Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Women
Rowing North
Navigating Life’s Currents
and Flourishing as We Age
Women Rowing North is about the specific issues women face as we tran-
sition from middle age to old age. The core concern of this life stage, with
all of its perils and pleasures, is how to cultivate resilient responses to the
challenges we face. Resilience is built by attention and intention. We can
take responsibility for our attitudes and focus on our strengths and our
joys. We can go deep and face truth squarely. We can learn the skills that
allow us to adapt to anything. Yes, anything.
With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that worked
for us at an earlier stage. We find ourselves in an environment that pelts
us with more challenges than our current self can manage. If we don’t
grow bigger, we can become bitter. When our problems become too big
for us, our healthiest response is to expand our capacities. That growth is
qualitative. We become deeper, kinder to ourselves and others, and more
capable of bliss.
Attitude is not everything, but it is almost everything. In fact, in many
situations, it is all we have. Especially as we age, we can see clearly that we
do not always have control, but we do have choices. That is our power.
These choices determine whether we stagnate or grow into fully realized
people.
Of course, the world is not divided into two types of women: those
who grow and those who don’t. All of us fit into both groups almost every
day of our lives. Some of the time, we are good copers and resilient human
beings; in other moments, we are reactive and pessimistic. Pain, sorrow,
and anger will always be with us. But with will, intentionality, and the
right set of skills, we can be happier over the long haul.
There are some lucky people who seem to be naturally sunny, but for
many of us, happiness doesn’t come easily. My knowledge about happi-
ness comes from being someone who has struggled with sadness and
anxiety much of my life.
I know how to take care of others and to be good, but it has been a
lifelong journey to learn to take care of myself. I am from a family tree
whose fruits include psychosis, depression, alcoholism, and suicide. As a
girl I suffered a great deal of parental absence and I became the overly
responsible, hyper-vigilant big sister. Once I told a friend I was theoreti-
cally happy and she laughed. She said, “You can’t be theoretically happy
any more than you can be theoretically orgasmic.”
Even though I would not call my quest for joy and happiness a
rousing success, I have learned from my journey. I don’t expect constant
happiness. Now, when I am blue, I know how to help myself. I am calmer
and less reactive. I still have my share of bad days and I need constant
we discuss family, travel, books, movies, and fun. We joke around. For
example, one day I heard a woman say, “The kinder you are to them the
longer they last.” Another woman asked, “What are you referring to?”
Then, one by one, the rest of us chimed in, “Your knees,” “Your bank
account,” “Your swimsuit,” and “Your husband.”
How do we manage our many difficulties? In this book, I argue that
neither our genetics nor our external circumstances determine our happi-
ness. Rather, happiness depends on how we deal with what we are given.
Even though we all suffer, we don’t all grow. Not all older women
become elders. Successful resolutions of our developmental challenges
don’t just happen. We don’t become our wisest selves without effort. Our
growth requires us to become skilled in perspective taking, in managing
our emotions, in crafting positive narratives, and in forming intimate
relationships. We develop the skills of building joy, gratitude, and
meaning into every day. By learning these lessons, we cultivate emotional
resilience.
We have the capacity to build happiness into our lives with humor,
concern for others, and gratitude. Of course, we can’t do it all of the time.
That self-expectation would drive us crazy. However, we can develop
habits that make it more likely that we will respond in an upbeat manner.
It’s critical to distinguish between choosing to live lovingly and cheer-
fully and living a life of denial. One leads to joy, the other to emotional
death. I have learned from my work as a therapist that secrets, denial,
and avoidance invariably cause trouble. To move forward requires seeing
clearly.
When we lose a beloved or learn that our health is deteriorating, our
natural response is full-body despair. We are likely to panic, go numb,
and wonder if we can survive. As we emerge from shock, we feel all the
other painful emotions as well. We don’t heal without hurting. For a
while, the cure for the pain is the pain.
storms and hold a long view of life’s journey. We can take responsibility
for the emotional weather we create and experience.
