Dearest:      Power Surge welcomes back Letty Cottin
                Pogrebin--author, lecturer, media personality.
                Letty's ninth and newest book is called,
                GETTING OVER GETTING OLDER.
                 The book deals with the issues women face past 
                forty.  Letty also addresses the ways in which 
                menopause impacts our lives.  This book is for 
                and about US! 
                Letty was also the co-founder of MS Magazine,
                and remains a contributing editor and columnist,
                as well as contributing to a whole host of other 
                national publications.  Letty won an Emmy       
                award for co-producing "Free To Be You And 
                Me" with Marlo Thomas.  Letty will participate 
                in a question and answer session with us tonight 
                about our concerns with regard to getting over 
                getting older :).

Dearest:      Let's all give Letty a very warm and gracious
welcome to Power Surge. Letty, how is your book doing? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Very well, thanks.  It has gone into a second 
printing and it was on the San Francisco Chronicle's best seller 
list for a couple of weeks.  Happily, people seem to like it.


PZukow: How can we acquire this book? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        The book is available at any bookstore.  I know 
that Barnes and Noble has it in stock all over the country.  It is 
in women's bookstores too.


Sherbaker:      I meant to say that I am not holding onto my 
youth, just a raving individualist. Are there a lot of women like 
me, do you think. I refuse to believe in age labels.


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Age labels are coercive, I agree, but we also must 
acknowledge that the culture views us differently as we age no 
matter how we view ourselves.  That's the reason to keep 
organizing against ageism.


Lynscho:        The title may be self-explanatory, but I'd like to 
hear a little about the book.


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        GETTING OVER GETTING OLDER is a very 
personal rumination on all aspects of aging.  I started it when I 
was 49 and miserable. I'd been young for so long that I had 
gotten used to it.  Then suddenly I realized I have less time left 
than I've already lived.  It freaked me out.  I realized how much 
more important time is than aging.  I reframed the whole 
experience around that epiphany.  The book covers everything 
from existential angst, sex, dieting and body blues to 
relationships, work, you name it. 
Postrain:       I have just realized my view of self has changed. 
I'm feeling less "feminine."  Is this the norm? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        The question is,  "What is femininity?"  We've 
allowed that word to bully us into behavior that is not 
necessarily true to ourselves.  Femininity is as femininity does.  
Try to define it and you'll see how absurd it is. I think the real 
question is, have you realized your dreams.  How far away from 
your fully realized self are you?  How much time might you 
have left in which to become your best self?  That's what 
matters.  Femininity is meaningless.  I hope that no one out there 
is equating femininity with reproductive capacity.  Are you? 


LynnCSE:        Have you heard that ageism is a socially 
transmitted disease? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Yes, it's an apt axiom.  Ageism is a disease that
we can cure by defying it. 


Sherbaker:      I think it's so important to have older role models 
who are free, not caught up in ageism.  My mom, 75, drives me 
nuts.  She has four different careers, loves life, and men find her 
still attractive, which is weird to me on some level. I have 
always had older and younger friends. 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Regarding your feisty mom, Sherbaker, consider 
yourself lucky.  I'd say there is no better predictor of one's 
attitude toward aging that having had a stellar role model, 
someone who makes it unthreatening to grow older, someone
who is living life exactly as she wishes. 


NitaFar:        There are so many diets and changing concepts 
about what and how we should eat.  What is your point of view 
on what is the best way for us to eat? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        I'm really a newcomer to nutrition and healthy 
eating, so I'm not sure I'm one to advise.   For most of my life, I 
never had to worry about gaining weight, but when my 
metabolism changed at age 49, I suddenly had a weight problem 
I gained 17 pounds in 3 years and I felt like a stranger in my 
own skin.  In my book, I write about my need to learn about 
healthy foods from ground zero.  I'm now pretty well back to my 
old weight and wedded to a low fat regime, but I'm not rigid. To 
each her own.  


Postrain:       I am 50 and I have three grandchildren.  I find 
myself saying, "I started young."  How and I accept this better?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        I envy you!  I am going to become a grandmother 
for the first time this spring.  It's a shame that the word 
grandmother carries the connotation of being old or being a has-
been or worse yet--asexual.  I hear that being a grandmother is 
one of the greatest experiences one can have.  Someone once 
said,  "If I knew grandchildren were so much fun, I'd have had 
them first."


