Books

Journalist Margaret Webb sets out to run a marathon at 50 and discovers a world of women athletes defying aging. Packed with science and inspiring stories proving fitness peaks are not behind us.

The science of how exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle choices can reverse the biological clock. A doctor and his patient make the compelling case that most of what we think of as aging is actually decay from disuse — and it is reversible.

Dr. Stacy Sims applies her female physiology expertise specifically to the menopausal transition, with training and nutrition protocols designed to maintain strength, power, and athletic performance through and beyond menopause.

Exercise physiologist Dr. Stacy Sims revolutionizes women’s sports nutrition and training with her mantra: women are not small men. Essential reading for any active woman wanting to train smarter through hormonal changes.

The follow-up to WomanCode, focusing on cycle syncing your diet, exercise, work, and relationships for optimal hormonal health. Particularly useful for women in perimenopause wanting to work with their fluctuating hormones.

Functional nutritionist Alisa Vitti explains the female endocrine system and offers a plan for balancing hormones through food, lifestyle, and cycle syncing. Valuable for perimenopause.

Dr. Mary Claire Haver’s anti-inflammatory nutrition plan designed specifically for menopausal women, addressing the hormonal drivers of midlife weight gain that conventional diets ignore.

A registered dietitian and a nutrition counselor lay out an evidence-based eating plan to manage menopause symptoms, reduce disease risk, and maintain a healthy weight during and after the transition.

Dave Ramsey’s classic step-by-step plan for getting out of debt, building an emergency fund, and working toward financial freedom. Particularly relevant for women in midlife who are restarting financially after divorce, caregiving gaps, or job changes.

Practical, no-nonsense personal finance advice for automating savings, optimizing retirement accounts, and building wealth. The straightforward system works at any age and is especially useful for women who are starting or restarting their financial planning.

A step-by-step guide to financial success for women, covering values-based financial planning, investing basics, retirement accounts, and building lasting wealth — even starting later in life.

Suze Orman’s complete guide to retirement planning for those in the critical pre-retirement decade. Covers Social Security, Medicare, 401(k) strategies, and how to make your money last as long as you do.

Suze Orman addresses the financial challenges unique to women — pay gaps, caregiving breaks, longer lifespans — with a concrete action plan for retirement, savings, and financial independence.

Joan Price’s most recent guide to sex and intimacy after 60, covering solo sex, partnered sex, dating apps, communication, and the full landscape of older adult sexuality with warmth and expertise.

Dr. Christiane Northrup treats menopause as a powerful life transition, not a medical problem. Drawing on medicine, psychology, and holistic healing, she guides women through the physical and emotional landscape of the change.

A powerful corrective to decades of fear around hormone therapy. Presents the science showing estrogen is safe and beneficial for most women. Essential before any HRT decision.

Dr. Jen Gunter cuts through menopause misinformation with science, humor, and feminist fire. Tackles HRT, bone health, cardiovascular risk, and medical neglect of menopausal women.

Dr. Mary Claire Haver delivers a comprehensive, evidence-based guide to perimenopause and menopause — hormones, nutrition, sleep, strength training, and mental health.

Neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi reveals how menopause reshapes the brain and what women can do to protect their cognitive health. Groundbreaking and empowering.

Heyman is a New York psychiatrist who published this collection of her stories when she was 74. Not surprisingly given her profession, Heyman is a student of the human spirit, and her stories are most notable for the depth of the characters she develops. Her people are sexual even in the face of illness and with the specter of death in the wings. If you have ever had the good fortune to live in New York City, these characters will come to you like people you almost met. This story collection was well received (for example, Terry Gross interviewed the writer on NPR), and has helped to bring erotic writing by older women into public consciousness.

Our spiritual foremothers are the proper ladies of this California writing circle of the 1980s. The formal tone of these stories contrast beautifully with the tales of one-night stands, lovers who find each other after decades apart, and the bliss of married love as well. Just as in the Elderotica writing group that is still going strong in the Bay Area, the Ladies in this book use writing prompts to get their juices flowing, and they share some of their prompts here. As in my new book from North Atlantic Press, the Ladies’ Own Erotica encourages women of a certain age to come together in writing circles and share erotica and conversation.

Each of the women has a chance to tell her own story, and why she enjoyed the writing circle, in the “Kensington Ladies Revealed” chapter at the end of the book. There is something wonderful about coming together to write erotica, as these ladies discovered long ago.

You may remember Jean Shinoda Bolen‘s classic book, Goddesses in Everywoman, from back when we were young. This 1984 classic included goddesses for every occasion, including love and lust. Just as Erica Jong circled back to her classic Fear of Flying with the recent Fear of Dying, Bolen revisited her seminal work by publishing Goddesses in Older Women in 2001. I was sure this had to be the place to find erotic goddesses for women after midlife. After all, Bolen’s clear favorite in the original book was Aphrodite. In the 1984 book, Bolen grouped goddesses into three categories: the “virgin goddesses” (workaholic Artemis, nerdy Athena), who represent not literal virginity but rather women’s capacity for independent thought and action; the “vulnerable goddesses” (Betty Crocker, Hera, ever-pregnant Demeter); and the one and only Aphrodite in the category of “transformative goddess,” she who loves with joyful eroticism and who, not coincidentally, is the goddess of creativity.

I was excited to open my new copy. Would I find a particular goddess for sexy ripe women? And there she was, the goddess we have known all along, Aphrodite, or Venus, the goddess of love and sex. Bolen describes three ways that Aphrodite can manifest in older women. The first is through creativity. The second is through sensuality tempered by wisdom: The sensual joy we feel in massage, in delicious food, as well as in sexual love.

Bolen recognizes that as we age, we can develop the pansexual side of our natures, falling in love with trees, kittens, and our favorite beach. And, lastly, Bolen talks about late-blooming Aphrodite, the erotic love we can feel later in life for our long-term partner or for someone new, whether a man our own age, a younger man, or a woman. So I did not find a particular goddess in Bolen’s book who represents sexuality in our wisdom years. But come to think of it, Venus’ oldest temple in Rome dates back to 300 BC, while the story of Aphrodite goes back to the 12th century BC.

The goddess we have known all our lives, she of love and lust, of freely chosen sexuality, is herself a crone.

This is an anthology of works performed at the (now sadly defunct) Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, California, at readings of erotica by women over fifty. The Dirty Old Women reading series pushes San Francisco Bay Area culture in the direction of celebrating sexuality after menopause. This volume is a varied collection from the readings, with stories, book excerpts, and poetry.

Full disclosure: My short story, “Terraforming,” is included in this collection. Many of the other stories were written by friends, so naturally I am fond of this volume for personal reasons as well as the fun read it undoubtedly is. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or if you travel there, check out the Dirty Old Women reading schedule (usually the 4th Tuesday of the month).

This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism by the dynamic Ashton Applewhite is a call to action on many fronts, beginning in our minds. As Ashton writes, “This book is a call to wake up to the ageism in and around us, embrace a more nuanced and accurate view of growing older, cheer up, and push back.
What ideas about aging have each of us internalized without even realizing it? How do they play out across our lives, from office to bedroom, in muscle and memory?
What can we do, individually and collectively, to catalyze a radical age movement to make it happen?
Let’s find out.”

I first learned about anti-ageism activist Ashton Applewhite through her terrific TED talk. She also led the team that developed Old School, a clearinghouse of anti-ageism resources.

The fact that she is out there doing good work, reminding us to include ourselves in the circle of those deserving equality, makes me happy and reminds me once again how important it is for older women to write our sexy stories.