5 great tips for turning 55

Aging, especially for women, brings challenges. But also rewards. Here are five great tips for enjoying life after 55.

1) Your children should not only be cooking for themselves, but also, occasionally, for you.

2)  You will almost always sleep better and wake up feeling brighter if you eat little or nothing after 6pm

3)  If you do not know how to blow dry your hair attractively, now is a good time to learn.

4)  Unless you work in a dry cleaner, laundry is not your job. It is time to let family members in on the secret.

5)  If you are hoping for a promotion at work, don't wait any longer to speak to the the boss about it.

Have tips you want to share? Add them to the comments...


about the author:
Geena Heart's Lifehacks for Over Fifty will be released in 2017.

Cutting the umbilical

We long for our children’s love and approval just as they long for ours.

But now: they are ascendant, we fading; 

Our stars passing

In the heavens before that long dark night. 

And just as our new selves are struggling to be born, their new selves are struggling to be born. 

We have always defined ourselves in opposition to each other and none more than that part of ourselves than grows outside us, independent and separate from ourselves. 

They are our light. If we shine, it is in their caressing luminescence. 

(As they shine in ours.)

The umbilical. It runs both ways: from us to them and them to us. 

For each of us to be free, each of us must be free.

- J. Chu (1932)

Yearning to be Free at 50

Dance like no one’s watching, Brene Brown advises, sing! Who cares what others think?

Most of us want to take off our “game face” and let our true selves emerge. Never is this more true than in middle age when we are rediscovering who we are, what we love, our passions, our interests, our beliefs, our long held, subterranean goals.

This yearning to be free grow stronger after the death of a beloved parent, one we wanted to impress.  Or the departure of our children, to lead their own lives.

They are free. Why shouldn't we be free too? Why shouldn't we lead the life we want? Be who we want? Act how we want?

And yet something holds us back.