Rather than believing our worth and self-esteem flew the coop along with our children, our empty nests provide us with both the time and the opportunity to pursue long neglected interests and passions. And, as older women, this isn’t all we’ve got going—we also have the internal drive to explore unchartered and unfulfilled territory. “If not now, when?” becomes an insistent call that sets our course on turbocharge.

In addition to this age-related calling, we older gals have released ourselves from much of the self-doubt that plagued so many of us in our younger years. As one dear friend recently put it: “I made a decision that 2010 was going to be the year of ‘I can do’ and step out of my chains and prisons of fear and self-doubt.” My friend has recently turned fifty and this birthday seems to signal a watershed marker for women to flex their muscles and burst free from the social and self-imposed roadblocks to success.

Yes, we will experience setbacks and self-doubt but, at our age, we’ve got the wisdom, the strength, and the inner resources to keep on track and persevere. So, here’s to counting our blessings, following our bliss, and making our own mark on the world as we choose it to be.

In my introduction on Feisty Side of Fifty Radio, I proudly proclaim there are “no invisible shrinking violets here” and I mean it! If any generation of women can retire that musty, old shroud of invisibility that has been used for centuries to demean older women… it is the boomers! After all, we’re the proud, the willful, the revolutionary, and the trailblazing generation that burst through the gender barrier. So this age thing is just a drop in the bucket for us!

And, while you’re trailblazing, drop on over to Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights and The Perimenopause Blog. Two of my very favorite boomer bloggers have honored me with posts about my work. Please do stop by and leave a comment!

If you or a boomer friend is unemployed and looking for work, please check out Land the Job You Love: 10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers Over 50. It’s the only book around that provides midlife jobseekers with an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to successfully navigating today’s competitive job market. Don’t be left in the dust—set yourself apart with an up-to-date resume that rocks, learn how to build critical and strategic alliances within your targeted companies, and ace the interview with skill and style. Packed with insider tips and techniques, this book is guaranteed to put your search on overdrive and turn you into the candidate of choice!

Women over fifty experience significant change in their lives, not the least of which is seeing beloved children leave the nest and head out to pursue goals and dreams of their own. In my last post, I suggested that recently displaced mothers “feather their nests” with new interests and linked to my  TV appearance where a therapist and I discussed that very topic.

Now I’d like to introduce you to a wonderful book by Catherine Goldhammer entitled, Winging It: Dispatches from an (Almost) Empty Nest. Catherine shares her very personal story of seeing her daughter, her only child, spread her wings and fly off to follow her newly claimed independence. Here’s what Catherine had to say about her experience:

What made you want to write this book?

When I had the realization that my daughter was really getting ready to go off on her own, I wanted to talk about how that felt and what it meant to me as a mother and as a person.  I thought that the book would be about independence and separation, but it ended up being about connection, between me and her, but also between me and my past and the thoughts of the future.

Did writing it help you deal with the “empty nest?”

It did.  I really expected to have a very hard time when my daughter went off to college, but it was easier than I thought it would be.  Part of that came from writing the book, but I was also surprised to discover how really ready we were to be away from each other, in the best of possible ways. 

How else did writing the book affect you?

The book surprised me by becoming a way of looking at other parts of my life:  my childhood, my family of origin, my “wild” youth!  It became a way of seeing my life, not just as a series of disconnected parts, but as a whole story.  It also became a way of thinking about my relationship with my mother, and in doing so I came to realize and be grateful for the impact she has had on the way I see the world. 

What would you like to see people take away from this book?

It’s not an easy thing to allow our relationships with our children to change and grow, and to allow ourselves to change and grow, too.  In writing the book I was able to have a few laughs at parts of that journey, and to come to see it as a good and necessary experience.  My hope is that readers will join me in that adventure.

Catherine was also kind enough to share an excerpt from Winging It:

The summer she was fifteen my daughter left for a college program in philosophy.  It was the longest she’d ever been away from home, and she, of course, did fine. 

And so did I, mostly.  Just one lost weekend and a few weekdays given to wandering around clueless.  But once I got into the swing of it, I got a lot done.  I made phone calls, moved my office, made a Web site, and mailed the publication announcements for my first book.  I had a certain kind of energy that comes with time and the ability to concentrate.  I felt virtuous and productive.  I had that reaching-out sort of feeling.  The anything could happen now feeling.  I was vital.  I was on the upswing. 

Then, in the back and forth of the text messages and phones calls my daughter and I exchanged, I began to understand what the next seismic shift in my life was going to be.  You have your children and you can’t possibly imagine that one day they will walk off toward their own future without you.  And then it happens and you have to let them go. It wasn’t that I didn’t know this.  Not to get all Kahlil Gibran about it, but our children really are the arrows we send out into the future, and I knew that my daughter was walking toward the moment with intent, and that she was way ahead of me in readiness.  According to my friends who had been there before me, knowing it didn’t necessarily help.

