To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.
The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.
Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.
To hear how special and wonderful we are is endlessly enthralling.
The source of continuing aliveness was to find your passion and pursue it, with whole heart and single mind.
Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect you have enough.
Transformation also means looking for ways to stop pushing yourself so hard professionally or inviting so much stress.
The delights of self-discovery are always available.
Adapting to our Second Adulthood is not all about the money. It requires thinking about how to find a new locus of identity or how to adjust to a spouse who stops working and who may loll, enjoying coffee and reading the paper online while you're still commuting.
It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there's a whole second adulthood!
Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.
I keep returning to the central question facing over-50 women as we move into our Second Adulthood. What are our goals for this stage in our lives?
If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.
Back in 1968, when I was 30, my entire life blew up. I had a life plan, and it collapsed for no rational reason.
In 2009, I served as AARP's Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.
We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.
Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter.
My husband, Clay Felker, died 17 years after his first cancer due to secondary conditions that developed from treatment.
