What does Aging Mean for Women?

Posted on May 10, 2019August 22, 2024 by Dr. Toni

Gayle King moderates a Milken Institute panel on rethinking what aging means for women

By ELLEN OLIVIERMAY 01, 2019 | 3:05 PM

Appropriately enough, Katy Perry’s song “Roar” could be heard over the speaker system as guests filed out of the panel discussion “Coming of Age: Women Rise to the Top” at the Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton earlier this week.

Moderated by Gayle King, co-host of “CBS This Morning,” the April 29 event during the four-day conference consisted of women who had broken age and gender barriers to achieve powerful positions in a variety of industries and who had come together to talk about the need for society to rethink what age and aging represent.

“How do we feel about the phrase ‘women of a certain age?’” asked King, 64, plunging right into the topic.

“I like, ‘perennials — perennially young,’” said Sherry Lansing, 74, former chairman and chief executive of Paramount Pictures. Lansing said she has no problem revealing her age but hates the phrase “a certain age” and also the descriptors “seniors” and “older.”

“I’ve never felt better and more in tune with myself, more in tune with my business and more connected to the rest of the world,” said Sylvia Rhone, 67, chairman and chief executive of Epic Records.

Anastasia Soare, 61, joked that she still celebrates age 39 every year. Soare is the founder and chief executive of Anastasia Beverly Hills, a cosmetics company that has more than 19 million Instagram followers.

Former congresswoman Jane Harman, currently the director, president, and chief executive of the Wilson Center, speaks during the April 29 panel discussion. (Milken Institute)

Not surprisingly a proponent of makeup, Soare talked about cosmetics’ ability to lend women confidence and give “the power to women to control what they want to look like.”

“You have to look good in order for people to listen to what you have to say,” said former congresswoman Jane Harman, 73, currently director, president and chief executive of the Wilson Center.

Harman said she first became passionate about politics as a young girl after meeting Eleanor Roosevelt and feeling “an aura about her.”

Lansing then suggested that Roosevelt’s beauty came not from outside but from her energy, charisma and substance, and that beauty as women age should also be judged in other than superficial ways.

Anastasia Soare, founder and chief executive of cosmetics company Anastasia Beverly Hills, was among the panelists at the April 29 event. (Milken Institute)

“I thought I’d be dead by 70,” Lansing said. “So instead of thinking that 70 is old or 80 is old or 90 is old, can’t we accept the way it is? I’m too scared to let my hair grow gray. … But if we’re really going to be role models and we’re really going to redefine aging, some of us have to do that.”

Donna Karan, 70, said that although her daughter thinks she should retire, the designer said, “I’m [just] beginning. … I’m an artist. You never give that up. There is no age about it.”

Then, offering a fashion tip, the founder of Urban Zen and Donna Karan International recommended clothes that bare the shoulder. “Your shoulder never gains weight,” she said. “That’s why I did the ‘cold shoulder.’ … The shoulder never gets wrinkled.”

Harman had two more suggestions for success. The first: “Be confident. It’s very hard for women to learn self-confidence,” she said. “When you’re confident, you put yourself out there in ways you wouldn’t otherwise.”

Her second piece of advice: “Be the most qualified person in the room. … Don’t say, ‘Well, I’m the girl’ and ‘Gee, it’s stacked against me.’ … If you’re good, it’s amazing what can happen and what continues to happen even at this ripe ‘young’ age.”

Epic Records’ Rhone said her success came not only from being good at what she does, but also from hard work, surrounding herself with good people and being fearless. “I’m very fearless,” she said, “and that’s what gets me through. There’s not a lot of things that can put me down. And, if there are, it’s just for a moment until I recalibrate, and then I’m back again.”

Former congresswoman Jane Harman, left, listens while former Chairman and Chief Executive of Paramount Pictures Sherry Lansing speaks at the panel discussion “Coming of Age: Women Rise to the Top.” (Milken Institute)

Summarizing the sentiment in the room, King ended the session with a declaration: “70 is the new 50 — I’ll leave you with that.”

The talk about aging didn’t end at the door. In a post-event conversation, Lansing said, “My generation marched for civil rights. We marched for the women’s movement. We marched for gay marriage, and now we have to be the culture to redefine what aging is and what beauty is. I wish I had the courage to let my hair grow gray, but I can’t because there’s a stigma attached to it. Aging can’t be a negative thing. It has to be a positive thing, and every birthday has to be celebrated.”

Of course, for some women, aging naturally may not be realistic and may depend upon a woman’s profession.

“I’m under no illusion that if I were gray-haired, white-haired or 50 pounds overweight with wrinkles on my face, the reality is I would not have a job on television,” King said, just after the session. “I look at that as that’s just the way it is. I don’t run away from aging and I have no hang-ups about telling my age, but if you’re in a business where you have to look good, that’s the reality.”

Ellen Olivier is founder of Society News LA.

Why Age When You Can Sage?

Posted on May 8, 2019May 8, 2019 by Dr. Toni

This expert offers what she calls the three keys to ‘sage-ing’

By Jann E. FreedAuthor, ‘Leading With Wisdom’May 1, 2019

Credit: JDS Malacky | Flickr

When I worked as a professor of business management, my mentor, Elmer Burack, once told me, “The world is full of baby boomers who will be leaving their careers. Once boomers leave the workplace, they won’t know what to do with themselves. You can help them figure it out.”

Elmer sent me the book From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller. Reading it changed my life. Now I blog about “sage-ing” © (becoming an elder) and have a monthly podcast titled Becoming a Sage where I interview thought leaders in the field of positive aging. Because of my involvement in Sage-ing International, I read and watch everything with my “sage-ing lens.” I’ve concluded: Why age when you can sage?

