Posted By Dr. Thelma Reese on Jan 13, 2012
For this reader, who is beyond the Second Adulthood described and encouraged by examples in How We Love Now, Suzanne Braun Levine’s new book is a wonderful and informing look into the lives of our children’s generations. It lets us see and appreciate their worlds and the choices open to them. I know I’ll be ordering copies for my own 50-something daughters. It’s a necessary book for women who, as we in our older years certainly find, have to look among themselves for role models, because they are occupying new terrain and treading new paths their mothers hadn’t known.
From her days as the first editor of Ms., through her trail-blazing examinations of the changes women have experienced through aging in a changing world, Levine has tracked and reflected upon what it can mean to reach the 5th, 6th, and 7th decades our foremothers never dreamed of -if we’re lucky and smart. (Her earlier books, Inventing the Rest of Our Lives and Fifty Is the New Fifty are pathfinders in defining life for Boomer women.) How We Love Now helps women be smart by presenting many examples of life-choices less bound by social opprobrium today than ever before.
In Levine’s latest book, through research, her own journalistic prowess, and the engaging stories of many women, she etches a reassuring picture of the many forms love can take in the lives of women. While sex and intimacy are major themes, experiences of love through friendships, family, work, inside and outside of marriage, and on and off the Internet are all explored vividly, but dispassionately. No judging or scolding here! As she says, “The most liberating insight of Second Adulthood is that You Are Not Who You Were, Only Older.” Without suggesting there is a right or wrong way that applies to everyone, the author helps us count the ways we give and receive love, and they can change or deepen as we reach an age of greater reflection and self-knowledge.
The “Now” in the title refers to this time of self- discovery and acceptance, when we really know ourselves and realize that growth and learning are ongoing. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Our changing demographics tell us that now we have a lot more time to examine our lives and discover who we really are – to make our lives truly worth living. In this book, we meet women who have made decisions about how to move on in life that were rarely contemplated by their mothers: leaving husbands; finding new romances; making radically different career choices; examining family roles and relationships and finding the strength to confront them when they no longer fit. ” She looks realistically at the relationship between mothers and daughters, the gulf that so often exists between generations, and emerges, thanks to the gift of time and self-knowledge, on the side of understanding and compassion for both mothers and daughters.
Readers will find the Resources section a useful annotated list of web sites aimed at women entering and experiencing their Encore years.
Dr.Thelma Reese
www.ElderChicks.com
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