The only reward of aging is a sense of some honest friendship with yourself, where you get to know yourself—you make peace with the things you are and you aren’t.
—Pepper Schwartz, sociologist
AS IMPORTANT AS HAVING FRIENDS is to our well-being, there is a level of understanding and respect that only we can reach for ourselves, and only by becoming as good a friend to our selves as we are to our circle of trust. It may take a little work to get that relationship into shape.
Authenticity. When I talk to women about their objectives for their reinvention, that word comes up all the time. Achieving it is, as psychologist James Hillman suggests, a process of liberating character (what you do when you are alone and presumably being true to yourself) from personality (the traits you have developed to navigate society and please other people).
Chipping away at personality in order to reveal character involves unloading some of the baggage from the past, and making peace with the rest. Which “me” did that? Do I want to keep doing it? Why didn’t I do that? Do I have the courage to do it now? Which relationships are supportive of the “real me”? What souvenirs from my life are worth keeping and which need to get tossed? How do I put my life in authentic perspective while looking forward—and looking back?
Much of that baggage accumulates during our earliest experiments with relationships. Childhood friends can help sort out our recollections. After all, they know who we were before we became who we are. Indeed, we learned what friendship was about from them. All the drama of those love/hate relationships with classmates was an education in making friends. “No one can teach you what a great friend is, what a fair-weather friend is, what a treacherous and betraying friend is, except to have a great friend, a fair-weather friend, or a treacherous friend,” observes psychologist Michael Thompson.
Those first friends are in a unique position. Certainly more objective than family members, they are able to comment on the narrative of our childhood that we have carved in emotional stone. Maybe that humiliating classroom presentation has been forgotten by everyone but you. Maybe everyone thought you were really smart, even though you didn’t. Maybe your friend remembers your parents being home more than you do, or remembers your parents being as cold toward you as you hardly dared to think. Maybe she recalls a secret that you have forgotten or never knew that could explain a lot. A need to find witnesses to our lives may explain why we type names from the distant past into a Facebook search and why many women who avoided ten- and twenty-year high school reunions are signing up for them now.
We can also measure how we have grown up in the context of those relationships. Eileen has retained two childhood friends on and off throughout her adult life. They are still teaching her about friendship—and herself. “We reconnected about fifteen years ago and started planning regular get-togethers as a threesome. Back in school, I was much closer to each of them than they were with one another; they both considered me their best friend.” But this time around the configuration shifted. “The two of them are actually more like one another than either of them is like me,” she realized. “They both tend to be quieter, more internally focused, and share many of the same interests: gardening, cooking, creative pursuits that don’t really interest me.”
When she found out that the others had arranged activities together that didn’t include her, Eileen was struck by a totally new response. “In the old days, I would have been jealous!” But a lot has changed. “Thank goodness that life perspective, menopause, and a needed dose of self-esteem and self-awareness have helped me realize that I don’t have to drive myself crazy trying to be everyone’s favorite friend.” Nowadays, she understands that “relationships change, people evolve, and life can be good just the way it is,” without measuring the bestness of friends.
Which is not to say there aren’t moments when we revert to the days of cliques and constantly shifting best friends. “I struggle with how to deal with friends who disappoint us when they cancel dates, don’t include us in their plans, take too long to return phone calls, forget to send birthday cards, or make friends with other women we introduce them to,” Ellyn Cohen, a retired publicist, admits. “What surprises me is that, despite our age, we still react the way we did in junior high school.”
It was mutual interests that brought my grade-school friend Ruthie back into my life, and it is our mutual history that has made the relationship uniquely meaningful now. We had twin families, we thought back then: European fathers; upbeat, somewhat flirty mothers (who, unlike other parents, took piano lessons); and pesky little brothers. We even lived in similar houses in the same neighborhood. We spent a lot of time together in one or the other of those houses.
After high school, though, we went our separate ways. She married, had three children, and lived in the Midwest; I went across the country to start my career. Thirty years later, I was beginning to write about women over fifty. A former classmate told me that Ruthie had become a therapist and was leading groups for women called “‘Retirement’—or What Next?” that dealt with the same issues of transition, turmoil, and self-doubt that I was writing about. We made a date to visit, and it was as if we had played our favorite card game on the floor of her sun-porch the day before, not decades ago. We talked and talked and seamlessly reentered one another’s lives.
Soon after that, both our mothers, who were still living in those houses we grew up in, began to fail. Our sympathy wasn’t abstract; we could each picture both mothers in both kitchens where we gathered after school, and could bear witness to the experience of being their daughters. No one else in my life today could go there with me.
