This week Jackie of Aging Backwards is hosting Fashion Flash. Jackie also writes for The Examiner and Style Goes Strong covering health, nutrition and aging providing useful info in an upbeat voice. She is one of those people who can spot an idea and find a practical application. We can go to the same event, hear the same presentation and she will find a nugget of information that went right past me. No wonder the PR chicks are so happy so see Miss Jackie show up at an event.
Both Jackie and I worked during our “Mommy” years, but I’ve had close friends who had focused their lives and energies on their children. When the last child went off to college they struggled with anxiety and depression and it was hard for them to enjoy their new stage of life. Beyond the Mommy Years is a great resouce for all moms who need to relearn their lives. Author Carin Rubenstein, PhD is uniquely qualified to write this book. A social psychologist and mother of two, she inteviewed over 1000 women on their views, challenges and solutions to reinventing the post- parenting years.
For many women their lives were centered around playground community, sports and even
PTA events. When the last child is deposited in a college dorm room, moms need not only to restructure their days, they need to find a new identidy. Beyond the Mommy Years offers dozens of suggestions on finding new meaningful paths include going back to school, starting a new career and and making new relationships. Its a cruel coincidence that mommy years often end at the start of menopause. This positive book offers special advice and support for the physical and emotional tsunami that accompany “The Change”.
As any Mom of a college grad will tell you, parenting doesn’t end, but evolves when a child leaves home. Rather than packing lunches and running to gymnastic practice, I now get to take an ecstatic 18 month old granddaughter to a doggie run and then go out to a wine bar with my editor. If you wait long enough, you can have it all.
This is why some women need to build new communities because their old ones drift apart when their children do. And there needs to be a special community for mothers of college graduates who return home because they can’t find a job…a very special community!! Thanks.
Absolutely! And did you know there is a term for children who return home because of unemployment– Its called Bounce Back and I tried to interest editors in a book project on the subject– but I think a supportive community would be far more helpful than a book.