A Glorious Freedom Read online

  I ended up securing my dream job as the outdoor recreation manager for the Chesterfield County Parks and Recreation after coming home empty-handed from my cross-country job search. I worked twelve different jobs that year to support my family, while still hoping to find a local outdoors job.

  Lisa: You are a longtime outdoors enthusiast, and you refer to yourself as “The Aging Adventurer.” How did adventuring start for you and why?

  Emily: I did a few bike trips while in college and always played tennis and baseball as a kid. We ice skated on the frozen streets of Rochester, New York. But I really became more of an adventurer in my 40s—I took a class in backpacking for women over 40 and joined the bike club to supplement my life as a single parent. I made this career change because the outdoors was my passion, and since I would probably have to work for the rest of my life, I wanted to work at something that I believed strongly in and felt passionate about.

  Lisa: What do you do to take care of yourself and stay in shape between long-distance hikes or bike tours?

  Emily: I take care of myself by aiming to be active five days of the week. I walk for an hour before breakfast, play doubles twice a week with a 55-plus group, bike on Saturdays with the club (25 miles), and in the summer, I swim almost daily in the great Olympic pool where I live. I also do some backpacking, but that is getting harder, and, of course, I hike.

  Lisa: How has the experience of being out in the wild changed with age?

  Emily: I find that I am happiest when I am out in nature. It is where I go for comfort. Being active and in nature keeps me going. That hasn’t changed with age, but it is harder to find pals my pace to do these things with, so often I do them by myself. Of course, I am a lot slower at them and have given up cross-country skiing due to balance problems, and loaded touring (where you carry everything on your bike) is just too hard now.

  Lisa: You’re now the author of two books, a public speaker, and you even run workshops focused on creative aging. Why is creative aging important for you?

  Emily: I speak about creative aging, my favorite topic, because we now have twenty to thirty years of healthy living after leaving the workforce, and I want to inspire people to make the most of this time—to ignore the ageism in our culture and just go out there and live their dreams. My favorite topic to speak on is “Redefining Old Age for the Twenty-First Century.”

  Lisa: What advice would you give to older women who are considering pursuing a passion, exploring something new, or changing their life in a significant way and might feel they are “over the hill” already or nervous to do something new?

  Emily: My advice to older woman is to take risks, try new things, and don’t let failures get you down. Learn from them and then move on. This is also my main message in my recent book, A Cotton Rat for Breakfast: Adventures in Midlife and Beyond. You’re not over the hill. You have twenty or more good years to go for the things you put off in the busy middle years!

  Lisa: What’s next on your horizon?

  Emily: I leave June 13 to join a bike tour on the 240-mile Katy Trail in Missouri. I am calling it my last hurrah, but friends tell me it probably won’t be. It is a 2,000-mile car trip to get there, and I will camp at nice parks, swim, and visit friends along the way. And I plan to stay afterward for a couple of days and do a canoe trip on the river and maybe some more biking before coming home. In April, my son and I did a seven-day bike tour in Florida. We always do a Florida tour each spring.

  became the highest-ranked female judo master in the world at the age of 98, after enduring decades of discrimination from the male-dominated Kodokan.

  Born in Tokyo in 1913, she was the granddaughter of Hachinosuke Fukuda, a samurai and master of jujitsu. While her Japanese upbringing was conventional at the time—spent practicing flower arranging and calligraphy—her life changed at 21 when Jigoro Kano, founder of judo and one of her grandfather’s former students, invited Keiko to train with him at his martial arts center, also known as a dojo. Standing less than 5 feet tall, Keiko was an unlikely master.

  Judo is related to jujitsu, involving a combination of holding and throwing techniques, with strength and balance. Despite her physique, Keiko excelled. She was so dedicated that she refused an arranged marriage for fear of having to quit the sport, and she became an instructor in 1937. Jigoro Kano died in 1938, and Keiko developed an expertise in a gentler form of judo called judo kata. At the age of 40, she joined a select group of women as a fifth-degree black belt, also known as fifth dan, and moved to the United States, where she taught for several years. She then returned to Tokyo, demonstrating women’s judo at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

  In 1966, she relocated to the United States and later became an American citizen. After twenty years of the Kodokan refusing her advancement, a petition was held, and in 1973, 60-year-old Keiko became the first woman to hold the rank of sixth dan. A year later, she founded the Keiko Fukuda Joshi Judo Camp, the first women’s judo training camp, and in the late 1980s she established her own women’s tournament. For more than forty years, she taught women from all over California’s Bay Area at her dojo in San Francisco.

  She remained a sixth dan for more than thirty years, until the Kodokan granted her ninth dan, the second-highest ranking possible, in 2006 at age 93. This remains the highest ranking a woman has ever achieved. Keiko was 98 when the U.S. Judo Federation promoted her to tenth dan. The Japanese government recognized her with the “Order of the Sacred Treasure” for her contribution to the sport. Keiko continued to teach judo at her dojo until her death at the age of 99.

