The Active Grandmother Theory
The Active Grandmother Theory We women, unique among female primates, live long past our childbearing years. There are good reasons why. I’ve written before about the Grandmother Hypothesis, the brainchild of Kristin Hawkes, a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. Hawkes and her colleagues published the seminal article on grandmother theory in 1998. […]
Influencers In The Elder Ecosystem
Influencers In The Elder Ecosystem Word pairs are powerful; remember “outside agitators?” If the agitators are from outside, that implies people in the community are fine with the status quo. But are they, really? Or take my current least favorite pair: “young influencers.” If influencers are automatically young, that implies the old lack influence. But do […]
Retirement Till the End
Retirement Till the End Retirement is a lovely vacation that ends in death. Our exhilaration when we first retire is tempered by how it will end. Back when I was working, if I had two weeks off, I reveled in the first week and spent the second week dreading the return to the office. Even […]
Joining Hands Across Generations | Newly Minted Crones
Joining Hands Across Generations – Newly Minted Crones Cronedom is not just one generation. It begins in our forties and extends to the end of life, which for some of us happens in our nineties or more. At each stage we have much to learn from one another: Newly menopausal women can learn from sisters who […]
Everyday Life Is A Revolutionary Act
A woman in a longstanding lesbian marriage once told me, “I love it that my everyday life is a revolutionary act.” I remembered that while reading the new novel, Fishwives, whose main characters go about their daily lives exemplifying for their friends and neighbors the lasting and perfectly imperfect love of two women. In the […]
Too Many Images Too Little Touch
Too Many Images Too Little Touch April 2020 exists as a haze in my mind. One of my few clear memories is looking out the window at two squirrels running and playing in the newly green yard. Even then I knew it was absurd to envy wild squirrels with as little as a one-year […]
