I found that female pathfinders generally integrate characteristics commonly associated with being women - like the capacity to be intimate - with 'male' ones like ambition and courage.
— Gail Sheehy
Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.
Jill Clayburgh's life so closely paralleled mine, I feel as though a part of me lived a little through her and died a little with her.
We really only have two choices. Play it safe, or take a chance. For me, pulling back because of fear has always made me feel worse.
I dare to do things - that's how I survive.
In the first phase of shock over, say, your mortgage being called in or your job washed out, it's essential to engage with others and share the fear, release the feelings, do fun things to take your mind off it.
Family caregiving has become a predictable crisis. Americans are living longer and longer but dying slower and slower.
Very few women manage to have it all; certainly not all at once.
Spontaneity, the hallmark of childhood, is well worth cultivating to counteract the rigidity that may otherwise set in as we grow older.
Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.
No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness.
I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.
It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter.
People in grief need someone to walk with them without judging them.
I know I'm never going to probably see the Taj Mahal or, you know, climb Mt. Everest, but I can still maybe influence peoples' way of thinking by a story that I do, by something I learn about the world.
I actually interviewed other people about myself, and that alerted me to the fact that I had to really investigate my memories.
Character is what was yesterday and will be tomorrow.
Be willing to shed parts of your previous life. For example, in our 20s, we wear a mask; we pretend we know more than we do. We must be willing, as we get older, to shed cocktail party phoniness and admit, 'I am who I am.'
Back in 1968, when I was 30, my entire life blew up. I had a life plan, and it collapsed for no rational reason.
One of the ways we women often handicap ourselves is thinking that once we've made a decision or a commitment, we can't change.
Married at 23, a mother at 24, and blindsided by divorce at 28, I found myself struggling, like many young women I meet today, to strike a balance between my personal life and my career.
We have to move from the unbridled pursuit of self-gain at the expense of others to recovering appreciation for what we gain by caring and sharing with one another.
If you begin to think you are solely responsible for keeping your loved one alive and safe, you will eventually find yourself playing God. This phase can develop into an unhealthy, codependent relationship.
You have a new role: family caregiver. It's a role nobody applies for. You don't expect it. You won't be prepared. You probably won't even identify yourself as a caregiver.
The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology.
Adapting to our Second Adulthood is not all about the money. It requires thinking about how to find a new locus of identity or how to adjust to a spouse who stops working and who may loll, enjoying coffee and reading the paper online while you're still commuting.
The first thing one notices about Jill Abramson is her short stature. The second is her intensity.
This is something caregivers have to understand: You have to ask for help. You have to realize that you deserve to ask for help. Because you need to keep on working on your own life.
I did not give my daughter the kind of childhood anybody would want. The vision of the divided loyalty between a mother and father who don't live together and don't share in decisions is a great depravation for children.
I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'
Like everyone else in the first weeks after the tragedy of 9/11, I was looking frantically for some way to help.
I'd visually have that idea. I'm diving off the end of the diving board. I'm not going to be worried about if I'm going to dive into a jellyfish or the water's going to be too cold or the boys are going to beat me. I'm just doing it. And if I do it, it's a good chance I'll make it.
It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there's a whole second adulthood!
It seems like, to me, somewhere between 30 and 35 is a really, really good time to turn your eggs into babies.
In rough times, pathfinders rely on work, friends, humor and prayer. They develop a support network.
My husband, Clay Felker, died 17 years after his first cancer due to secondary conditions that developed from treatment.
You don't have to feel confident to act confident. In fact, it's the most important acting job you can learn.
I actually like getting out of my comfort zone. It shakes me up.
Stress overload makes us stupid. Solid research proves it. When we get overstressed, it creates a nasty chemical soup in our brains that makes it hard to pull out of the anxious depressive spiral.
In 2009, I served as AARP's Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.
Career-driven millennials are strategic about working obsessively while they are single and earning enough money to afford advanced education. Most are patient enough to wait until 30 or later to develop their dream.
The feminist spirit still lives! It shows most boldly among younger women from the millennial generation.
I keep returning to the central question facing over-50 women as we move into our Second Adulthood. What are our goals for this stage in our lives?
In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.
If you're the person living closest to the parent who's going to need help, and you take on the whole role of primary caregiver, you can be pretty sure your sibling who lives farthest away is going to call you and say, 'You don't know what you're doing.' Because they're not on the spot, and they probably feel guilty.
I do think women can have it all - but not all women. If you take daring steps and are smart about it, you can probably have it all. But you might have to wait a while.
We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.
I'm a liberal, but I think there's so much that the private sector can do and does do.
When I was immobilized by fear, I might have a panic attack. I've had a couple of panic attacks in my life.
In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.
