Life lessons for women in second adulthood, from Lesley Jane Seymour, Gloria Steinem, Isabella Rossellini, Donna Edwards – and me!
I don’t think there is anything more nourishing than an hour spent with a group of bright, funny and honest women friends. I got to do that - big time – last June when Gloria Steinem, Isabella Rossellini and Rep. Donna Edwards joined me for a discussion of the ideas in my book Fifty Is the New Fifty on a panel moderated by the editor in chief of More magazine, Lesley Jane Seymour. We were cheered on by a lively standing-room-only audience of like-minded women. Many themes emerged – so did outbursts of hilarity – and I will report on others in the future. To set the scene, each panelist was asked to tell us which of the “Ten Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood” from my book spoke most meaningfully to her.
Gloria said: “I love ‘Both is the new either/or’ because either/or-ness comes from falsely dividing human nature into masculine and feminine instead of seeing all of us as human. But I think the Life Lesson that I need the most is ‘Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes.’ The good news and the bad news about change for me is that I find myself doing over again what it is that I already know how to do. Since I’m the oldest one here – 75 – the good news is that I can still do what I’ve always done. The bad news is that I think I’m immortal, which then causes me to plan very poorly.”
Donna, who decided to run for Congress (from Maryland) as she approached fifty, singled out “Every Crisis Creates a New Normal.” “When I first started running for congress, because I look much younger, people would look at me and mis-guess my age; I thought it was really important to say, ‘no, I’m fifty’ (even though I was only 48 at the time) because I have a 20-year-old son, so if people were guessing that I was thirty five – you do the math. But I really don’t want to be any of those younger ages. I love where I am – it’s so liberating. When a crisis comes, you just kind of breathe right through it. It feels really good.”
