Then came the earthquakes. A divorce, single motherhood, a bankruptcy. Bing, Bang. Boom. Even though I was an emotional wreck, I never ballooned to outrageous proportions. Still, for the first time in my life I had to shimmy into a girdle to control the overflow of tummy flesh. I was mortified.

One day it struck me, as I was listening to Swift’s song how well the word “fifty” fit in the title spot. I decided to write the rest of the song.

I want to live
right through to the end in full frontal
engagement, awake to everything.

Yes they do. Every day. In almost every way. This, as much as used-up eggs and hot flashes, seems to be a fact of my midlife.
Once, in my glory days, I could …

Since I’m roughly halfway through my life, you can expect the following to be half wise.

There on my computer monitor, staring at me in bold, cheerful color appeared a reunited assembly of my former classmates. My first thought was: Who are all these old, gray haired people?

I’m also poking fun at myself for being conflicted about no longer being hot–-hot in the sense that people who didn’t already know that I was “beautiful on the inside” thought I was hot.

In a sense, they are like spouse stand-ins, and they’re thinking of getting T-shirts made saying: “I’m Becoming The Man I Always Wanted To Marry.”

At fifty-three, I have to laugh when I hear people claim that fifty is the new thirty, or that aging is all in your head. The truth is, it’s a lot of work to stay young. Which isn’t the same thing as remaining youthful.

This little number arrived in my mailbox this morning and it’s got me fit to be tied.  Lesley Jane Seymour, editor of More, is debating some “Dating Coach” (quotes mine), on the Morning Show, about …

I wonder how long I’m supposed to keep it up? At what age do I knock it off– Skip the Botox, cancel the personal trainer, go with the uni-brow, and lose the retainer on my teeth at night?

…we Americans almost universally associate “greying” with aging. Which is strange considering the fact that I know men who are completely bald by thirty, and we don’t use the word “balding” as a way of referring to states of degeneration.