What do you think?
Rate this book
On Women Turning Forty: Coming into Our Fullness
The candid interviews and beautiful photographs of ON WOMEN TURNING FORTY will inspire all women who are navigating through the mid-life passage. This updated version of the best-selling classic makes it the perfect companion to the later decades of Cathleen Rountrees series on women.
214 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1991
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 25, 2020
Right now, I am 35. Culturally, my next big birthday is 40. No reason to miss any wisdom. I don't esteem one woman above the others. Each woman delivered candor about her past experiences and current standing.
Women and those empathic to women ought to read this book.
Women and those empathic to women ought to read this book.
May 22, 2021
turning forty as a rite of passage, women who have rewritten their life scripts.
Many of us spent our first twenty years learning the ways of the wounded, the next twenty were spent healing those wounds. Now, turning forty, we've begun to weave together painful experience and joyful expression into a certain balance, an evenness.
I am convinced that the second half of a woman's life is a profound opportunity for transformation.
The truth is comforting, even though it isolates me from many people who practice denial.
I've been in charge of my life for a long time. I think most women are at the mercy of their lives.
Success means different things at different times in your life. As you get older, success comes from within, it comes from being happy with yourself and your personal and spiritual evolution, being able to feel that you learned something, did it well, and got pleasure from that.
get through tired, or lonely, or difficult periods. I always know it will pass. That's ones of the delights of the forties-I've had enough life experiences, enough joy and pain, to know that they just keep turning. They will both continue to be there and I have some choice about what I do with them.
Being a mother is an important part of my spiritual training. There's no way to "transcend" this one. He's taught me love and been my clearest mirror. He has taught me to walk my talk.
pg 98
The Chinese definition for the fortieth decade is "Standing Alone." One can interpret the symbol as being alone or lonely, or as being strong and independent. It can also be part of both.
I began to look inwardly, to find out who I was, rather than seeking something outside myself.
I am also infuriated by the ageist remarks I hear: "You don't look your age", or "You're so young for your age." These comments, based on youth -oriented culture, are pervasive, insidious, and undermining. Our society is so completely permeated by this thinking...
When the viewers response meets the artist's intention, that is spiritual, that's a communion, then I'm speaking. Perhaps this is what is spiritual; two people talking to one another, engaging and listening to the other.
My forties were perhaps the toughest times, because I began to wake up in a real sense. To do that I had to go through some very unpleasant feelings. I had to relive hurtful situations from my childhood that were so bad I had forgotten them. I had to notice that much of my life was not the way I wanted it to be and I had to change it deliberately. At this time I began to take myself more seriously and notice how much fear controlled my entire life. I began to live my life my way. I finally feel free to be myself more often than not, and that means that I will be able to do so much more. In my my forties I laid the foundation for the rest of my life, and that took persistence and determination. It is something else to be thinking, to be making art and relationship with out old baggage.
My dream is to reach a point where age is irrelevant. I want to continue having new experiences.
I learned to be intolerant of anyone in my life, particularly men, who would treat me with dishonor or disrespect, or who would behave without integrity and dignity themselves.
The only advice I have for other women approaching forty, or who are in their forties, is to, "Sit back, girl, and enjoy it. The worst is over; the best is yet to come. You have survived. You have met adversity, made decisions, and solved problems. You have done stupid things and cried your tears, but you have survived! You can create beauty in your life. You have had forty years of experience, so you can live the next forty or fifty years informed."
There was no support from the culture, no initiation into womanhood. I now feel strongly about the need for rites of passage throughout our lives.
every year of life can be a growing year
It's important to start paying attention to ourselves, to be healthy and vital, because without that physical body foundation we don't have a the stamina to be who we really are and to give what we have to offer. When we get to be forty or forty five years old we have a wonderful base of experience to transform ourselves. Everything we've done gives us what we need for the next step. We haven't wasted any time. What if each state of our development is just school for the next step? What will be the next adventure? What will I be graduating to? There's a wealth of learning continually happening. It's so exciting! I really have the sense of myself at sixty years old having an entirely different life. And then again at ninety having a birth into another kid of life that's very powerful. This is an exciting time in a woman's life. Very, very much so.
Your forties are usually the time when you begin to understand your own mortality. It is something that matures you quite dramatically.
The writing exercises led us into emotional labyrinths. We wrote our own eulogies. We viewed our personal foibles, failings, secret madnesses, and neurotic tendencies. We gave our reasons for daily choosing life over death, explained what makes us get up in the morning.
I looked at older people and thought, "Well, I'm looking forward to getting those lines around the eyes." They make eyes so much more expressive.
She found a way to dance that took into consideration the changes in the body.
That's what's so important about the forties: it is the time when we begin to integrate all the years we have lived.
I think it's lucky and wonderful to make it into your forties, because it takes that long to develop the skills and the philosophy that you have- that can then carry you through the next forty or fifty years.
Being a mother is an unending task. When i look at my mother I see her still trying to shape me. it is a struggle of identity for the child to become their own person.
I've bene free to do certain things that I couldn't have done if I'd had children. But as I get older, it seems to be more of a loss.
I think we have to deal with whatever comes up each day.
