“You are not who you were, only older,” Suzanne Braun Levine
I haven’t written a book review for Mothering, yet, since I believe our readers are a widely diverse group of women representing many ages, interests and ideologies. So, when I received How We Love Now, I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, other than read it.
Nearly four pages into the book, I wrote Suzanne’s dear friend, Karin, to thank her for this wonderful gift. Likewise, I hope my writing will peak your interest enough that you will buy this book. Like Christiane Northrup’s The Wisdom of Menopause, Nancy Alspaugh-Jackson and Marilyn Kentz’s Not Your Mothers Midlife, Katrina Kenison’s Gift of An Ordinary Day and Mothers; Doreen Nagle’s But I Don’t Feel Too Old to Be a Mommy, Levine’s How We Love Now should sit on your shelf as a beloved old friend – there when you need it, available to hold, and ready to provide support and answers for your every need. In fact, some of these books should be a friend for life. How We Love Now is my new BFF.
Having very recently traversed the incredibly unsettling path of peri-to-menopause – that in-between time where nothing makes sense intellectually, physiologically, and emotionally – I’ve actually come through to the other side as a very different woman. Not to others, I presume, but clearly to me; in fact, many times/week I’ve had to pinch myself as I: respond differently, feel differently, view someone/something/someplace/differently, and wonder if I am still in one piece or have simply and totally fallen apart and shattered. I hoped that reading this book would provide me with answers to some nagging questions, an identification with others and, perhaps, some solace. The subcaption on page 22, “You Are Not Who You Were, Only Older,” said it all. (In fact, those words now sit on my computer table where I read them several times/day.) Having been struck by this thunderbolt, I relaxed into my reading and enjoyed the rest of the ride.
In folksy, casual language, Levine weaves the tales of her many interviewees/respondents into concise chapters/categories ranging from cyberspace, work, and untangling family ties, to the inner child – topics wrapped around love. It’s impossible not to find simpatico or resonance in any one of the many interwoven stories. It’s impossible not to find personal support from the truth revealed by these brave and open women.
My only disappointment is the notable absence of a chapter on (new) Midlife Mothers. We need help, support and a sense of community/camaraderie around this often isolating experience. Ours is a shared, common experience which is growing increasingly more popular with each passing year. However, there’s more than enough in this book to satisfy other facets of our lives – what Levine now calls our “Second Adulthood” – a term that most of us will come to embrace and can surely identify with. It, like Midlife Mothering, marks the passage of new beginnings – a fitting topic for the new year.
In a recent Huffington Post article, Levine writes, “My new book How We Love Now is out this week. The date was chosen because in publishing, January is “self-improvement month.“ The thinking is that at the start of the New Year we want to repent for all the guilty pleasures we indulged in over the holidays. Which is also why we make resolutions — to become better than we are. Oy, the guilt.
But Second Adulthood is about shedding that kind of guilt, along with many other emotional and psychological burdens that get in the way of inventing the rest of our lives. So I am proposing a new kind of resolution, a guilt-free and empowering resolving of unnecessary conflicts and contradictions that freeze us in place.
We are especially suited to moving on from either/or stress to both/and resolution, because we have reached a level of equilibrium in our lives that couldn’t have existed before. Until now we lived with responsibilities, objectives and messages that often seemed irreconcilable forces: work and family; fat and thin; strength and accommodation. But, the pieces of our lives fit together better now.
Most important, in our relationships — especially our partnerships — we are staking out new more accepting territory. When I interviewed people about what I came to call the New Intimacy in How We Love Now, I found an important new dynamic: interdependence. It is not either/or — independence or dependence — but both/and — a balanced and mutually trusting sharing of responsibility, support, tolerance, and devotion….
We are more comfortable with change and the insecurity as well as the possibilities it brings — rolling with the punches. We see common ground more clearly, and we cherish the glass half-full. A perfect skill set for resolving conflict and contradiction and making peace with what is.
So, what do I want to resolve in 2012?
I want to make a better balance between worries about the future, which I cannot control, and the gifts of the present, which I can’t control either, but I can enjoy.
I want to resolve the love/hate nattering over how my body is getting farther and father away from the ideal that it never measured up to in the first place.
Most of all, I want to free myself of emotions that force an either/or reaction.
A poem by an anonymous (it is so often thus) woman has been circulating among my friends. It describes a woman who managed to do that:
She let go of fear.
She let go of judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
And what did she get in return? The poem concludes with a vision:
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her,
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.
I wish such a “small smile” of peace and reconciliation for us all.”
I could not have said it better, if I tried. Thank you, Suzanne.