This developmental stage is a “both/and” experience. Most likely, we
will feel both some of life’s deepest sorrows and also enjoy moments of
bliss. Around the time of a parent’s death, we may hold our first grand-
child in our arms. We may have health issues that limit our mobility, but
we can still savor a Bach concerto, bake a peach pie for a daughter’s visit,
or pack a picnic and watch the sunset from a beach or prairie.
If we make good choices and develop the skills discussed in this book,
we will experience growth spurts. Let’s aim to become more curious
and less worried and more self-aware and less reactive. We can learn to
embrace everything. All of it. Regardless of life circumstances and our
innate human foibles, we can find serenity, happiness, and wisdom.
Women Rowing North is a guidebook for the flourishing that is
possible. It explores what sustains, enlivens, and enriches us as we navi-
gate this developmental stage. This era offers us an opportunity for
emotional, social, and spiritual development. Perhaps the book’s core
lesson is simply “Everything is workable.” We can always find the silver
current of resilience that can carry us forward.
This book is both descriptive and prescriptive. I share what I learned
about growth from my lifelong work as a therapist. I describe through
interviews and stories the myriad points of view of women in this devel-
opmental stage. We learn from each other. This is not a “how to” book,
but what I hope is a “how to think” book.
I interviewed women from all over the country and from many
different educational, economic, and cultural backgrounds. I do not iden-
tify women by race, but Latina, Asian, Caucasian, African American,
and Native American women all shared their stories. These women varied
greatly in both what they were coping with and how well they were
managing to cope. Some were in the depths of sorrow. Others were skilled
in the art of vibrant living. But all were striving to master the challenges
of this life stage. They were trying their best to be both happy and good.
Except for a few women who asked that I use their real names, the
women I interviewed are given new names. Some stories are combined
and details are changed to protect anonymity. I tell the stories of many
women in this book; however, I focus on four women across time—
Willow, Kestrel, Emma, and Sylvia.
I include many of my own stories and reflections. I know myself
better than I can ever know anyone else. I see myself as a typical older
woman. I’m middle-class and live in the middle of the country in a
midsize university town. It’s a blue city in a bright red state. I am mostly
healthy, but I’ve lost some functioning. I am full of moods, flaws, disap-
pointments, and self-criticism, and I will be trying to improve myself on
my deathbed.
Women our age vary by race, cultural background, employment,
socioeconomic status, geographic region, and sexual preferences. Like-
wise, we range from women who are full-time caregivers to those who
have no such responsibilities. We differ in our access to resources, such as
nearby family, life partners, close women friends, and safe and connected
communities. I know women who are sixty going on ninety, while others,
like my seventy-five-year-old friend Debbie from Los Angeles, are ready
for yet another great adventure. We vary in the amount of emotional and
physical pain we are suffering and in the amount of resilience we can
summon. Some women seem hard to lift up and others are impossible to
keep down.
Most of us exist between those extremes. We are resilient on some days
but not others. We recover quickly from one kind of stress, but struggle
to bounce back after another. What we share is our place on the river.
There is no one woman who can represent all of us. We are part-
nered and single, healthy and infirm, and contented and miserable. Thirty
spring, bolstered with snowmelt from the Rockies, the Platte roars with
ice jams crashing against each other in strong currents. In summer, when
it rains a lot, the Platte can be a muddy swimming hole.
When I picture our river journey, I see my friends talking and
laughing along the Platte. As with any other journey, every new day offers
us surprises, danger, and tests of our courage, intelligence, and resolve.
We encounter shoals and logjams as well as elderberry blossoms, lush
sunsets, and the calls of wild geese.
Over the years my friends and I have discovered many empty, wild
places. Invariably, when we get lost or something goes wrong, one of us
reminds the others, “Remember the first rule of the wilderness: don’t
panic.”
That is a good rule to keep in mind as we journey along our own
rivers of time. If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage
our emotions skillfully, we will experience a joyous time in our lives. If
we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps
and guides, the journey can be transcendent.