Customer Reviews

Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood

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If you charted your 20's, 30's and 40's with Gail Sheehy's "Passages" and found nothing to help you through the next part of your life except books on menopause and others telling you that gray hair and an expanding waistline are better than youth and beauty, you'll love this realistic, empathetic and, yes, inspiring book! Like the journalist she is, Levine has interviewed hundreds of women, and many scientists and other experts, to understand what really happens to us, psychologically as well as medically, as we navigate these years. She makes a good case for her thesis, which is that not only our bodies are changing - our brains, needs and priorities are, too. The "fertile void" is a brilliant and spot-on description of the chaos and confusion of second adulthood that plunges every woman who's defined herself up to now by her obligations to others or the demands of her career (and often both) into a sometimes painful reexamination of her life - what's in it that we treasure, what's missing that we need or want, what possibilities still exist for making a difference in the world as well as in our own lives, and where the energy will come from for for realizing them. My book club just started reading it, and we've been burning up the phone wires to discuss it even before our next meeting. A must-read for every woman who reaches a landmark birthday still wondering, "What am I going to be when I grow up?"

This is one of the most inspiring books I've read in a long time. For those of us in our 50s and 60s, there's more ahead than retirement and taking care of aging parents, aging men, and growing grandchildren. Levine gives us stories of regular women who have tackled brand new careers, learned skills they always wanted to learn but never had time for, renegotiated their marriages and renewed their love-lives. And she also gives us scientific research that shows women's brains have a growth spurt in the 50s that renews our strength and our intellectual curiosity. Keep this book by your bedside and read it every night and your morning will be brighter.

I was very much looking forward to reading this. I'm approaching my 40th birthday, and wanted to hear how others had dealt with this transition. In all fairness, Ms. Braun does interview many women on their transitions. However, the language is superificial, sometimes to the point of being annoyingly "cutesy". For example her term "Fertile Void" which is defined once, is used as a critical thread throughout the work, as though it's a sociological phenomena. If the book had been written about that term specifically, maybe things could have been interesting.
OK, there is a period of time where one doesn't know which path to take, but I hate labels, especially cute ones, especially when applied to grown-up women facing serious challenges. I need to lead myself into new terrain, and find my own voice, and I don't need cheerleading and labels. I found the "rah-rah" attitude really lame.
Worse still, the term "F-You Fifties"...I'm sorry, but I got over that language a long, long time ago. I don't think it's amusing.
One of the "success stories" was from a woman who, when she lights up her joints (marijuana) today, has much more pleasant trips. Frankly I felt offended and patronized, and I am no prude...I grew up on Ms. magazine, I went to a Seven Sister school, and I'm from NYC.
I was truly expecting More, as in that wonderful magazine for which Ms. Braun works...

This book is at the top of my list as a must-read for all of my coaching clients trying to negotiate the slippery slope of mid-life transition. For the first time, we learn not only that we are different at mid-life and exactly HOW we are different. Inventing the Rest of Our Lives is both reassuring and instructional.

I was attracted to this book because I was turning 50 and finding it unexpectedly disturbing. The book was interesting enough but not very useful. I didn't really find out anything I didn't already know - other than there were a lot more women out there who were going through, or had been through, a similar re-evaluation. So while it was vaguely comforting, it wasn't at all inspiring or particuarly helpful. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who hasn't had a traditional married-with-kids-plus-career lifestyle.

Very good read! Helpful information & thought provoking examples for women who are 50+. I bought several copies to give away to my friends.

I bought this book as I was anticipating my 50th b-day=It definitely resonated on many different levels-the book truly reflected my optimism about the future and I found it genuinely inspiring...I gave the book as a gift to 20 similarly aged women friends and their responses were also very postitive!-provoked much great discussion!

I have known about this book for sometime through my involvement with The Transition Network...Braun Levine has been a popular speaker for many TTN chapters...but avoided it, thinking it was "more of the same." Was I wrong.

From my perspective, in my sixites, moving from my mainstream life to what's next, this book caught my mood and made sense of it in developmental, rather than personal, terms. You know that nice feeling when a writer not only gets what you are feeling but speaks of it in a way you couldn't quite articulate and you find yourself saying YES...well I found myself saying YES so much I had to laugh. I LOVE this book and have already urged several friends to read it as well.
Suzanne Braun Levine is a good thinker, a good writer and a good teacher. I don't know her, but I'm guessing she is a good friend as well.

I noted a review that thought less of this book and dismissed Levine's term, "the fertile void." I also noted that the reviewer was turning 40---- a very different sort of transition. I didn't understand that "fertile void" until I found myself in it. Our mainstream years are, of course, full of transitions, but moving from middle age to that odd and still unnamed place that we are just now creating between middle age and old age brings different transition challenges that require new ways of seeing ourselves. This book is a surprisingly good guide for women in that developmental stage.

This is a well written and well thought out book that supports every woman who gets to mid-life wondering, "now what?" Good insights, positive ideas and inspiring conclusions.
I ordered many copies for my friends and family

One premise of this book, you are not who you were, only older, seems such a simple truth once you are aware of it. I only wish I had read this book at age fifty instead of age seventy. Fortunately, I have good health and energy and have quite a number of years left in which to make use of this new knowledge. It does, however, explain the phenomenon that enabled me to achieve what I did in my fifties and sixties.

In my fifties I was clearly in the Fertile Void -- trying desperately to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I had to make a living, that much was clear. Ms. Levine's description of the process -- and the discoveries are a process -- mirrored my own struggles. In my sixties I undertook two major creative projects that satisfied some lifelong interests. This book enabled me to see that my experience was part of a greater community and I was not alone.

The Fertile Void, according to Ms. Levine, is what women pass through at the beginning of our second adulthood -- a time rife with possibilities and it can be daunting. For me, it occurred post-divorce when I was being pushed back into the work world. There were decisions to be made and I might have made better, more interesting ones if I had the advantage of seeing the bigger picture at that time. The journey through the Fertile Void should not be hurried, although it is an uncomfortable time, a time of not knowing, of discovering. There is a second adolescence before the second adulthood is reached, and it's almost as painful as the first, only in different ways.

The journey is about rediscovering your passion -- which doesn't necessarily come in a blinding epiphany -- and facing your fears. It's knowing what you cannot change, and changing what you can.

The good news is that it isn't too late if this book comes into your life at a much later stage than age fifty -- second adulthood lasts to the very END and there's still much opportunity to benefit. I for one, am feeling a renewed energy and there's a new spring in my step as I work toward inventing the rest of my life. It's definitely a Must Read.

Jean Boggio, author of Stolen Fields: A Story of Eminent Domain and the Death of the American Dream