Women Rowing North
Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age
“I have everything I need to be happy right between my ears.” —Jane Jarvis
Women Rowing North is about the specific issues women face as we transition 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 happiness 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 theoretically 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 reminders to be present and grateful, but I am engaged in a hopeful process. The process, rather than a perfect outcome, is what makes me happy.
To be happy at this junction, we cannot just settle for being a diminished version of our younger selves. We must change the ways we think and behave. This book focuses on the attitudes and skills we need in order to let go of the past, embrace the new, cope with loss, and experience wisdom, authenticity, and bliss.
During this life stage, we lose some of the long-term aspects of our identity, but we add new aspects and expand on many others. We learn to balance the loss of certain roles with the crafting of fresh and more serviceable ones. Hopefully, we become more gentle and kind to ourselves.
My focus is on women who, like myself, are on the cusp of change. I turn seventy this year. Women in their sixties and early seventies are crossing a border and everything interesting happens at borders.
Of course, women may feel that they are on this border at different ages. Chronological age is not as important as health. In the twenty-first century, we women often consider ourselves middle-aged well into our sixties. Until we suffer a major health crisis or the loss of someone we love, we continue to feel young.
Developmental psychologist Bernice Neugarten made this distinction between young-old age and old-old age. As long as we can do most of what we want to do, we are young-old age. When our health fundamentally changes the way we live, we have entered old-old age. However, my own experience is that many of us are between those two categories with various kinds of health problems, such as failing eyesight or arthritis. We still live much as we always have, but with adaptations.
Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson documents the extended life span of people born after World War II. Most of us have the possibility of living well into our eighties or nineties. She suggests that we call these later decades Adulthood II.
Throughout this book, I draw on my own experience. I’ve been a daughter, a big sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a caregiver for my ill sister with dementia. I’ve watched my parents die and held all five of my grandchildren on the first day of their lives.
I’ve been a therapist who worked primarily with women. My research has been on women. I taught Psychology of Women and Sex Roles and Gender at the University of Nebraska and I have written and spoken about women all of my professional life.
I write as a cultural anthropologist and clinical psychologist who specializes in developmental psychology and trauma. In Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, published in 1994, I wrote about teenagers; in Women Rowing North, I reflect on older women. Both life stages are sharp turns in the river requiring us to expand our identities.
As with Reviving Ophelia, this book explores a specific life stage from a feminist perspective, revealing the reality of women’s lives as opposed to the dominant cultural stories about us. We are much more complicated, intense, and fascinating than most of America’s stories suggest.
Our culture presents us with a misogynistic version of who we older women are. We confront both ageism and gender-specific challenges. As we age, our bodies, our sexuality, and our minds are devalued. There are many negative stereotypes about older women, but my least favorites manifest as mother-in-law jokes. These jokes suggest we are nosy, bossy, judgmental, and in the way. Women Rowing North begins a new conversation about our complexity, challenges, and gifts.
Contrary to cultural stereotypes, many older women are deeply happy. A 2014 Brookings Institute study on happiness and age found that people are least happy in their twenties, thirties, and early forties, and steadily gain an appreciation for life as they age. Indeed, most women become increasingly happy after age fifty-five, with their peak of happiness toward the very end of life.
Dilip Jeste at the University of California, San Diego, found in 2016 that as people age they report higher levels of overall satisfaction, happiness, and well-being, and lower levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. The older the person, the better her mental health tended to be. Women’s happiness ratings were consistently higher than those of men. Recent census data from the United Kingdom finds that the happiest people are women aged 65–79.
There are many theories about why women fare better than men. One is simply that we tend to be healthier and more active. We also are more likely to have close relationships with family and friends. We understand how to hold intimate conversations, talk about our own deepest emotions, and help others discuss theirs. We may have a long-term partner and often have decades-old friendships to support us.
This year I experienced a vivid illustration of the happiness of older women. I switched recreational centers from the university where I have taught for many years to a gym geared toward older people. I noticed a great change in the locker room atmosphere. At the university, the young women were mostly stressed and unhappy. They talked on their phones or to their exercise partners about their weight, finances, studies, and relationship issues. Almost all of them hid their bodies by crouching as they undressed. Except for occasional happy talk about weekends or school holidays, conversation was generally gloomy.
