Sex and the Seasoned Woman, Gail Sheehy
Sex and the Seasoned Woman, Gail Sheehy
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Sex and the Seasoned Woman

Author: Gail Sheehy

Narrator: Gail Sheehy

Abridged: 4 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/10/2006


Synopsis

A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience. . . . She can be alternately sweet, tart, bubbly, mellow. She can be maternal and playful. Bossy and submissive. Strong and soft. . . . The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of life.
In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, bestselling author Gail Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon–increased vitality in women’s sex and love lives after fifty. Sex and the Seasoned Woman is the story of an intimate revolution taking place under our very noses.
Boomer generation women in midlife are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women–married and single–who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don’t have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women–once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers–find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. They embrace their “second adulthood” as a period of reawakening.
Written in Sheehy’s singularly compelling style, combining interviews and research, this book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women. The inspiring stories tell of wives who reinvigorate their marriages after their children leave the nest as well as divorced, widowed, and long-single women who find new dreams and new loves. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure. She also examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women’s sex lives.
From women who find their sexuality reawakened by a younger lover, to couples whose marriages survive health crises and grow stronger, to women who finally find a soulmate in their sixties, to stories from seasoned sirens in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, these portraits cover an enormous range of experience. In them, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives.

About The Author

Bestselling author and cultural observer Gail Sheehy made history with the publication of Passages, which was an international bestseller, appearing in twenty-eight languages. She followed up with The Silent Passage, New Passages, and Understanding Men’s Passages. Sheehy is also the author of Hillary’s Choice, a biography of Hillary Clinton, and Middletown, America, about a New Jersey town devastated by the World Trade Center attack. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 1984, Sheehy is the recipient of the Washington Journalism Review Award for Best Magazine Writer in America.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Cathy on December 24, 2016

I've been reading this book for over four years now and I finally finished it. The attraction was the subtitle: Pursing the Passionate Life. The book consists of interviews with many seasoned women and how they've reinvented themselves in mid-life and later. It was easy enough to pick up and read wh......more

Goodreads review by Juliana on May 28, 2011

I picked this up at a library sale because I like Sheehy's books. I'm a little young for the book--but as a recent divorcee I found this book very inspiring. The book is full of stories and interviews with women who have found a more independent and passionate life after 50.......more

Goodreads review by Karah on April 11, 2021

Gave me something to look forward to! Sheehy doesn't negotiate that a passionate life and sex accompany each other. One must maintain herself in all facets to preserve a great life.......more

Goodreads review by Angela on March 20, 2024

Sex and the Seasoned Woman I enjoyed this book for the most part. There were A LOT of examples, maybe too many but i found it encouraging. I can recommend this book and I might listen to it again someday, why not!? Favorite Quotes: To be among the successfully long lived we must have cultivated some sp......more

Goodreads review by Anna on November 04, 2022

Don’t let the title fool you- this is not a racy “Carrie Bradshaw ish” beach read but rather the result of decades of research by Sheehy and others on the “developmental stage” of 45-80 women. One of my life’s 10 most important books- this book was the launching point for the kind of “second chapter......more