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The Musings & Ponderings of Stella (And Friends)

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First Do No Ageist Harm Montage
Stella Fosse

First Do No Ageist Harm

First Do No Ageist Harm Last year I signed up for an online clinical study about brain health and answered a series of questions. The study materials said the research would help discover treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other brain disorders. Back then it seemed like a public service to provide information that could help fight disease. I recently completed a follow-up set of questions and came away with a different perspective. Life after full-time

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10 Steps to Write a Great Seasoned Sex Scene
Stella Fosse

10 Steps to Write a Great Seasoned Sex Scene

10 Steps to Write a Great Seasoned Sex Scene At their best, sex and writing have a lot in common: two forms of play that engage us creatively with others. Both make us vulnerable. And there is no subject we can write about that makes us more vulnerable than sex—even more so for older women who write about sex in a youth-obsessed culture. On the flip side, it’s the most fun you can have with

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When I am an Old Woman I Shall Dye My Hair Purple
Stella Fosse

When I am an Old Woman I Shall Dye My Hair Purple

When I am an Old Woman I Shall Dye My Hair Purple In early 2000 I flew to San Francisco with my newly adopted baby. At 46 and still jet lagged, I pushed her stroller through our Oakland neighborhood. “Your granddaughter is beautiful,” said a woman on a park bench. Granddaughter. Right. I went home and dyed my gray hair red.  It was my first experience, not of trying to look younger, but of trying

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Montage header for Awaken the Power of Older Women
Stella Fosse

Awaken the Power of Older Women

Awaken the Power of Older Women. I am in several online groups for older women where the prevailing content is jokes at our expense. Incontinence is a recurring theme, along with making fun of older women’s looks and desires. Self-deprecating humor is great, up to a point. But too much of it degrades our self-image. Why is an advocate for older women’s empowerment on those groups? For one thing, I was naïve enough to think

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Header montage for That Great Retirement Not So Fast
Stella Fosse

That Great Retirement Not So Fast

That Great Retirement Not So Fast At the start of the Industrial Revolution, early labor theorists saw the transition from small business owner to employee as a kind of limited servitude.  When I read about that years ago it made a big impression, because it was clear that even as a professional, I gave up much of my agency when I accepted a job. My career was spent in the maw of American work culture; a

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How I Made A Huge Mess of My Life montage
billie best

How I Made A Huge Mess of My Life

How I Made A Huge Mess of My Life Billie Best has been a music producer, a marketing executive, a farmer and a writer. Her memoir, How I Made a Huge Mess of My Life (or Couples Therapy with a Dead Man), is a witty, unblinking look at success, failure, bliss, infidelity, life, and death. I loved it and was lucky to catch up with this busy author for an interview. Stella: Your memoir How I

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