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Penney Peirce's avatar

I remember hiking with my Buddhist boyfriend once, and we strayed and got lost. I was a bit anxious, and he said, "You know what Gary Snyder said—'Off the trail but on the Path. . .'" and we continued, using some sort of gut intuitive sense and eventually found our way back to the car. ;-)

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Cristy De La Cruz's avatar

Hi Jenny,

I’ve noticed a lot of literature about aging is extremely biased by under-including women. Men’s career journeys are sometimes a stand-in for “universal” experiences. This is a chronic problem in clinical research (where I spent 11+ years), and I'm betting much of the sociological literature.

At the risk of writing too long a post here, my lived experience shows SO many women who go through rebirth or Renaissance experiences between age 40 and 52. Of course, that assumes generally good health and hormone balance, some financial resources and strong networks. Not accessible to all, I realize.

A wonderful podcast that highlights these stories is "The Shift with Sam Baker." I’ve only listened to about 5 episodes so far. It’s a great reminder to me that many of us are just getting started.*

***

There are certain parts of us that slow down as we age. Physically we don’t have as much bounce back from injuries as we had when we were younger. But when we keep feeding our minds, bodies, and souls with new experiences, and we don’t lose the courage to try new things that might make us feel foolish once in a while, we keep renewing our neural networks.

Statistical averages are only helpful if they are truly representative. Women aren’t just “men with slightly different hormones.” We haven’t had the access to media and publishing that men have had historically, so our stories are not shared as often. We have a set of behavioral and cultural differences in how we are socialized.

I wonder how many women were included Raymond Cattrell’s psychometrically derived theories on fluid and crystallized intelligence (from 1943). It’s amazing how much science about bodies has been considered legitimate, even framing women’s bodies as just a weaker “variation” of men. It's incorrect, and it's bad science.

One book in my queue which I can’t wait to read is Cat Bohannon’s Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Her recent conversation on this topic with Elise Loehnen (Pulling the Thread podcast) is something you might enjoy also.

You had early success with your first couple of books, Jenny. I believe you’re going to write a lot more of them and/or do many other brilliant things. While this contraction in your business may feel personal, I suspect we are witnessing a systemic reinvention in the way we work and live that lands differently for each of us.

*Footnote with personal story:

My grandmother started college in her 50’s while my Mom (youngest of her three kids) went to college. She LOVED it! She drank it in! Her autodidact intellectual potential (and many years of reading newspapers) finally was unleashed.

It helped that she said out loud one day to my grandfather: “I always wished I could go to college.” He stopped the car and drove to the admissions office immediately and told her to could find out what it would take. She had to get some loans, but she did it.

Grandma had a teaching career into her 60’s and went onto live until 101. Maybe she was an anomaly. But Grandpa frequently told her how grateful he was that he no longer had to count his money before going to the grocery store anymore after they had two incomes. Imagine if she’d kept that dream to herself…❤️

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