An online journal for women engaging the third third of their lives.
Perspectives: If The Third Third is an Age of Adjustment(s), how can we ease the transition and invest this newly defined developmental stage of our lives with meaning and purpose? Contributors share their Perspectives in stories, columns, articles, and other tomes about all the choices that matter to us: faith, health, relationships, work, retirement, finances, lifestyle, and current events.
That Hope-y Change-y Thing
Sarah Palin’s recent derision of “that hope-y change-y thing” may be a slam-dunk politically. But in religious terms, coming from the devout Christian she claims to be, it is a puzzling disavowal. After all, next to “Love,” “Hope” and “Change&rd...
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SPIRITUALITY | 11 Views | 0 Comments
Olympics of the Mind
We are a competitive sort, we baby boomers.
And it appears we have found our next arena.
In an ongoing effort to stave off dementia, Alzheimer’s, and even the benign-but-prejudice-causing vicissitudes of aging, we are intent on keeping our minds active and engaged.&n...
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LIFESTYLE | 16 Views | 0 Comments
Who are you going to call when you start to fall apart?
I have come face-to-face with my mortality in recent days – or, at the least, with some of the vicissitudes of aging – and it is not a pretty picture.
Indeed, “picture” is the right word. It is the images that I find so jarring – depressing, actuall...
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HEALTH | 28 Views | 0 Comments
A Battle for the Ages
I have always believed that a significant portion of the newly-aging 60-somethings (formerly known as baby-boomers) felt called upon to –finally – make a real difference in the world in this third third of their lives.
I have read tomes, in fact, that suggest in the strong...
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CURRENT | 39 Views | 0 Comments
The New Normal
The New Normal.
Isn’t there a line in the musical Hair that eschews “Normal” for children of the sixties for all time? (Something like “Please, God, Please, Don’t let me be Normal!”)
So, if we never truly mastered the “old” No...
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FINANCE | 37 Views | 0 Comments
It's Very Complicated
Some of what I read about the new movie “It’s Complicated” and its Hollywood woman-of-the-hour, writer-director-producer Nancy Meyers, made me embarrassed to want to see it. I was reminded of the quiet scorn I once received from a college president about to le...
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CURRENT | 39 Views | 0 Comments
The Retirement Journal
Retirement: Week One
It is not that I had not given a lot of thought to my husband’s Retirement from the practice of law after 37 years. He has been talking about it for about two years. It’s not even that I had not laid down a few rules and worked toward...
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RETIREMENT | 43 Views | 0 Comments
Good Job, Dad!
Last year about this time, my grown children elicited a promise from me that I would never again post any writings about them without their permission. The word in play at the time was “betrayal,” and they were right.
I’ve kept my word (sort of like Mary...
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RETIREMENT | 58 Views | 0 Comments
Thank You, Church Ladies!
The last time I felt I had a role model worth looking up to, I was a sophomore in high school. I remember watching a senior girl and thinking “I could be like that,” and that it would be a good thing.
But when I looked around after high school, the journey to adultho...
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SPIRITUALITY | 63 Views | 0 Comments
All Wrapped Up
I love the holidays.
Go ahead – say it – Bah! Or Humbug! You can’t snuff my spirit.
I love the holidays. And I even like them when they no longer turn out exactly as I might have planned. (Did they ever?) I’m getting used to them co...
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CURRENT | 74 Views | 0 Comments
Retirement Daze
DAY ONE
On a bad day – and there are some – Retirement feels like a chronic disease my husband has given me by leaving work at age 61. A chronic disease to which one must adjust and adapt, with symptoms that require changes in lifestyle and, perhaps, diet. A ch...
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RETIREMENT | 105 Views | 0 Comments
The Caretaker Daughter
It is one thing to have a good discussion with your 88 or 89 year-old mother about end-of-life issues. It’s quite another, my 50-something (and favorite) cousin reminded me yesterday, to live through them.
Quite another. In fact, she said she wasn’t sure...
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AGING PARENTS | 131 Views | 0 Comments
If Charity Begins at Home, Where Does it End?
Charity – to quote someone (like my mother) – begins at home.
At the time, she probably meant “Be nice to your sister!” Or perhaps she was thinking like on the airplane, when you have to fasten your own oxygen mask before grabbing one for your child...
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FINANCE | 98 Views | 0 Comments
Learning to Pray -- Again
Prayer.
According to [Ask the] Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, in a recent New York Times Magazine article, “A lot of people in their late 50s begin to feel small. Some feel existential angst. They want to relate to a higher entity. We call that ‘prayer....
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SPIRITUALITY | 159 Views | 0 Comments
Targeting the Aging
Do you feel it, too – that target that’s been drawn on your chest, centered between your wrinkle-creamed neck and exercised-but-nevertheless-slightly-bulging waistline, stretching from the ache in your right shoulder to the creakiness on your left? It’s a bulls-eye,...
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HEALTH | 123 Views | 0 Comments
A Different Kind of Anniversary
My daughter and her husband gave me permission to remember September 11 in a very different way than most: they chose it as their wedding day in 2004.
It was time, she said, to reclaim the day for love.
Still, we struggled with engraving (letter-pressing, actual...
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CURRENT | 120 Views | 0 Comments
Cure Cancer with $75?
Ovarian Cancer. The two words have a profound ability to cast a pall over things. Literally. Even a luncheon staged to celebrate life and raise funds for researching prevention or a cure. Even a luncheon that stands as a tribute of a daughter’s love for her mo...
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HEALTH | 108 Views | 0 Comments
Congrats, Diane Sawyer!
Congratulations to Diane Sawyer! And a huge Thank You to Katie Couric for paving the way for her. Maybe Diane won't have to suffer the indignity of the Hairstyle and/or Gravitas critiques as the second woman to host a prime time network news show. And good for all women over 60 who have paid the...
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CURRENT | 105 Views | 0 Comments
Are we history? Or still making it?
The first time I heard the Days of Our Lives reviewed as History was when my kids started studying the Vietnam War in high school. “But that was just yesterday!” I protested, although, in fact, it had been 20 years since the TET offensive. How did something that seemed so immediate, ...
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CURRENT | 90 Views | 0 Comments
The First Day of School, Again
Do you remember how much bigger – and older – you felt walking into a fourth grade classroom on the first day of school, compared to when you were a third grader? As I recall, even the desks were larger in the fourth grade classrooms, but perhaps that didn’t really happen until fi...
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LIFESTYLE | 109 Views | 0 Comments
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