On the other hand, in my new locker room, we older women walk around unselfconsciously naked or in utilitarian underclothes or swimsuits. Our bodies are saggy with plenty of stretch marks, wrinkles, and cellulite, but do we care? Not much.
We are more interested in each other’s faces, which reveal decades of joy and suffering and are often open and awake to the moment.
Older women do talk about their troubles, especially what we call the “organ recitals,” that is, conversations about health issues. Mostly, though, 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 happiness. 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 cheerfully 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.
I don’t recommend controlling our emotions, but rather listening to them. They are delivering information that is vital to our recovery. We want to fully experience our emotions in both our hearts and our bodies. If we do this, we will gradually move toward healing and hope.
Part of what allows us to deeply appreciate our lives and savor our time is our past despair. In fact, it has great value as a springboard for growth. There is an ancient and almost universal cycle that involves trauma, despair, struggle, adaptation, and resolution. This is a deepening cycle that prepares us for whatever comes next. It opens our hearts to others and helps us feel grateful for every small pleasure.
My role models are not women who avoided reality, but rather social activists such as Alice Paul, Tillie Olsen, and Grace Boggs who saw reality clearly and set about to improve it. I have always admired the multifaceted genius Margaret Fuller. In the early 1800s, she campaigned for birth control and women’s rights. She once declared, “I accept the universe.” She accepted it, in that she understood it and didn’t deny reality, but she acted both to benefit women and to enjoy her life to the fullest.
Let us all reach for the freedom to see, hear, and feel everything. That does not mean we act on impulse. Rather, it means that, like Margaret Fuller, we have the fortitude to face the truth directly and then build our happiness accordingly.
Our journey through this life stage, while potentially beautiful, is arduous. Old age is always accompanied by loss. Eventually, one way or another, we will say goodbye to everyone we love. In our sixties and seventies, we are likely to spend more time in doctor’s offices than at concerts and more time at funerals than weddings. Maneuvering this stretch of river requires flexibility, a tolerance for ambiguity, openness to new vistas, and the ability to conceptualize all experiences in positive ways.
Older women have the most need for navigational skills, but we also have the most experience acquiring them. We have weathered strong 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 grandchild 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 navigate 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 developmental 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 identify 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, disappointments, 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. Likewise, 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 partnered and single, healthy and infirm, and contented and miserable. Thirty percent of women between sixty-five and sixty-nine are working. This book merely samples the richness and variety of women in our life stage.
Part I of Women Rowing North considers the challenges of aging, including ageism and lookism, caregiving, loss, and loneliness. Part II considers the travel skills necessary for our river journey north. These include understanding ourselves, skillful choices, community building, managing our narratives, and gratitude. I emphasize the importance of being useful. Barbara Kingsolver said it best: “Happy people have found a use for themselves like a good tool.” Part III turns readers toward the lifeboat of long-term loving relationships. Whether or not we have a family, we need to live interdependently with others. Our growth depends on interaction: isolation is the quickest path to stagnation. Finally, Part IV explores the rewards of this life stage, including authenticity, enhanced perspectives, and bliss.
For this book’s title I chose the word “rowing” rather than sailing or floating because, to stay on course, we need to make an effort, choose a positive attitude, and maintain a strong sense of direction as we travel toward winter and the land of snow and ice.
I feel fortunate to have a community of women friends who have gathered for thirty years for our annual All-Women’s Camping Trip. We have all worked outside the home and we have talked about jobs, bosses, co-workers, and sexual harassment. Some of us had our babies together. We talked about breastfeeding, teething, and toilet training. We complained about our husbands. Later, we had issues with the school system or with rebellious teenagers. We cried and worried when our children left for college. We shared our cranky menopause years together and had a few campouts that weren’t much fun. We helped each other through the deaths of our parents. Now our own aging is a big topic.
This group has spent many days and nights on the Platte River, a shallow, braided river that meanders across our state and is known for being “a mile wide and an inch deep.” But it isn’t always shallow. In the 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.