The Journey, Part 2

Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood
by Suzanne Levine

(Page 5 of 5)

As the pieces of self-knowledge and self-determination begin to fall into place, what at first appeared to be a chaotic and sometimes fool-hardy enterprise morphs into a more philosophical and authoritative frame of mind, a phase I call making peace and taking charge. This is when we implement some changes and begin to believe that we can handle whatever life throws at us. At this point it becomes inviting to look beyond the limits of our inner voices and our immediate concerns - to the world around us. Some women become galvanized by community activities or go back to school; others take a new look at the impact of their work or at the spiritual component in their lives. Many are drawn to the generations ahead or behind them and come to feel more grounded in the human family.

Ideally - which means rarely - these stages build upon each other so that a sense of mastery meets the riptides set off by the painful, and invigorating, and inevitable business of recalibrating every gauge in our lives. For most of us, though, it seems to be happening all at once. Still, with every risk we take, we become more confident that we can cope with and even embrace conflict and change. And as we meet the challenges described in the chapters that follow, the discoveries we make about our inner resources empower us to take on the next one.

Margo's Story

There's Just No Static on the Line

You will meet many complex and exciting women in the pages that follow, but I do want to introduce you now to Margo (whose name, like some of the others in this book, has been changed to protect her privacy). Her story struck me as a paradigm for the Second Adulthood process. Margo's husband died twelve years before we met and her two sons had only recently moved on into their own lives. For thirty years, Margo, now fifty-five, had worked as a high-powered corporate executive and had relished the excitement her career brought. But suddenly, she was feeling claustrophobic, a condition many women experience in widely differing forms. "I felt my world was small and getting smaller," she told me. Margo was bewildered. "I had always had a lot of ambition and aggression. And then I didn't. What happened?"

As she continued to push herself to meet the job demands that used to feel like a welcome challenge, she tested out alternatives. Since she'd always loved antiques, she thought she might try being a buyer for other dealers, but a few courses in antiques convinced her she "didn't want to go back to school," and several months scrounging flea markets convinced her that she couldn't earn a living as a "picker." She tried to push her imagination further; she even "thought it might be fun to be a character actor in commercials. But," Margo concludes, "one by one, I eliminated all those ideas."

Then serendipity struck. A young woman her son was dating was about to leave for the Peace Corps, and everything she described about that program sounded just right. Margo, the urban executive; Margo, whose lifelong hobby - around which she planned her busy schedule - was ballet classes; Margo, the driven, bossy, power broker; that very Margo found herself a year later in a tiny village in the Ivory Coast, speaking fluent French and designing latrine-building projects. What does Margo say about all this? "I have no idea why I had so little trouble adjusting. There is just no static on the line!" What a glorious prospect: a stage of life that brings clarity, confidence, and purpose!

But her journey doesn't stop there. In a couple of years Margo plans to come home and become a consultant on economic development to international corporations. And lest anyone think she's thrown over her old self altogether, she expects to pick up ballet again (though a few classes when she came home for the birth of her first grandchild showed her that she "couldn't do a turned-out plié as gracefully as before"). And she intends to make the most of her new self. "I have a nest egg," she explains, "but I do need to earn money. I'm used to earning and dressing and being and going - being chic. You can't do that on a fixed income. Maintenance is expensive. Being a jazzy older woman costs money. And that includes plastic surgery - when I get back from the Peace Corps."

Margo and you and I are the first generation of women nurtured on a recognition of women's independence; that gives us the chutzpah to go for a Second Adulthood. We are the first generation to be recipients of new levels of health and longevity expectations; that gives us the time for a Second Adulthood. We are the largest segment of the largest population demographic in U.S. history, and that gives us consumer and political clout to shape a new social experience called Second Adulthood. And science is producing breakthrough research showing brain changes that suggest our outlook is literally being redesigned from the inside; that gives us affirmation for what we are finding out about Second Adulthood.

What we don't have yet are role models or road maps for the journey, and that can make freedom feel like chaos, and promise feel like wishful thinking. I offer the brain research news, sketchy as it is, as a metaphor for Second Adulthood. If a woman looks at what is happening to her as a learning curve of her new brain power, she will be more receptive to the impulse to reconsider her experience, revisit her decisions, and reorganize her emotions. Willing to step off the cliff and meet the not-yet-known.

Like our first adulthood, Second Adulthood begins with a turbulent adolescence.

© 2005 Plume, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues. Editor of Ms. magazine from its founding in 1972 until 1989 and editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, she is currently a contributing editor of More magazine . The author of a book about fatherhood and numerous articles and essays, she has also produced a Peabody Award-winning documentary about American women. She has appeared on Oprah and the Today show and has lectured widely.