I recently interviewed a seventy-five-year-old woman. She said something about aging that rings true to me. She said, "You don't feel that you are aging, because you always feel like the same person you were when you were thirteen. For example, I know my eyelids are drooping. I'm very much aware of my skin, but I don't feel my own wrinkles. When I go to the mirror I see an older face, but I remain the same person inside.
Many of us spent our first twenty years learning the ways of the wounded, the next twenty were spent healing those wounds. Now, turning forty, we've begun to weave together painful experience and joyful expression into a certain balance, an evenness.
I am convinced that the second half of a woman's life is a profound opportunity for transformation.
The truth is comforting, even though it isolates me from many people who practice denial.
I've been in charge of my life for a long time. I think most women are at the mercy of their lives.
Success means different things at different times in your life. As you get older, success comes from within, it comes from being happy with yourself and your personal and spiritual evolution, being able to feel that you learned something, did it well, and got pleasure from that.
get through tired, or lonely, or difficult periods. I always know it will pass. That's ones of the delights of the forties-I've had enough life experiences, enough joy and pain, to know that they just keep turning. They will both continue to be there and I have some choice about what I do with them.
Being a mother is an important part of my spiritual training. There's no way to "transcend" this one. He's taught me love and been my clearest mirror. He has taught me to walk my talk.
pg 98
The Chinese definition for the fortieth decade is "Standing Alone." One can interpret the symbol as being alone or lonely, or as being strong and independent. It can also be part of both.
I began to look inwardly, to find out who I was, rather than seeking something outside myself.
I am also infuriated by the ageist remarks I hear: "You don't look your age", or "You're so young for your age." These comments, based on youth -oriented culture, are pervasive, insidious, and undermining. Our society is so completely permeated by this thinking...
When the viewers response meets the artist's intention, that is spiritual, that's a communion, then I'm speaking. Perhaps this is what is spiritual; two people talking to one another, engaging and listening to the other.
My forties were perhaps the toughest times, because I began to wake up in a real sense. To do that I had to go through some very unpleasant feelings. I had to relive hurtful situations from my childhood that were so bad I had forgotten them. I had to notice that much of my life was not the way I wanted it to be and I had to change it deliberately. At this time I began to take myself more seriously and notice how much fear controlled my entire life. I began to live my life my way. I finally feel free to be myself more often than not, and that means that I will be able to do so much more. In my my forties I laid the foundation for the rest of my life, and that took persistence and determination. It is something else to be thinking, to be making art and relationship with out old baggage.
My dream is to reach a point where age is irrelevant. I want to continue having new experiences.
I learned to be intolerant of anyone in my life, particularly men, who would treat me with dishonor or disrespect, or who would behave without integrity and dignity themselves.
The only advice I have for other women approaching forty, or who are in their forties, is to, "Sit back, girl, and enjoy it. The worst is over; the best is yet to come. You have survived. You have met adversity, made decisions, and solved problems. You have done stupid things and cried your tears, but you have survived! You can create beauty in your life. You have had forty years of experience, so you can live the next forty or fifty years informed."
There was no support from the culture, no initiation into womanhood. I now feel strongly about the need for rites of passage throughout our lives.
every year of life can be a growing year
It's important to start paying attention to ourselves, to be healthy and vital, because without that physical body foundation we don't have a the stamina to be who we really are and to give what we have to offer. When we get to be forty or forty five years old we have a wonderful base of experience to transform ourselves. Everything we've done gives us what we need for the next step. We haven't wasted any time. What if each state of our development is just school for the next step? What will be the next adventure? What will I be graduating to? There's a wealth of learning continually happening. It's so exciting! I really have the sense of myself at sixty years old having an entirely different life. And then again at ninety having a birth into another kid of life that's very powerful. This is an exciting time in a woman's life. Very, very much so.
Your forties are usually the time when you begin to understand your own mortality. It is something that matures you quite dramatically.
The writing exercises led us into emotional labyrinths. We wrote our own eulogies. We viewed our personal foibles, failings, secret madnesses, and neurotic tendencies. We gave our reasons for daily choosing life over death, explained what makes us get up in the morning.
I looked at older people and thought, "Well, I'm looking forward to getting those lines around the eyes." They make eyes so much more expressive.
She found a way to dance that took into consideration the changes in the body.
That's what's so important about the forties: it is the time when we begin to integrate all the years we have lived.
I think it's lucky and wonderful to make it into your forties, because it takes that long to develop the skills and the philosophy that you have- that can then carry you through the next forty or fifty years.
Being a mother is an unending task. When i look at my mother I see her still trying to shape me. it is a struggle of identity for the child to become their own person.
I've bene free to do certain things that I couldn't have done if I'd had children. But as I get older, it seems to be more of a loss.
I think we have to deal with whatever comes up each day.
I recently interviewed a seventy-five-year-old woman. She said something about aging that rings true to me. She said, "You don't feel that you are aging, because you always feel like the same person you were when you were thirteen. For example, I know my eyelids are drooping. I'm very much aware of my skin, but I don't feel my own wrinkles. When I go to the mirror I see an older face, but I remain the same person inside.
May 16, 2014
Read on recommendation of my mom; enjoyable and interesting interviews! Gives me hope that it's just gonna keep getting better ;)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews