It's time to Tell My Age.

Because how we talk about ourselves matters.

The diagnosis seemed almost inevitable: In early 2022, after decades of watching, waiting and dreading, I found that I had early-stage breast cancer. I would choose to have a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction. Luckily, the Stage 0 diagnosis meant I wouldn’t need chemotherapy or radiation.

The surgery was extensive, the recovery difficult. I struggled to understand my new body. I wondered if I’d ever feel normal.

But this is not a medical story.

This is a story of the monumental change in my approach to my work — and my life — that began when I was forced to sit still for five months, doing only what I had to do for my clients as I recovered. I thought a lot about time and energy and age and accomplishments. On particularly dark nights, I thought about how much time I had left, and what I wanted to do with it.

Suddenly, the thriving communications consulting practice I had built over the last seven years didn’t seem like the way I wanted to spend the next seven years.

Or maybe it did, with a new dedication to doing only work that changed the world for the better. Work that was fun. And meaningful. And well-compensated (why do we always leave that part out?).

Or maybe it was time to get a job-job, one that came with a dependable salary and interesting (challenging?) co-workers. I had to admit that working for myself, even in the company of dedicated and supportive clients, had gotten really lonely.

Or maybe it was time to think about a move. To a different city — maybe even a different country.

What DID I want to do next? For the first time in my life, I didn’t know.

That’s when I started wondering if there were any other women like me. Women who’d been working for years in a career that offered satisfaction and challenge.

Women who had made big changes – and big mistakes – but had grown and learned and were at the top of their game, whatever it was.

Women who weren’t ready for retirement, unless retirement gave them the freedom to do the work they really wanted to keep doing.

Turns out, we are everywhere.

And that’s the focus of this Substack: Resources, community and encouragement for women with decades of wisdom to share.

I want to talk with — and hear from — women who are living “four-quarter lives,” as the gender and generational consultant and expert Avivah Wittenberg-Cox explains it. Women who don’t let their age or someone else’s expectations make decisions for them.

Because we will likely live longer than our mothers and grandmothers, with all of the opportunity and uncertainty that suggests. It’s time to own our late-in-life power and learn from each other.

Join me: Subscribe!

My plan is to publish a post once a week, with notes and conversations mixed in. Since today is my 64th birthday, it seems like a great time to begin a new journey, a new conversation — this is a gift to myself.

I’m ready to Tell My Age, and hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Because how we talk about ourselves matters.

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