Women’s Survival Guide is a newsletter about women’s experiences in midlife.
Are you over 50 or just about? Curious about what lies ahead? What to do with yourself? Where you left your glasses? Then, let’s be friends!
I can’t find your glasses for you but I can introduce you to lots of women your age who are trying new things in midlife. We can also talk about all of the wild and wooly things that happen to us: physical changes, mental changes, retiring, empty nest, parent elder care, keeping up appearances, good reads, and of course, a lot of humor!
Here at Women’s Survival Guide we have a lot of friends just like you and together we can find our comfort zones in the “now-what?!” time of life!
Come along! We need each other.
Start HERE by answering the Maven5Q (see below) and send to me!
But wait! There is more!! Keep scrolling…
What you can expect here:
I post every Sunday and have since December 15th, 2020.
Relatable Personal Humor Essays:
”Now, what was I doing?” Is this a common refrain for you? It is for me. I say it out loud. I’m hoping someone can tell me what the hell I was actually doing! I like to write about the funny parts of my midlife experiences. I think you will find them relatable! For instance:
Is your home still recovering from covid?
Do your kids come home from college or their nifty new jobs (and tiny apartments) and turn your orderly home into a 1970s bus station? I do a series called “The Crapping” (up of your home).
Do you miss your estrogen?
My humor essays talk about lots of stuff like that.
I relate to this famous SNL sketch: Back Home Ballers
Here are a few of my Personal Essays to give you an idea…
Or, I may write about nothing in particular, just stream of midlife consciousness: A Couple of Rants About Nothing, Really. That was a good one! Or sweet reflections like, Happy Mother’s Day!
Maven Interviews:
Starting something new after 50!
I interview women who are really into something they started after 50. These women have decided to take a risk and try something new. I love to hear their stories and I hope you will too! See Cai Cai Fritzinger’s clip below!
Maven Interview examples:
The interviews are both in video and written form with lots of links! Every interviewee is asked my 5 Maven Questions and they provide their favorite recipe.
The Maven Questionnaire (Maven5Q):
This is new to WSG! I ask five questions of a reader, a friend, a stranger. The same five questions and here they are:
What is the most surprising part of being in this stage of life?
What’s one new thing you’re trying to embrace in mid-life?
If you could give yourself a piece of advice 20 years ago, what would it be and why?
What’s something that our generation had access to that you’d like to bring back?
If the next 20 years of your life had a theme, what would it be and why?
Want to be a published author? Take a swing at those questions and send them to me… womenssurvivalguide@gmail.com
One Woman’s Journey:
These interviews can be anonymous, like this one on cancer, or personal, like Karen Fabri’s Journey to Sobriety.
Zoom Hangouts!
That’s right! WSG online, in person with fellow WSG readers! It’s a blast! You never know what we will talk about, but everyone has a smile on their face from beginning to end. The zooms will restart soon! I send out an email the week before.
Video Interviews and Podcasts!
Most of my interviews for the past year and going forward are accompanied by a Zoom video lovingly transformed into a fun viewing experience on YouTube and embedded into the e-mail and online posts. Here is a link to the Women’s Survival Guide YouTube channel. And Here are the Podcasts so you can listen to joyful banter anywhere, anytime. Fun!
Be a Part of Our Community!
Subscribers:
We are nothing without each other. I am learning how to better use the ever-evolving Substack tools to create a happy and informative cadre of lovelies! Comment, post, question, use the Notes tool in the Substack app. It’s great!
Premium Squad!
For $5 a month or $60 a year Premium subscribers are treated to monthly surprises that only they can see. They also get my undying love and gratitude for supporting my work.
About me:
I live in Boston with my husband, dog Gidget and a daughter’s cat, 7. We have three daughters who are semi-launched, meaning, in college and newly graduated. I miss them, and I miss our predictable life together, which we shared for 20 years under one roof. But, I am suddenly full of creative energy to do and to make and to go. It is an interesting time in life!
I am a painter and have my MFA from The Museum School/Tufts and a studio in the SOWA arts district in Boston (450 Harrison Ave if you’re around for a first Friday!). Here is my Instagram. I love to cook, garden, and play sports and Mahjong. I adore British humor and Japanese and Irish fiction writers, Agatha Christie and strangely, I am addicted to the Harry Potter series.
Things that I love:
I love to paint. My mom is a painter, so was my Dad’s mom, my husband and his mom are also painters. For me, painting was something that happened as a way to fill time. I made paintings for holiday presents when I was in my early twenties. Eventually, I started taking night classes at the Boston Architectural College and then at the Museum School which led me to apply for my MFA from there when my three kids were in lower school. It was a three year program, full time and hard. But, I love to paint and have a studio in a building in Boston called SOWA and sell through galleries and my studio. Here is my Instagram.
I love to write. I have kept a journal since second grade. I think it was a way for me to try to relate to what was happening around me. Writing is its own meditation, an evening practice that puts everything in its place. Journals aren’t necessarily for figuring out the truth, but finding what means what.
Women’s Survival Guide has been both a journal and an experiment. What is this thing we are calling midlife? It’s a lot to unpack and I never am at a loss for what to write next or finding an interview. That says something.
I love to cook, but I don’t love to bake for two reasons: 1. I would eat everything I baked and 2. because you have to follow strict rules for baking and I don’t like to do that.
I love to move. I need to move or my body hurts, I don’t sleep and can’t think: running (not very far but in all weather but not that often), yoga, tennis, golf, skiing, cross country skiing, hiking, walking.
I love to garden. I have been in my garden club for over twenty years and chair of the Horticulture Committee. It took me a while to get into the role, but now I am in love with cultivating native species seeds (I take my summer seed babies all over with me so they don’t die in their containers) and encouraging others to, as well.
I love to make rock gardens and then paint them. The process of rebuilding a garden checks the “move your body” box and painting the garden through paint for a meditative experience.
I love to decorate: For eight years I had a decorating business. Lately, I have started to miss it as I slowly refresh my own home post Covid and kids leaving. I like the “high/low” style of decorating. I can spend on some expensive fabrics, but I have long gone with my mom to the fabric mills or local wholesale fabric stores to see what I can get done for less.
I love to be with my family: My girls are at a really fun age. So, hang in there with your teens, if you have them, the twenties are coming! At my age my grandmother had a twelve year old grandchild. Can you imagine? We live differently now and we treat this period of life with more potential than people used to.
Entering midlife is like beginning a new adulthood…
Five years ago, I was 52. I had three kids at home, and it was COVID. Now I have one kid in college, two out and an empty nest. My body seems to have its own agenda. My friends are scattering. People are taking up bridge and Mahjong. This has been a big five years of change.
Entering midlife is like beginning a new adulthood. It’s exciting but, let’s be honest, change is hard. There are moments when we miss what was. Like, what was I doing? What was I saying? What? But you’re not alone! Here I am, and here we go!!
xo
Kim
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