Inventing the Rest of Our Lives Women in Second Adulthood

This new Second Adulthood is a life change that gives women a second chance to grow up again, free of the limitations and expectations of their first adulthoods. Drawing on personal stories, cutting-edge science, up-to-date trend analysis, woman-tested wisdom, and her own brave, sometimes painful, sometimes very funny struggles with life after her fiftieth birthday, Levine shows that Second Adulthood women are not the same women they have been so far, only older; they are really different. At midlife, women really do start to see the world differently, which the latest brain research is proving to be literally true.

From work to love, self-discovery to civic duty, health to economics, Levine examines every aspect of women's lives and shares stories — scary, powerful, challenging, joyful — of women who have found insights and solutions that work for them. She reports on and explores the phenomenon of "the fertile void," the process of "saying no, and letting go" and the defiance of what she calls "the fuck-you fifties," as well, as the recalibrations of relationships, intimacy, and sense of self that women experience.

Inventing the Rest of Our Lives doesn't read like a health guide or a careerguide or a therapy guide, though it tackles all these issues. What it does do is offer role models and a roadmap for a journey that — without the kind of awareness this book engenders — can make freedom feel like chaos and promise feel like wishful thinking. It's a companion and a handbook that helps readers explore this new frontier and find their own answers to the three big questions each woman wrestles with — What matters? What works? What's next?

New brain research is proving it: Women at midlife really do start to see the world differently. Some 37 million women now entering their fifties and sixties—a unique generation—are refashioning their lives, with dramatic results. They have fulfilled all the prescribed roles— daughter, wife, mother, employee, but they’re not ready to retire. They want to experience more. Suzanne Braun Levine gives us a fun, smart, and tremendously informative road map through the challenging and uncharted territory that lies ahead.

“Levine takes us beyond the frontier of our own expectations and into a new and hope-filled stage of life.” —Gloria Steinem

“I found so many resonances with my own experiences in this book… It will have a huge impact and will clarify so many things for so many women.”—Carol Gilligan, Ph.D., author of In a Different Voice and The Birth of Pleasure

“Suzanne Braun Levine made me understand why I always envied older women . . . life just gets better—more outrageous, more radical, more passionate, less fraught, wiser, deeper, and kinder.” —Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues

“A you-go-girl manual for the menopause crowd.”—People

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues. Editor of Ms. magazine from its founding in 1972 until 1989 and editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, she is currently a contributing editor of More magazine . The author of a book about fatherhood and numerous articles and essays, she has also produced a Peabody Award-winning documentary about American women. She has appeared on Oprah and the Today show and has lectured widely.