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"In Sheehy’s most groundbreaking work since
Passages, Sex and the Seasoned
Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life, she
reports on the emergence of a new phenomenon
among Boomer women. Traveling across the
country Sheehy spoke with women from their
40s to their 90s about the about sex,
dating, new dreams, divorce, remarriage,
spiritual growth, and seeking ways to live
more passionately in the second half of
their lives."
Excerpted from
Gail Sheehy's website:
http://www.gailsheehy.com. |
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Excerpt from Sex and the Seasoned Woman:
Pursuing the Passionate Life, by Gail
Sheehy, Random House, 2006
The Dancing Dolls of Scottsdale
... If younger people lump all those over 70
into one indistinguishable, irrelevant, and
invisible pool, it’s because they haven’t
been exposed to contemporary senior centers
in the dance capital of America. Every
winter, thousands of women and men in their
fully seasoned years abandon the shut-in
months in the northern states to converge on
Phoenix and its environs. They come for the
same reason, best expressed by one of the
regulars at the Thursday dances, Essie
Brown, who was interviewed at Scottsdale
Senior Center on her 106th birthday. She had
outlived three husbands, but she had always
found a new dance partner. On this birthday
she was looking for another new one because
her last partner had just died.
“Does he have to be good-looking?” the
interviewer asked.
“No, honey, he just has to know
how to move his feet.”
“Why do you love to dance?”
“Because it keeps me alive.”
And indeed, she stayed alive to
the age of 108..."
In Sheehy's
book, Lynn Adler goes on to say:
"The older
people become, the more they are shunned by
society. We all like attention, women and
men; we don’t outgrow that. If it is hard to
get a compliment at sixty, it’s nearly
impossible at a hundred. It’s not easy to
make ourselves pretty every day; it takes a
lot of time, effort, and motivation. What is
it that gives some people that inner
motivation?”
Do you know?
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