“I wasn't sure I had something that someone would want to listen to," Grace Haggerty says, "but that fear subsided, and I decided that whether or not someone liked it or someone didn’t like it, I had to do this for myself."
She was the successful manager of a well-regarded restaurant. She was in her forties and had lost all her contacts. Still, she had to go back to the theater: “When you walk away from something you love, it doesn’t really go away. It simmers. It hides. It never lets you engage fully in what you’ve chosen to do. And then comes the lightning bolt.”
“I had a very joyful and fulfilling career as a writer—but after 25 or 30 years, it’s just time to try something new,” Susan Nanus says. Her goal was worthy and her journey toward it transformative: She says, “I am different than I was when I started. More spiritual, certainly.”
Many of us are stuck in situations that do not tap into either our essential selves or our core values, and reversing that can be not just invigorating and life-enhancing, but life-saving.
Women are now bombarded about the symptoms of menopause and the options for its management. Here is a lesson plan for a summer of reinvention, based on goals, age, current lifestyle, health issues, and interest in managing the symptoms of the often decade-long menopausal transition in a positive way.
Ten years later, I am pleased to report that our organization, WVFC, is still here. This year we will embark on a mentoring initiative to show women on the cusp of the second half of life that their best decades are ahead of them. And today, we are honoring Christy Turlington Burns at our annual luncheon in New York. She has been chosen as our 2015 Champion for Change, an award given to women who have made a difference.
“I have a great TEDWorthy idea that has guided me through my socially hapless life: Just show up and great things will happen."