  ROARING OVER THE TIPTOE

  by

  I am writing these words five weeks after running the Boston Marathon, my second time running 26.2 miles. The first time I ran a marathon I was 36 years old and crossed the finish line with broken bones and emotional bruises so profound that they would lead to the end of my ten-year marriage. This time I walked away from the finish line at 40 years old, content, an effortless and knowing grin on my face, back to a hotel room I was sharing with no one.

  The journey between the first and second marathons is one I did not anticipate, but it would change the entire fabric of my life and how I feel about being a woman in an age group that is so frequently written off. Little did I know that the difference between 39 and 40 is that 39 is considered “older.” Forty? Forty is considered “old.”

  Anyone who is vaguely familiar with the trajectory of my career would point to a younger version of me, to the year that my second daughter was born, and say, “There. That’s when she peaked.” I was 34 years young, had just finished a tour for my New York Times bestselling book about the postpartum depression I’d experienced with my first daughter, and was running a wildly successful blog that had pioneered an industry of online voices making money through storytelling via ad networks. I was also very much in love with my new infant and the chance she had given me to experience early motherhood in a way that I had not had the first time around because of my depression. On paper, that year looks exactly as I had always imagined it would look when I became successful, the lines and curves of it matching perfectly with the teenage illustration I’d carefully crafted and referenced in my 20s and early 30s.

  But two years later while training for that first marathon, while spending hours alone on sidewalks and trails jostling my body (literally and metaphorically) into something new and strange and complicated, I reached a level of self-awareness that had unknowingly eluded me throughout my successes. I thought I had been present and careful with the choices I’d made as a mother and business owner, but what came to the surface during all those miles spent alone was I am not this.

  I am not this.

  This was not only the commodity that I had become as the sole source of income for my family, but it was also the passionless partner and disengaged friend I’d transformed into because of what I thought it meant to be a married woman with a family. This was modeled for me by my mother, who had suppressed her true self and all her inte
rests my entire childhood in sacrifice to my father and a religious notion that a woman has a specific place in the household. And even though I was the primary breadwinner in my family, I had for years been censoring and sanitizing and punishing my true self because the father of my children did not approve of the wild-eyed woman he had originally fallen in love with.

  Fortunately, my mother also modeled for me the step I took next when I blew the whole thing up.

  I came home from that first marathon on crutches, broken outside and in, and when I asked for my separation shortly thereafter I knew that I could quite possibly be committing career suicide. I was “the mommy blogger,” she who had made a purported fortune writing about her happy family and marriage with a humorous irreverence that masked all of the very real, very damaging problems plaguing the everyday. Divorce was not supposed to be part of the storyline.

  But I could not continue to live what had become a lie, could not continue to tiptoe inside my home when I wanted instead to roar and break through walls. Not surprisingly, the next two years were the hardest, most agonizing years of my life. When my divorce played out publicly, like I knew it would (in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and even in my hometown newspaper), a portion of my audience chose sides. At the same time, my industry was rapidly fracturing, and readers began scattering to various corners of the Internet. What was once a business model focused entirely on authentic storytelling quickly turned into manufactured “stories” about products that brands wanted to sell with my own life as the backdrop.

  Masking my unhappiness while writing those posts brought me to the brink of another stay under neuropsychiatric supervision.

  There were moments during the darkness of my divorce when I thought back to the year of my second daughter’s birth and let nostalgia mislead me, if only to stop myself from bleeding out. But I’d always come back to the sound of my two feet, one after the other, carrying my body past mile 16, past mile 17, past mile 18. I could not unlearn what I had learned throughout those thousands of steps. The year of my second daughter’s birth was not “peace,” as nostalgia would have had me believe. It was one stretch of pavement on the way to it.

  I also frequently looked ahead to the end of the contract I had with my ad network, an event that would closely coincide with my 40th birthday. As freeing as the end of that agreement would be, I was much more terrified by what it meant. Was it the end of an era? Could I possibly transition what I had built over the previous fourteen years into something just as lucrative, especially when I didn’t have the young 25-year-old face to help propel it? Would people find out that I really had no idea what I was doing all along?

  How do I do this all alone?

  My mother didn’t start her career until after the age of 40, after she divorced my father and had finally embraced the notion that she should never be anything but all of herself. Over the course of twenty years she worked her way up from being a district sales manager in Avon (the most basic managerial role in the company) to becoming the regional sales director for the western United States. Here I was worried that it might be curtains for me at the same age my mother was when she was just breaking out her running shoes.

  “You need to build another boat” is what my life coach, Rachel, told me after our first meeting. I hired Rachel after I asked my mother to a one-on-one dinner in desperation, eager to hear what advice she would offer to what I saw as the washed-up, burned-out, and weary shell of who I once was. Her answer was not what I had expected.

  “You have a head start,” she told me.

  But wasn’t I at a dead end?

  “Hire one of those . . . life coaches? Is that what they call them?” she continued. “Find one you like and let them guide you. Darlin’, I didn’t even wade into the waters until after I was 40, and look at what you’ve done. You have so much more to do.”

