Red Hot Mamas

Description for RED HOT MAMAS: COMING INTO OUR OWN AT FIFTY by Colette Dowling:

Colette Dowling, bestselling author of THE CINDERELLA COMPLEX and YOU MEAN I DON'T HAVE TO FEEL THIS WAY?, offers a gift to every woman edging up to, at, or just beyond age fifty---the gift of meeting the "Red Hot Mamas," women who have arrived at midlife to find that they're getting another chance. Listen to their stories---of moving beyond fears of aging and changing, of leaning to steer their own course and discovering a new sense of freedom and power.

Funny and poignant, savvy and intimately personal, RED HOT MAMAS doesn't skirt the issues. Colette Dowling's account of her own midlife transition is bracingly honest about the challenges of growing older as a woman in our society---from the politics of appearance to the need to come to grips, once and for all, with money issues, and the family pressures created by older parents and departing children. But whether she's discussing the latest scientific debates over hormone replacement, the risks of career change at fifty, or strategies for midlife sexual satisfaction, she gives readers the information they need to make life-changing decisions---and to confront the really big questions:

*What is the most exciting and fruitful way I can make use of the next thirty or forty years?

*Where, how, and in whose company shall I spend them?

*How can I best protect my options and harness my energy?

She also show the payoffs that come from plunging ahead:

*A university president, dating again in midlife, says, "I'm no longer trying to be what the man wants me to be. Now I am implicitly saying, 'This is the way I am, and wouldn't it be great if we liked each other.'"

*A slightly chubby psychologist with two kids decides, at forty-five, to take up skating and now hits the ice every morning at dawn to practice her figures.

*A wife, mother, and recent college grad recovers from a hysterectomy, rethinks her priorities, and negotiates the job---and salary---of her dreams.

*A divorced woman puts the family home on the market and renovates a cottage with the help of her friends---the first place that's been hers alone.

Fifty is not the beginning of the end but a time to finally come into your own. RED HOT MAMAS shows the way. It's a guide and companion for what life can be the best years of a woman's life.