Own Adult Voice 203
11. Becoming a Critical Mass
The Personal Is Still Political 223
12. Riding the Spiral 235

Bibliography 243
Web Sites and Organizations 249
Index 255