All of us at Women’s Voices for Change appreciate your support and send our best to you for the New Year.  We are very interested in your comments; we hope that many more of you will join us in 2009 with your voice, as we redefine not only The New Menopause, but the new world in which we are living.

We have increased our regular contributors this year, to include writers with expert knowledge about the economy, culture,  national social policies.  But we believe that every woman over forty can have a voice – one that can shape both the lives of our country’s policies, and certainly the way that women over 40 will be viewed during this prolonged economic crisis.

If history is any indication, often women do gain power for short periods of time: then when there is a crisis, social pressure and often public policy have moved us aside, so that the working men can have the jobs “to support families”.  This time, over 50 percent of families are headed by single women.  We run companies and families; we run marathons and foundations; we run countries. We are presidents of Ivy League colleges; we are journalists covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are humanitarians. In this country, we have women over 40 making a difference in politics and government: Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Rodham Clinton. This is not a group of women who will ever be invisible. This is a group of women who walk into a room and own it.

This time we come prepared with our powerful demographic to support our voice, our view.

So add us to your daily email in-box, and join in the conversation!  We are a non-profit blog that exists only with volunteer writers — women passionate about the creation of the real picture of who women over 40 really are. We have a vision and a mission that now seems even more important to women across America.  If we aren’t part of the conversation, we may once again, miss out when the music stops in this new and alarming game of economic musical chairs.

— Patricia Yarberry Allen, Publisher, Women’s Voices for Change

When I think of this
past year, the same song keeps pushing through my head. Not yes we can, not it’s the end of the world as we know it. Just  lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip
it’s been! (I’m a dyed-in-the-wool East Coaster, but I did spend ten years in Northern California in what I now think of as my dancing years. Thus the Jerry Garcia.)

For every step of 2008, WVFC has been singing. I’m grateful for the Board — Dr. Pat for her counsel as well as her laughter-filled stories;  to Laura Sillerman and Faith Childs’ unsentimental and poetic voices; to Elizabeth Hemmerdinger’s reflections and, when we needed it most, her financial-vocabulary lessons; and for the voices from our invaluable medical board, Dr. Elizabeth Poyner and Dr. Cecilia Ford. (My companeras and contributing editors, Rachel Rawlings and Elizabeth Willse, have also given their hard work, editorial rigor and poets’ souls to the endeavour.)

Through Q&A interviews, we’ve also brought in experts like Deutschebank’s Karen Weaver, whose predictions about the mortgage crisis proved truer than even she wanted; historian Annette Gordon-Reed, and journalist Robin Gaby Fisher, who spent years chronicling the fire at Seton Hall University.  We also weighed in as the Presidential race tightened, reporting from the Conventions and live-blogging the third debate.

There’s really no other site like us out there, with our particular blend of culture, politics, health and personal testimony.That blend also comes from our longtime contributors, from Agnes Krup to Judy Orlando, and from our new columnists — Tamar in New Jersey, Beth reporting from New Orleans, we can’t wait for more! — and the other new voices:   Karin Zeitvogel’s report from Jordan, Alexsandra Stewart on the West Coast real estate wars, Julia Kay’s narrative of growing older with her art.  And our comments section has been slowly blooming, most recently around Dr. Pat’s family narratives, Dr. Ford’s series on grief and Kay’s visual-verbal feast.  (Welcome and c’mon back, Janet Wendy Spiegel, Nicole Browning, Elaine Williams,  Nina Paley, Alina Ever!) Next year, I hope to start sharing the comments in blogs of their own, because each reflection illuminates the others.If you want to do more than comment, please write me: your voice is that important.

See you in 2009. We can make it ours.

Chris Lombardi, Editor