WLVJean:        I enjoyed the last half of your book, but I have to 
admit the first part depressed me with its emphasis on death . 
Did you really feel that way when you started this? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        I had good reason to focus on death.  My mother 
died when I was 15 and she was 53.  That experience tends to 
point up the evanescence of life; and in my case it made me 
highly conscious of the 50's as the decade in which my mother's
life ended.  The interesting thing for me has been the process of 
converting my awareness of death into a cherishing of life.  
Without acknowledging mortality, we cheat ourselves of the 
sweetness of time, the preciousness of the present,  the wonders
of the ordinary.  I truly believe that our culture, which is in 
denial about mortality, has made us into the age-obsessed 
women many of us are.  We deceive ourselves that we can 
conquer age, when what we really want to conquer is death.  So, 
I recommend that everyone try imagining her own death.  You'll 
realize that what you really fear is not dying but suffering; not 
being dead but rather not being here any more.


SGETT:  I am sitting here thinking about goals that I have 
never thought about before.  I was so busy for years as a single 
parent that I think I lost sight of goals for myself.  Maybe I'm 
ready to try something new.  Do you have any advice for me 
other than to read the book for ideas and insight?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        One of the great perks of mid-life is the luxury of 
focusing on the self after years of serving others.  The best I can 
tell you, besides, "read the book," is to take on at least one new 
thing a month.  Newness enhances mindfulness and we pay 
more attention to the unfamiliar.  When we are mindful, time 
slows down and we live in a different way.  Goals are often too 
remote.  New experiences plus goals would be my prescription. 
RCHCTH: What is it about turning 50 that is so hard to 
swallow? 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        For me, as I have said, it was getting closer to the 
age my mother died.  Also, it was approaching that fearsome 
number.  It is a  number that is conceptualized as the top of the 
hill, beyond which everything else is downhill from there.  I
couldn't bear crossing over into a territory in which people who 
make judgments about me that did not match my view of 
myself, or my sense of my own potential. 


LynnCSE:        Could you say something about the difference 
between the way men and women respond to old women.  I 
seem so invisible to men and women respond so well to me.  


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Perhaps the larger point is the different ways in 
which the men and women experience aging.  For a man, if he 
has money, power, and status, aging can be neutralized.  For a 
woman no amount of money, power or status can take the edge 
off the negative cast accruing to women over 50.  Just think of 
the average single or divorced heterosexual woman in her 50's.  
Does she have a pool of available men?  Hardly, but a similarly 
situated male who has anything going for him can date women, 
some 20 years younger, without raising an eyebrow.


WoodsWomn2:     I see some women becoming wonderful, 
wise crones and some turning into cranky old crows. Do you see 
any predominant characteristics that I could foster so as not
to fall into the latter category?



Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        In my book, I write about how important it is to 
me to observe older women and clarify for myself : (1) the kind 
of woman I don't want to be; and (2) the kind of older woman 
who is an inspiration.  Oddly enough, it's often easier to find the
negative examples.  These women are usually self-involved, 
complaining, uninterested in the world around themselves, and 
somehow disengaged.  The woman I want to be is vibrant, an 
activist for something she believes in and she is not obsessed 
with her looks. 



FY1001: In this mortality thing, I find myself feeling I 
learned the main lesson of this life and am hoping I have 
become the woman I want to be. I am anticipating the
step through the door to the next lesson.


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        I agree that anticipation and enthusiasm for the 
next challenge are keys to aging well. 


Dearest:      Letty, I realize it's only a word, but I have a 
problem with "crone." The connotations in my mind aren't 
pleasant.  What's with this politically correct business?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Many feminists have reclaimed the positive 
meaning of the word crone, meaning wise woman.  Your 
reaction is understandable because of the associations with hags, 
etc.  I admire those who are taking back the language and who 
have devised rituals that are called the crowning of the crone to 
symbolize their coming of age in the best sense.


Dearest:      Letty, for those of us just crossing the threshold, 
isn't it understandable that we'd be reluctant to refer to ourselves 
as crones?  I'm simply not ready.


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        It's kind of as if the Black is Beautiful movement 
of the 60's.  They changed the meaning of blackness. We have to 
change the meaning of age to make it strong and good. 

Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Dearest, do you admit your age publicly? 

Dearest:       Sure, most of the time.  I'm 32  :)


LynnCSE:        I like crone and think it reflects the PMZ Mead 
talks about.


DixiC:          Some older women lose interest in careers they 
once found exciting.  Is it time for a change, or good to focus 
inwardly?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Time for a change could be the by-word of mid-
life whether it is careers, a bad marriage, or in taking on a new 
academic challenge.  It's the healthiest way to recommit to the 
business of living; a way to say to yourself, I am not done 
becoming, that I am still in process.


