Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We A

Aging has some real issues: living in a culture that not only denigrates old age but actively despises it, the lack of civility that makes it hard to move fast enough to avoid being in the way, the high cost of medicine, the one-size-fits-all medical treatment, etc. This book is of no use that I can see. The author's approach is the same kind of generic advice you can find everywhere. If you are annoyed by being told that there are 8 steps to grief or 5 steps to acceptance or to be sure to bring a casserole to a grieving friend, this is not the book for you. Most of the examples seem to be of people who will benefit by being told to take a soothing bubble bath or go hug a cactus or take a rafting trip with "the girls". Nobody seems to be cutting up their pills to save money or taking time to go deeply into "aloneness". It so trivializes aging...just one more pop psychology book to add to the pile of "self-help" books that do not help. Aging is fierce, terrifying, mysterious and very human. Pick up The Bible, the Upanishads, the Torah, the Buddhist sutras, the Odyssey and you will find the same questions being asked about Life, Old Age and Death and it's re-assuring to realize these perennial questions are part of being human. Instead of continuing to "serve", women might think about why? serve your parents, your boyfriend, your husband, your children, your parents (again) and then die " Is that life? is it MY life? why do feel I have to serve? Is it real or just conditioning? Am is afraid of being called 'selfish'? why am I doing this" Old age is a time when you have the time to contemplate these questions and to find friendship and connection with all that has come before you and all that you are. Don't waste it reading this kind of trivial junk and never asking the deeper questions about what it is to be truly human. There is only this one life as this particular "person"; it's a great joy to discover what you are!

Yes, can relate to much of this and brings up some interesting issues

Disappointed that the book was sold in very good condition but is heavily throughout in bright pink highlighter.

Enjoyed this book immensely, a 'Must Read' for all girls young at heart but over 70 nevertheless ;-))

I adore Mary Pipher & expected her book on "navigating life's currents & flourishing as we age" to be my new favorite "Must read!" recommendation. My enthusiasm wilted as it dawned that she often sounds like part of my born-in-1910 mother's generation than four years my senior who graduated from high school at the dawn of the conscious-raising '60s, grew up solidly in the Therapeutic Age. Where I was expecting book relevant to every part of our nation, WOMEN ROWING NORTH seems to largely (not exclusively - one is a pleasant acquaintance of mine who lives in Phila) feature examples & anecdotes from what seem to be solidly middle class, heartland women - - makes sense, since that is where she practices, but limits its effectiveness, at least to this reader. Strikes me that a more apt title would be "White Midwestern Well-Educated Upperish-Middle Class WOMEN ROWING NORTH."