Clinical studies of older adults are built to measure decline and nothing else. Stella Fosse on Becca Levy’s new research, the review boards that let one-sided studies through — and what any of us can do about it.
Two Women on a Mission News flash: After Amba by Stephanie Shields is the Gold Medal Winner in the 2025 WSA Independent Book Awards for Adult Fiction. It’s late August 2025. This is us, Stella and me. Two women novelists of a certain age. We’re sharing a view and we’re sharing a vision. Two older women on a mission. Empowerment, creativity and presence. Yes presence, for invisibility is not a special power—it’s a problem for
A Taste of the Banquet As I’ve interacted over the years with the marvelous women who create Crone Culture, I’ve often wished for one place where we could see it all: the books, the podcasts, the shows and movies that celebrate women past midlife. A place to learn more about the vibrant women who are pushing back on stereotypes and telling the stories of our lives as we really live them. Because I never found
Zero to Fifty When I’m being interviewed, I often get the question, “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?” The answer is, it’s complicated. Not that I haven’t written off and on my whole life, I wrote a play in third grade, a reader’s theater in seventh, and there is a book and a screenplay in a drawer somewhere that will never see the light of day. But I never wanted to
Invent Your Own Goddess When pagan author Donna Henes was almost fifty she developed a surprising habit. She began praising herself over even the smallest thing. “Good girl!” she would say to herself if she took the stairs instead of the elevator, or if she really did drink eight glasses of water in a day. It dawned on her that she had been saying “Good boy!” to her dog for years, over the slightest thing;
What Are Women Made Of? As I child, I remember reciting, What Are Little Girls Made of? Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice. Somehow, that never seemed right. The girls and women I knew were made of stronger stuff. Wanting to better define this, I began interviewing women as a graduate student and never stopped. I’ve interviewed over a hundred women over the past decades, almost all of them over forty, in search of a
