Aging, Portals & Critical Nostalgia
+ the Beckhams, a book excerpt and podcast recs
Given where I am in my career and my life, and amid the current horrors in the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about aging, and how we learn over time to both resist and weather pain. I’m not talking about giving up hope or effort (or “looking away” as the current lexicon would have it), but about the hard internal work of learning what one’s body needs to keep going, to remain engaged, to stay.
Given that I have been thinking so much about aging, I was really glad to be included in this exploration of the midlife “portal” by
, which features some of my favorite writers, like and Tiffany Clarke Harrison. The comments are juicy. Andhas a great thread this week on what happens after 40.There’s also an excerpt of my book Touched Out up at Insider— a section that’s really about aging into a clearer view of the world and how it feels to move through it as a woman.
If you want to explore how to write about the many ways sexuality changes with motherhood, I’m teaching a one-day workshop this Sunday 10/29 at Write or Die. Later this week, I’ll share an essay on the topic. I also have a limited number of spots to work one-on-one with writers who might need some extra care next month. For help with a full manuscript, apply here.
Oh, and I wrote about The Golden Bachelor, which simply does not have enough crones!!
Speaking of aging, I love
and this essay by on rage, sobriety, and menopause blew me away.I taught a class on Memoir & Consent yesterday and it was wonderful and really moving at times, and I was thinking about how so many of my thoughts about writing about other people have changed with age— I want to protect some people more, some less. I also understand much better now the importance of protecting myself. As one student put it, it’s important to make sure we are consenting to ourselves in undertaking the hard work of writing memoir.