Deep down in that burdensome baggage, are packed the secrets we never told anyone, because we were mortified by what we did or how we felt. It is time to let them go. With every risk we take, we get stronger and braver, so that what seemed inconceivable earlier is a dare worth accepting now. Even though we know that speaking “the truth will set you free,” doing so is one of the hardest challenges we need to face in order to move on. Recently, I saw it happen in a workshop called “Dancing at the Shame Prom.” The workshop grew out of a collection of confessional essays by a wide range of women on the subject of shame. After the book was published, the editors, Amy Ferris and Hollye Dexter, heard from women needing to get stories off their chests; as Ferris puts it, they needed to express “feeling not good enough, smart enough, creative enough.” They felt they could finally unburden themselves, they wrote, because reading the anthology reassured them they were not, as they had imagined all those years, alone. In response, Ferris and Dexter have developed a workshop, which they described to me, in which women can share their “stories filled with great sorrow and sadness, stories filled with anger and resentment about past mistakes.” The experience, says Ferris, enables the teller “to breathe, to exhale, to share, be intimate.” And shed tears of relief.
Another kind of tears—tears of laughter—are an antidote to another kind of shame, brought on by the indignities and creeping decrepitude we all have to live with. The trials and tribulations of menopause, and what Eileen calls the “floppin’ and droppin’,” going on around her provide endless material. Many times I have seen something in the mirror that almost brought me to tears (thinning hair or lips, for example) or been depressed over the newest memory lapse (forgetting whether it is a tablespoonful or a teaspoonful in the time between looking at the recipe and turning toward the mixing bowl) only to find myself overcome with hilarity when I confess it to those who know whereof I speak. As I knew I would.
This is serious business, of course. We have been unrelentingly critical of our bodies, even, as one of my friends puts it, when you had to be on LSD to see the flaws. Even when we should have been proud of what we saw in the mirror. Who hasn’t come upon a photo of herself back when she was reluctant to put on a bathing suit and been stunned to find that she looked pretty good? Now that we are becoming increasingly less perfect on the outside, we owe it to each other to appreciate and enhance the strength and wellness within.
As we look long and hard at whom we have become, the mind wanders toward whom we might have become—and might still aim to be. We can get a glimpse in the lives of friends who took different routes. One major crossroad is parenting or not. Where are those who had children and had to make some hard choices about the rest of their lives? And where are those who chose different commitments and lifestyles?
Rachel, who is a traveling saleswoman, knew she could always count on her friends in a crisis, but she hadn’t seen much of them—especially those with families—because she was on the road so much, and they were focusing on home. The stock-taking milestone of her fiftieth birthday made her think about rebuilding her circle of trust. That was not so easy, she found. “Part of it was getting back to good friends and having to deal with some of their annoyance that I was gone.” Ultimately, though, she was able to cycle back into those lapsed friendships and found, among other things, that connecting to her friends’ children, who were growing up while she was out of the picture, was an unexpected reward, “for five hours, maximum,” she adds. As another woman put it, if you are lucky, when you circle back on a friendship, you find that “you haven’t dropped a stitch; you just put the knitting down.”
Another connection between diverging lives has been membership in an enduring working group. These groups used to be quilting bees; then came consciousness-raising groups; in our time, it has been book groups. Many have lasted for years, and the conversations have created a timeline across the women’s lives. Katrina Kenison, author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day, took one path, but has been able to follow the road not taken through the women in her book club. During the decade they have been meeting, “there have been two divorces and both women are dating again,” she wrote me. “The conversation around this is always so interesting—those of us in long marriages envy the dates, the spontaneity, the romance, the independence, the second chances. We want to hear all the juicy details. And yet I know my dear friends also envy us in a way, for our old, solid, unmysterious relationships.” She goes on, “These two women, ages sixty-one and fifty, both look fantastic, but then I realize they are working really hard to look so good, in a way that us solid-married aren’t, because we don’t have to. The grass is always greener, I guess. But I can tell you this: the seven married women are definitely living vicariously through our two bold and beautiful friends who are out there risking all in new relationships.”
For their part, though, those single women need a little more than green grass. As one woman (not in that group) admitted to me, “one of the difficult things for me is the fact that although I have a wonderful loving caring circle of friends, they are all married. At my age it is difficult to find women who are single and who are on the irreverent edge of life. There is so much to go and do … and laugh about … and have a ‘fuck it’ attitude one day, yet be able to walk the traditional path the next day.”
The paths of some friends have diverged after the family phase. Ann Voorhees Baker, a successful businesswoman, shared the letter she received from her friend Jackie on the eve of a weekend of workshops that Ann had organized for professional women in transition. Jackie traces their friendship back to the “little band of wives and mothers who gathered for countless play dates, dinner parties and holidays during our young mother years.” They had so much in common then, but now, when she compares herself to the women attending Ann’s workshops, she wonders what she has to offer. Those women “will have had such interesting lives,” she wrote, “and mine was/is so not. That’s how I’ve always felt, like who would want to hear my story? (Least of all, my children.) But as I get older, I wonder. We need to tell our story.” And she adds, “I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, my dear.”