PZukow: I live in Florida, the land of the retired.  The  
majority of older people seem to think age allows them to be 
rude and gives them certain privileges.  Can you have comment?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        That's the sort of behavior I was talking about 
earlier as a negative example of the woman I don't want to be.  I 
suppose it comes of feeling resentful that life has passed them 
by; as if the world owes them some freedom to be rude for 
having shortchanged them so much.  I would hope none of us 
will feel the need to strike back at others for our own 
disappointments.


KThomas600:     A career begins to be unexciting once it has been 
achieved. You question "why" and then "what next."


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Some wise person once said success is a moving 
target.  I think your reaction may be a way of keeping yourself 
motivated since your reach always must exceed your grasp.


Postrain:       I  made a "One new thing a month" sign and have 
hung it on my computer. Thank you for that! 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Also, one new friend a month 


KThomas600:     I think the "what next" is getting over  the 
sacrifices for one's career and deciding to make different 
decisions. 


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        The interesting thing about pursuing the new is 
this:  it approximates youth. It brings you back in touch with the 
thrill of discovery which characterized all of life when we were
young and doing everything for the first time.  The new causes 
us to be more mindful, to pay attention to the world, and  not 
take things for granted.  Newness is a gateway to the unseen and 
undiscovered part of ourselves. 


SGETT:  I have also posted a "something new every 
month" sign.  Reminders are needed, but where are some places 
to meet other women like us?  I work in a very small office.


Dearest:      This is a very nice place.


SGETT:  This is a very nice place with exceptionally nice 
(and well behaved) intelligent people!


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        Some places to meet other women that come to 
mind include political campaigns, adult education, bookstores, 
walking tours, and feminists' organizations. 


VAETJE: I see my elderly mother and many of my friends' 
mothers no longer able to live alone and having to give up many 
of the things that mean so much to them.  I see memory loss and
senility.  I can remember my mother saying, "Shoot me if I get 
like that."  Now she is.  I'm 53 and scared to death.


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        We are not our mothers and we are not doomed 
to repeat our mothers' lives.  Nor would they want us to.  


KThomas600:     We don't have to repeat our mother, but heredity 
is there.


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        To some degree, but heredity is not the only 
factor, but so much has to do with environmental and nutritional 
deprivation.  We will age differently.  


LdyJane886:     Either I am getting unsociable in my old age or 
just plain crabby! I enjoy being alone more. Is there something 
wrong with this?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        In GETTING OVER GETTING OLDER I write 
about my own romance with solitude.  This co-exists with my 
intense gratitude for my marriage, kids, and friendships.  I think 
it is normal to enjoy one's own company more as we settle into 
the truth about ourselves.  I've also discovered a new love for 
nature, and I used to be an incurable city kid.  I find I like fewer 
instruments:  trios not symphonies; piano concertos not the full 
orchestra.  It's all part of the distillation and simplification 
process that is a by-product of aging. 


Dearest:      I've never enjoyed silence as much as I do at this 
point in my life, Letty.


FBriggs113:     How can we get our women friends motivated to 
try the new?  Is motivation transferable?


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        I think it is, FB.  If you share your enthusiasm 
with your friends, drag them along, dare them to try something 
they've never done before--even something as simple as eating 
something unfamiliar--or walking to work via an unfamiliar 
route, they may become motivated.


WLVJean:        I really enjoyed reading about your long marriage 
It makes me glad to hear that there are good relationships 
possible as one gets older, me being single and all .


Letty Cottin Pogrebin:        I know many happy, single women my age. I 
have to sign off now. 


Dearest:      Letty,  thanks SO much for spending this time
                answering our questions about GETTING OVER
                GETTING OLDER and the issues endemic to
                middle age. This has been so wonderfully        
                enlightening and we're so pleased you joined us 
                again tonight in Power Surge!
                We hope you'll come back again very soon!  
 

Letty Cottin Pogrebin:      Thanks to everyone for joining this conversation.  I 
hope you all get a chance to sample my book,  GETTING
OVER GETTING OLDER, and let me know by e-mail how you 
like it. 



Disclaimer:  Every guest in Power Surge is a highly respected professional whose
opinions are his/her own. An appearance in Power Surge does not constitute an 
endorsement of a guest's views.

None of these transcripts may be reprinted or reproduced without 
the express permission of Power Surge™ and the respective guest.

Read other transcripts by returning to the Library.


Dearest
aka Alice Stamm
Power Surge
Founder, Facilitator, Host


Copyright©1994-2009 by Power Surge.  All Rights Reserved.