“We pour everything into them,” an uncommonly gentle friend said with uncharacteristically bitter humor.  “And then they leave us, the little bastards.”

And so, after years and years—of scraping oatmeal off the floor with a spatula, retrieving plastic octopi from the mouths of toddlers, navigating the shoals of kindergarten and friendships and boyfriends, driver’s licenses, the specters of sex, drugs, and alcohol, the bands with their poetic lyrics, the brain-sucking nightmare of Facebook, the iPod with its thousands of songs, the singing lessons, the art classes, the heart-stopping riding lessons with their massive horses and five-foot jumps, the ambitions and passions and dreams —you finally see it on the horizon. There you are.  You.  About to be returned to yourself.

For more information about Winging It, or to order the book, check out Catherine’s website at www.catherinegoldhammer.com.

One of the most difficult transitions women face is the double blockbuster hit of going through the hormonal havoc of peri-menopause at the same time their nest is emptying. It seems that at the very stage your children are rebelling and leaving you, both emotionally and physically, your very own body is rebelling and leaving you too. You get the sense that living inside your skin is no longer a familiar place (both emotionally and physically) and it’s an uncomfortable experience indeed. 

My friend, Mags, over at The Magnolia Diaries has a great post on some of the very real and distressing symptoms that many women experience. These are by no means easy to endure and peri-menopause can be a time of genuine suffering.

Nevertheless, as someone on the other side of the change, I’m telling you to hang on. Full-fledged menopause is just around the corner and it’s a wonderful period in a woman’s life, if you look at it that way. Menopause brings about emotional and hormonal equilibrium, revitalizes your energies, and gives you the nudge to “go for it”—it’s your time and you’ve earned it.

I was recently on the television talk show View From the Bay with my friend, Maure Quilter, Marriage Family Therapist, discussing this very topic. (The segment is only a couple of minutes and I’d love to have you take a look.) 

After menopause, ratios of testosterone to estrogen rise and women experience a merging of their male and female energies. Although nurturing will always be part of our make-up, we have an increasingly insistent drive to express ourselves and leave our unique mark upon the world.

So, go out there and feather your own nest with new interests, take risks and expand your own horizons. Step away from familiar behavior and head for new and exciting directions and goals. This truly IS your time and you HAVE earned it!

In her book about women’s second adulthood, Inventing the Rest of Our Lives, Suzanne Braun Levine provides us with some exiting data concerning the aging brain. Dr. Francine Benes, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has discovered that there is a growth spurt that takes place in the human brain around the age of fifty. Myelin, which is the fatty layer that covers nerve fibers, actually grows about fifty percent during this time. This coating is responsible for aiding the brain to more effectively synthesize life experiences and to enhance the ability to make thoughtful judgments and prudent decisions.  

Even better, the location of this growth spurt is found within the area of the cerebral cortex that is identified with emotional learning. Perhaps, as Levine suggests, this myelin growth factor may likely play a part in creating the highly revered trait we call wisdom.

So, next time we search for our car keys, call our son by the dog’s name, or forget to tell our husband his boss phoned, we have to remember that somewhere in our noggin there’s a whole heap of wisdom going on!

Yes, for women over fifty, or, for that matter, most anyone of any age, modern travel isn’t easy. I just returned from a week’s trip to the heartland visiting my relatives and, although I had a wonderful time, the going wasn’t easy.

To start, I awoke at 3:45 a.m. to give myself enough time to shower and finalize my packing so that I could make my 7:06 plane. There was an earlier flight I could have taken that would have given me more time to make my connection, but that one left at 5:45 a.m. As I opted to luxuriate in a couple of hours extra sleep (a 1 a.m. wake-up is a bit too much at my tender age), I was concerned I might miss it.

Not to worry! When I arrived at the airport the check-in line wound in tight snake-like twists and turns, and then headed halfway up the hallway to the gates. Someone behind me announced that the airlines had cancelled both the 5:45 and the 7:06 and the line was composed of two planeloads of people trying to rebook their reservations.

What fun! It only took two hours to finally get to a reservations agent. I shouldn’t complain, however, because there were people much older than I who were similarly inconvenienced. They even required wheelchairs because that doggone line was so long that they thought they might pass out or crumple to their knees on the hard linoleum floor.

