Barbara Waxman: Leaning Into Middlescence

The guest this week in 4-Quarter Lives is Barbara Waxman, whose work Avivah Wittenberg-Cox came across early on in her exploration of the topic of how to manage our ever longer lives. Barbara is a gerontologist and coach and has combined both these areas in a career focused on helping people become both more effective professionally and at the same time truer to who they themselves are as individuals. With a background in gerontology, she found at the start of her own empty-nester years a chance to reconsider her own trajectory, and realised just how much more opportunity the years ahead had to offer. Recognising the similarity between this turbulent time and that of adolescence, she coined the term ‘Middlescence’ and authored a book aptly called The Middlescence Manifesto: Igniting the Passion of Midlife. She serves as an Advisory Council Member for the Stanford Center on Longevity and is a faculty member of the Modern Elder Academy. In this conversation Barbara and Avivah talk about the ‘3Rs’ of the subject – Reality, Response and Roadmap and about the different challenges of this time for men and women.  And Barbara introduces yet another wonderful reframing – that instead of thinking about ‘retirement’ we should move to ‘preferment’.Links relevant to this episode:Barbara Waxman’s Website: https://barbarawaxman.comBarbara Waxman’s Middlescence Website: https://middlescence.coTo buy The Middlescence Manifesto click here (Amazon.com)The Stanford Center on Longevity: https://longevity.stanford.eduThe Modern Elder Academy:  https://www.modernelderacademy.comLinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbarawaxman/Twitter:  https://twitter.com/BarbaraWaxman Get full access to 4-Quarter Lives | Elderberries at elderberries.substack.com/subscribe