  First of all, my mother is not the type of person who would normally suggest a life coach. I honestly thought she might tell me to go back to church and pray about it. Second, it was the first time someone had given me permission—or what I perceived to be permission—to be proud of what I had done, of what I had built. Because in my industry, you’re only as good as your last blog post.

  But that’s not true. I am not my last blog post. Look at what I have done.

  I am not this.

  I worked with Rachel for over eighteen months, and not only did she help me build another boat, but she also gave me permission. If she reads this she’ll shake her head and say, “Did I teach her nothing?!” Because I don’t need permission to give myself credit or to cut myself some slack or to take a break. Turns out those things are a lot easier to do when you get “old.”

  I was 39 years old at the 9-mile marker of a half marathon in Tanzania when I started to get the hang of it. I’d hit a wall in the 90-degree heat and could feel my body shutting down.

  “You get to walk, Heather” is what I told myself, something I had never before let myself do in a race. And so I walked. Others ran past me while I walked. I saw them disappear into the fog of the heat ahead, knowing their finishing time would be faster than mine. But not better. Just faster. Two very different measurements.

  How happy I was to have finished upright. I finished! I am this!

  In the few months leading up to the end of my contract with my ad network, my excitement around the transition and the significance of my 40th birthday grew. Because I had been scared for so long. Scared of disappointing my ex throughout our marriage, of disappointing my audience, scared of aging out of my industry, scared of losing my audience to talent far younger.

  I had been scared that I was only as good as my last blog post.

  Then I turned 40. I got “old.” The fear fell from my limbs like dead weight because for the first time in my life I realized I was living the fullness of all that is me. All of me. Success, I had come to realize, was not a book tour or a paycheck or an award-winning blog or an age. Success was finding myself. How glorious turning 40 turned out to be.

  Heather B. Armstrong is widely acknowledged to be the most popular “mommy blogger” in the world. Her website, dooce®, has twice been listed as one of the 25 Best Blogs in the World by Time magazine. Forbes listed dooce® as one of the Top 100 Websites for Women and named Heather one of the 30 Most Influential Women in Media. She is a New York Times bestselling author, with 1.5 million Twitter followers and an actively engaged audience.

  was a well-known New York magazine writer and editor. During the course of close to thirty years, she worked her way through the publishing ranks of more than six major publications—from transcriptionist at Mademoiselle to columnist at Glamour, and then as health and fitness director at both Self and More. During her career in publishing, she was a pioneer for the writing on women’s health that is now so abundant in modern media. And then, in 2007, at the age of 53, Stephanie left the publishing world behind and embarked on a new journey—entering medical school and pursuing a career as a doctor. Today, at age 60, Stephanie is in the midst of applying for residency positions and beginning her career as a medical doctor.

  Lisa: At the age of 53, you decided to apply to medical school and become a doctor. What was that moment like for you when you realized you needed to make a shift in your life?

  Stephanie: I was with my best friend from sixth grade. She lives in California and I live in New York, but she was on a business trip to New York and we went for a walk. As we walked through Central Park, she was telling me that her company brought in a life coach to meet with her team. The coach asked them, “If money was not a concern and failure was not a concern, what would you do with your life?” And my friend expressed that she was disappointed because she couldn’t come up with an answer. Then she turned to me and asked me, “Would you have had a good answer?” And I turned back to her and said, “Oh yes, of course, I’d quit my job and I’d go back to medical school and I’d become a doctor.”

  And we both just looked at each other. I said, �
��Oh my God, that’s what I have to do.” It was not premeditated. It was just this spontaneous expression of what I really wanted. And she said, “Yes, that’s what you have to do.” And I said, “Okay, okay.” What I didn’t say immediately was, “Yes, you’re right! I’m going to go home and apply to medical schools today!” I was thinking, Whoa, this is intense. I have to go home and think about this.

  Lisa: So then what happened?

  Stephanie: I go home, and thank God for the Internet. I typed in something like “prerequisites for medical school” and stuff came up, and then I typed something like “post-graduate premedical education” and all these courses showed up. And I realized after reading all the information that I didn’t need to go back to college again. I just had to take calculus. At the time, I worked on 42nd Street, and I had to get up to Columbia to take the class, on 116th Street on the west side, at four o’clock while I was working a full-time job. I had to leave by quarter of four and the class started at 4:15, which was nerve-wracking. About four weeks into it, my editor comes around and says, “I noticed you’re not around as much in the afternoon,” and I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Why is that?” And I said, “I have to come clean, I’m taking a calculus class.” And she said, “Why the hell are you doing that?” I said, “I want to go to medical school and I have to take this class and I have to leave every day to get there.” She was over 40 herself, and her reaction was actually fabulous. She said, “So you can stop playing Dr. Young at the office and actually be Dr. Young?” She got it. Everyone would come to me with their problems and I’d say do this. And they’d say, “Are you a doctor?” And I’d say, “No. I only play one in the office.”