By the time I reached an agent, her likely once obliging smile was frozen in a frustrated grimace… no doubt having been the recipient of numerous angry complaints. And, yes, I added my own to her list. Try as I may, battling both the recorded voice “customer service” computer and the polite but unintelligible folks in India, I was stuck. Lucky me—I only had another seven hours to wait for an outbound flight. Instead of my anticipated 5 p.m. arrival, I got to inconvenience my brother by landing at midnight.

I remember flying with my mother and brother in the 1950s and loving the experience. We’d get all dressed up and settle into our comfy seats waiting for the familiar hum of the propellers to start-up and wend us on our way. The stewardesses were nattily attired in their fashionable uniforms, smiling and ever so helpful. They’d warm my brother’s baby bottles, and then sit next to me to play several hands of Old Maid, keeping me happily occupied and giving my mother a chance to relax.

Ah… the good old days! Do I sound grumpy and judgmental? Am I showing my years with a cantankerous, crotchety attitude? Well, YES, and I stand by all my wrinkled rectitude! As far as the airlines are concerned, a return to yesteryear and the gracious ways of an earlier era wouldn’t hurt. In fact, it would surely prove a boon to the flying public and make one old grumpy gal very, very pleased.

Yes, I admit it. I used to scoff at the young and technically savvy who went on about the “friends” they met over the Internet. “Friends?” I asked. “How can you call someone a friend when you’ve never even met?”

Well, I’m here to tell you that I have totally reversed my opinion on that one. In the past several months, since I’ve started blogging, I have become acquainted with some absolutely amazing women. Although we haven’t yet met face-to-face, or even spoken on the phone, I consider these ladies my friends. Some have left wonderful, uplifting comments on Feisty Side of Fifty. Some have linked to various posts I’ve written, and some have gone so far as to award me the honor of being a guest blogger on their sites.

However, there is a very special group I’d like to mention. The Baby Boomer Divas, a.k.a. Boomer Diva Nation, is an incredible pool of powerful and accomplished women—most of whom have already celebrated their half-century birthdays. Although they are all in midlife, the group is rich in diversity. The ladies hail from differing backgrounds, careers, and geographical areas, and from different races, ethnicities, and religions. The common theme is one that their leader, Beverly Mahone, stresses: women on the move and making a difference.

Mahone, who is a veteran journalist, author, media coach and motivational speaker, has written her own book on the many facets of aging. Whatever! A Baby Boomer’s Journey Into Middle Age takes a candid look at issues such as weight gain, menopause, and dating after forty, among others. After twenty-five years in radio and television, Mahone chose to become a work-at-home-mom. She now acts as a media consultant and counsels individuals as to how to best market themselves to radio, TV, and newspaper professionals. She’s a recognized expert on all things Boomer and has a radio show targeted to boomer women.

It is with great pleasure that I claim this talented and accomplished woman as my friend. She gifted me with an invitation to join the Boomer Diva Nation several months ago and, since that time, my life has changed… and all for the better! Through these ladies, I’ve been given wonderful and exciting opportunities to stretch myself personally and grow my career in new directions.

Beverly’s most recent gift to me was an opportunity to appear on her radio show, Whatever Live! I enjoyed the experience immensely—actually it was a blast. Beverly’s combination of professionalism, wonderful energy, and engaging personality make her the consummate radio host. I’d love to have you take a listen.

Yes, cyberspace or face-to-face, nothing beats a warm and caring friend. 

When was the last time you turned on the TV to find a face looking back at you that resembled your own? Yes, there are a few, but the names of these actresses no longer appear at the top of the credits. Even if they are series regulars, they usually play supporting roles: mothers, grandmothers, or recurring guest stars. It seems that, just like Elvis, the Golden Girls have left the building—or, more accurately, the soundstage.

Movies aren’t much better. If it weren’t for Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep, you could barely find a woman of a certain age gracing the big screen.

Well, that’s all about to change and, once again, social norms are reacting to the boomers and our numerical clout. Our famous bulge (and I’m talking population—not waistline) has served us well over the years, ensuring that our wishes and demands were heard. And, as older women in menopause, we’re not getting any less outspoken or assertive.  We want our due!

I came across an article in the Detroit Free Press that addressed how our generation is impacting Hollywood and the entertainment industry. They cite two current box office smashes: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with Harrison Ford, and the movie, “Sex in the City.”  At 65, Ford is a bit older than the leading edge boomers and, other than Kim Cattrall, the “City” stars are in their early forties, a bit younger than our years. So, the stars of these movies straddle both ends of our generation—and, of course, men are allowed to be the older ones. Still, this is progress!

I’m waiting for more films starring actresses in their fifties and sixties that have story-lines showcasing the lives of women in their post-menopausal years. These will feature real-life tales of love, passion, challenge, and triumph, and will reflect, with some creative license, what it’s like to grow older as a woman in our culture.