That’s what friends do as we age: Listen to each other’s stories and help each other grow up. No matter what choices we make, it’s possible for friends to grow separately without growing apart if we have achieved a relationship in which, as British social psychologist Terri Apter puts it, “understanding meant caring about (the other’s) experience, rather than sharing it.”
“We have been the peace keepers, the mediators, the selfless workers behind the scenes who have striven to please our parents, our spouses, our friends, our children, our bosses—and for the most part have been quite successful,” a woman named Toni points out. But things are changing; she is in shedding mode. “Nowadays I don’t have time for all of that. I continually ask myself, what is important for me? With the limited amount of time I have left, I want to allow less important things to drop away and focus on the people who matter most.”
“I find that my tolerance for ‘fluff’ or gossip has almost vanished,” another woman told me. “I don’t care so much what my coworkers make or what vehicles they drive. I’ve come to think more about the larger picture. And I look for that in my friends, too.”
Yet another has discovered that the big picture includes acceptance. “We are so critical and judgmental of ourselves,” she explains. “When you are kind to someone else, you learn how to turn it toward yourself. It can be very healing.”
Mary, a woman I met not long ago, gave me a list of the qualities in a friend that have become important to her now. They include “the other woman being on a journey and conscious of that” and “common value base (ethics, politics – small p).” And there is one more, a self-protective requirement: “Being psychologically reasonably intact.” “I have found it too draining to have to support people if they won’t seek professional support when they need it,” she explains and then adds, “selfish, perhaps, but honest.” Ah, honesty—and that much-maligned expression of self-worth, “selfishness.”
Actually, honesty and a healthy respect for our own needs (formerly known as “selfishness”) are signs of that authenticity we are after. In the safety of our circle of trust, we can dare to be ourselves without being judged; we can vent unworthy gripes without feeling guilty; we can admit failures and boast about successes (no false modesty here); even accept as much advice as we give. Quite simply, we can say what we really think.
For many women, speaking up and speaking their minds is a totally new experience. One of the hallmarks of this empowering period of self-discovery is the realization that hits each of us at some point: “You know what? I don’t care what people think any more!” (I’ve called that liberating experience “the fuck-you fifties.”) Nothing is more exhilarating than hearing yourself utter a resounding “no” to a statement or request you had been acquiescing to all your life. We practice that strong voice on our long-time friends. And we offer that empowered, no-bullshit self to new ones.
There is no escaping the fact that sooner or later, a circle of trust will be called upon to try to restore a friend’s emotional, physical, or financial health, especially since it is statistically likely that most of us will be living alone at some point in the future. The five of us who gather for a life-enhancing dinner every month may well find ourselves called upon to mobilize a different kind of lifesaving team.
Author Marilyn French was a member of just such a group—they called themselves the “coven.” When she was stricken with lung cancer, they moved into action; they met with her doctors and evaluated treatments along with her children; they also invoked mystical forces and kept each other informed. When she went into a coma, they organized themselves into a round-the-clock spiritual circle. When doctors believed she was dying, they didn’t think so and encouraged their sleeping friend to keep going. When she miraculously emerged from the coma, they got her home and tended to her needs in shifts.
As she got physically stronger, Marilyn discovered a totally new kind of psychological strength has emerged. “When I got home, someone stayed with me every night,” she wrote in A Season in Hell, a memoir of those days. “They did this because I asked them to; it was a measure of my desperation that I did so. It was incredibly hard for me to ask anyone to do something for me, but during this period I did.” She may not have realized it, but I am sure that her friends were grateful to know what Marilyn needed and wanted, so they could do it, rather than helplessly asking, “is there anything I can do?”
Women of our generation have a very hard time asking for and even accepting help. We pride ourselves on being able to cope with anything, and we are deeply invested in our hard-won independence. By the time we get into our fifties, we have learned a lot about caregiving and rising to the occasion, but know much less about being cared for, what I call “care-getting.” Dr. Sara S. Auchincloss, a psychiatrist, sees this dynamic all the time. It is, she says, “a challenge for the woman to accept what she needs from someone.” We are so used to caregiving, she explains, that we can barely “tolerate it when people give care back to you.”
If we are going to address the challenges of aging, some of the trust and honesty that have bound us together will need to shape authentic responses to our circumstances—accepting weakness in ourselves and each other. It is time for a new Golden Rule, Gloria Steinem says: “Do unto yourself as you have been doing unto others.” Or to put it another way: “Do unto yourself as you would do unto your friends.”