I’ve been seeing in the news that “seventy is the new fabulous.” For example this article in the Los Angeles Times on February 5, names so many over seventy women who are still with it and productive and in a word, fabulous. Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Close, Judi Dench, Betty Buckley, Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Bette Midler to name a few. And we mustn’t leave out eighty-five-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsberg who is still on the Supreme Court bench even after recent cancer surgery. She is my all-time hero.
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That gets me to my success after the age of seventy. I had lunch with a cousin yesterday who congratulated me on writing a novel Papa’s Shoes that will come out this spring by Aberdeen Bay publishers. Look what you did and at your age, she commented. Yes, that’s right. Though I don’t work a full-time job anymore I still work every day in my home office, beginning to market my novel and writing my new memoir (coincidentally about healthy aging), blog posts, poems, and journal entries. Just like I’m doing now.
Sure, I get tired and have to have a nap break every day. But I heard from a young woman who just turned thirty-five that she needs a nap a day too and now she is old enough to take one. But even though I’m closer to eighty than seventy, my life is still very full. I feel like I’m a prime example, like the other women named above, of what a fabulous woman in her seventies can do. It’s our time. We need to take advantage of our new-found fabulous power.
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I am proud to add that my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On was on a list compiled by Erin Burba of BookRiot of the 100 Must-Read Biographies and Memoirs of Remarkable Women. As I looked at the list I couldn’t believe my memoir was among those written by authors as Mary Karr, Joan Didion, Cheryl Strayed, Sonia Sotomayor, Madeleine Albright, Maya Angelou, Anais Nin, Malala Yousafzai, Patti Smith, Katharine Graham, Nora Ephron, and many more. It is still available here.
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