We’ve waited a long time for this, yet hope springs eternal. So, show me a wrinkle or two, let me hear the heroine grunt when she rises from a sitting position, let’s see her forget where she left her bifocals. I’m waiting to see myself, in all my wrinkled glory, reflected on the silver screen and so are 76 million of my peer group. Wake up Hollywood and smell the Geritol! 

Many of you read my last post entitled “Raise Your Havingness Quotient!”  Although I often write about this idea and firmly believe that women over fifty are, more than ever before, ready to own their power, at least, for me, it doesn’t hurt to revisit this concept from time to time. So, I’m sharing one of my very favorite quotes. It speaks to just this issue and I have it hanging in my office as a way of reminding myself that, yes indeed, I am powerful beyond measure…  and so are you!

You have probably seen this before because it has made the rounds. Nevertheless, the words of Marianne Williamson do serve to inspire and spark the genius that resides within each of us. A gentle reminder of our greatness can never be repeated too often.

         Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

         Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

         It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

         We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

         Actually, who are you not to be?

         Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

         There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people 

         won’t feel insecure around you.

         We were born to manifest the glory that is within us.

         It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

         And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people

         permission to do the same.

         As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

         Marianne Williamson

         A Return to Love 

You may be wondering what I’m talking about. But, there is such a thing as a “havingness quotient” and it’s worth examining and developing. I know, because I recently had my own shaken in ways I never could have imagined.

I have been working on a goal for over five years. When I started, it seemed far out of reach if not impossible. I encountered one hurdle after another and each success was followed by a disappointment. It was almost as if I’d take two steps forward and one step back.

However, I wanted this badly enough to persevere against the odds. My stubbornness kicked in and I doggedly put my nose to the grindstone despite the scrapes and scratches the grinding left on my poor proboscis.

Then a seeming miracle happened—things began to fall into place! I began to get recognized for my work and signs of support started to spring up where I’d least expected. I was ecstatic!

To my surprise, after the initial thrill and amazement began to wear off, I became anxious and began to fall into a funk. What if I couldn’t perform up to expectation? What if I were playing the imposter? What if I would fail? All these questions and doubts started to swirl through my brain and I began to feel immobilized.

But then, a dear friend who is also a therapist, mentioned that I might be struggling with issues related to my ability to “have.” She suggested I try a little exercise to measure my havingness quotient. It’s quite simple and, if you ever have doubts that you are deserving of an outcome, I suggest you give it a try.

Sit quietly, close your eyes and go inside. Imagine that you have a measuring stick running up your body and this gauges your feelings of worthiness for a particular result. It is marked from one to ten and acts like a barometer so that your score can raise and lower.

When I first attempted this, my ranking was a three—far from reaching my desired outcome. If you believe in the Law of Attraction, such a low score was sabotaging my chances for ultimate success. Aware of this, I’m now diligently practicing raising my havingness quotient. I check in frequently to see how high I can take my readings and I’m happy to say that I’m now a seven and climbing.

I pass this along so that each of you can raise your numbers and your potential. If you have spent valuable energy and time devoted to accomplishing a much desired goal, then it’s worth a bit of extra effort. Why not give this little exercise a try and make your own way to the top? 

My dear friend, Dahlynn McKowen, an amazing lady who’s an award winning author and highly respected editor, turned me on to a most wonderful site. I just had to share it.

It’s called Design-her Gals and it’s an innovative stationery company that allows you to create your own likeness and affix it to invitations, note cards, and the like. The fun part is that you can make yourself into quite the dish and then adorn your body with designer outfits and accessories that make for a fashionable new you. No bad hair days here!

But, even more than that, there is an important mission behind the fun. Design-her Gals was founded by Jeanne Fitzmaurice, who lost both her cousin and her best friend to Stage IV Breast Cancer. In their honor, she also created the Gal to Gal Foundation and five percent of every sale goes to the non-profit. If you choose, you can donate directly and support this important organization.

Over 300,000 patients worldwide will lose their lives to Stage IV Breast Cancer this year. Funds are often scarce for those in this critical stage, when health insurance benefits may be reduced or cancelled, family bank accounts become depleted, and hospice care is hard to find. This is where the Gal to Gal foundation steps in. Their main beneficiary is an organization called “Making Memories.”

Making Memories is dedicated to making a wish come true for women and men who are losing their battle against breast cancer. The wishes and memory-making events they bestow allow the individual the opportunity to put aside the realities of their illness, enjoy themselves, and leave one final, beautiful memory for their family.

So, take some time to visit this remarkable site and take full advantage of the combination of creativity and a  cause. You’ll end up having a lot of fun and helping to make a lasting memory all at the same time.