In my workshops, I ask participants to picture someone who is aging and to describe the characteristics. They will shout: bitter, regret, denial, withdrawn, not interested in doing much. Then I ask them to envision someone who is sage-ing and to identify the differences. For a sage, people will say: wise, kind, generous, relevant, engaged.

Everyone says they would prefer to spend time with a Sage.

First Key to Become a Sage: Live Life With Meaning and Purpose

To become a Sage, one of the key components is living life with meaning and purpose. Research shows that people who have a reason for getting up in the morning live longer and healthier lives than those who don’t. (In the Blue Zone of Okinawa, Japan, this is called ikigai.)

As Gregg Levoy, author of Vital Signs: The Nature and Nurture of Passion and Callings: Finding and Following An Authentic Life told me: “Passion and purpose is not a place you get to, but it is a place you come from. It is a skill and a mindset you have or don’t have toward life. In fact, I call it a survival mechanism.”

Second Key to Become a Sage: Embrace Your Mortality

Another way to become a Sage, rather than just age, is by embracing your mortality.

Dr. Timothy Ihrig, who practices palliative medicine (caring for the most vulnerable people) around the world and helps other health care providers improve the care they offer this population told me: “Most people do not fear death as is commonly believed. People fear getting dead. They fear the journey of dying.”

As the late professor Morrie Schwartz, who had ALS, told author Mitch Albom in Tuesdays With Morrie: “When we learn how to die, we learn how to live.”

Embracing death reminds us that our time can end any day, which frees us to live more fully. Sages want to make the most of their time learning, building community and in service to others and to the environment.

Third Key to Become a Sage: Leave a Legacy

Another key aspect of sage-ing is leaving a legacy. Most people want to know their life mattered.

Margaret (Meg) Newhouse, author of Legacies of the Heart: Living a Life that Matters, told me she defines legacy as “the footprint of our lives that lives on after our death and into another generation … But the heart is the key to a more positive legacy rather than ego focused contributions such as look at all that I have done with my life.”

In my workshops, I usually ask: “So when do we leave a legacy?” People will say: When we retire. When we die. When we leave. I ask, “When we leave what?”

We actually leave a legacy all the time every day. I call this “bread crumb legacy,” because we are continually leaving bread crumbs along the way.

We leave part of our legacy when we leave a meeting. When we leave a conversation. When we leave every interaction.

When we think about the legacy we are leaving — positive or negative — we are conscious of what we say, how we behave and how we treat others.

The Path to Sage-ing

If you want to be on the path to sage-ing, rather than aging, my advice is to:

Discover your meaning and purpose. What do you want to do with your time, money and energy? What will get you up and keep you going?
Learn to embrace death. What is your perception about death? How might you embrace it?
Think about the legacy you want to leave. What difference are you making? How do you want to be remembered?

Why age when you can sage? Simple: Everyone wants to be in the company of a Sage.

By Jann E. FreedJann E. Freed is the author of Leading With Wisdom: Sage Advice From 100 Experts. She has over 30 years of experience teaching organizational leadership and development and is a consultant with The Genysys Group.

Midlife and Aging

Posted on May 1, 2019May 1, 2019 by Dr. Toni

Conscious Aging poem

Posted on April 8, 2019April 8, 2019 by Dr. Toni

she said
I am rare.
I am the standing ovation
At the end of the play.
I am the retrospective
Of my life as art
I am the hours
Connected like dots
Into good sense
I am the fullness
Of existing.
You think I am waiting to die…
But I am waiting to be found
I am a treasure.
I am a map.
And these wrinkles are
Imprints of my journey
Ask me anything.
by Samantha Reynolds

Older Adulthood

Posted on April 7, 2019April 7, 2019 by Dr. Toni

by Joyce Ann Mercer, CALLING ALL YEARS GOOD: CHRISTIAN VOCATION THROUGHOUT LIFE’S SEASONS, Kathleen A. Cahalan and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, editors, pgs. 190-191

Those in the initial phases of older adulthood often note the way that gradually the deaths of friends and loved ones become less of an exceptional occurrence and more the norm. A central characteristic of this stage of life is the inevitability and constancy of loss. The regularity of loss accelerates across subsequent years, such that people in their seventies and beyond begin to speak of “outliving all my friends” or being the only one left in their families so that “it all ends with me.”
With the death of age-mates comes an increasing sense that there is no one who can listen to and validate the stories of one’s experiences of growing old. There is a loneliness inherent in losing the people who hold our stories with us.
…One of the most common experiences named by older adults is loneliness. As loss becomes cumulative and social supports diminish, there is the general loneliness of having too few companions. Sometimes retirement and its aftermath awakens the relational emptiness that can characterize this life period, a state particularly common among men in late adulthood who were socialized to form relationships in and around work roles.
…If loneliness is common, one of the most evident forms of loneliness in older adulthood is that which overtakes a person after the death of a spouse or partner. In John Bowlby’s studies on attachment, he identified a phenomenon he termed “pining away,” the intense yearning after the loss of an intimate relationship…The specificity of spousal loss cannot be ameliorated by adding other relationships such as friends or additional companions, as if the loneliness were generic That does not mean that a person suffering such a loss is not aided by support and friendship Older adults who have extensive social support suffer less from depression. Loneliness thus becomes one of the challenging staples of older adult life.
How might the loneliness of old age relate to vocation in this life phase? If we understand vocation not as a possession, something an individual “has,” but rather as an interaction with God’s purposes that takes place within a relational ecology in which one participates with others, then it seems possible to imagine loneliness in older adulthood evoking the community’s capacities to provide a web of relationships in which older adults can grieve well. In turn, older adults suffering losses in the midst of the community “teach us how to grow through losses instead of being defeated by them,” writes Paul J. Wadell in “The Call Goes On: Discipleship and Aging.”