How Writing for The Ethel Has Changed My Life

Being a mature woman takes guts. It requires the ability to let go when you want to hold on. To stop stressing as body parts travel south. To march on even when your plantar fasciitis flares up. Being a mature woman requires saying “no” to pointy-toed shoes and petty people.

It requires us to stop being easily offended and start being easily pleased.

That’s the title of poet Donna Ashworth’s new book: “The Art of Being Easily Pleased.”

“Don’t be afraid to be delighted, to show the world when you’re excited…” Ashworth writes. “The only way to combat the losses of this world is to love harder.”

I knew all this five years ago, when I turned 65 and started writing regularly for free weekly Ethel newsletter. Now that I am 70, and the losses of this world keep piling up, these truths are embroidered into my heart, thanks to the wise and funny Ethel community, and the original Ethel herself — Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, AARP's founder.

“Old people are tough,” Andrus once said. “They have to be to have lived this long.”

For the original Ethel, guts were a given. The ability to spill them when necessary to hundreds of thousands of friends who get that Ethel email every Wednesday — that’s a perk of technology.

In that newsletter are the layers of our lives, the confessions of women who are brave enough to tell the truth.

I’ve written about my agonizing divorce and my forays into online dating. I’ve written about the sadness of holidays when families are estranged, and the relentless fear I felt after my mother died. I’ve written about my 79-year-old widower boyfriend — and his family members, who weren’t always so crazy about me. I’ve written about a dear friend who died on the eve of our 50-year high school reunion, after dementia had cruelly dimmed her light.

I’ve written about the way life forces us to reinvent ourselves over and over and over — as it shaves away so much that we have spent our lives loving.

I’ve also written about cocktails and the soul-cleansing ritual of Happy Hour. My drink of choice: a dry martini, Ketel One, with a twist. Shared with a friend — while we pour out the burden of our hearts.

This is what The Ethel helps us do: release our stories into the world…and then find comfort from women who have been there, too.

We modern Ethels are the beneficiaries of the original Ethel, who understood what many of her era did not: one day, women would not die at 69, which was the average life expectancy when Andrus founded the precursor to the AARP, the National Retired Teachers Association, in 1947, according to Social Security records. One day, a 70-year-old woman like me could be fit and financially independent and capable of hoisting her own suitcase into the overhead bin as she travels the world.

When the original Ethel first championed the idea that our later years could be a reinvigorating Act 3 and not a chute to decrepitude, it was common for people my age to live with their children.

Now, when I spend time with my kids, we’re often traveling together. This summer, we celebrated my 70th birthday in Denver. This fall, we’re headed to London and Paris.

We don’t put off our adventures. Ethels keep moving. (Check out The Ethel On-The-Go Facebook group to share your travel tips and be inspired.)