Sexy Stories for Women Over Sixty

The Hey, Boomer guest today is Stella Fosse, writer, advocate for older women's empowerment and workshop leader.  Our topic today was Sexy Stories for and about Women Over Sixty. Stella reinvented herself from a technical writer, to a writer of erotica for and about older women. Her first book, Aphrodite's Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica after Midlife, includes lots of how to's and prompts to get your started. Her latest book, "Brilliant Charming Bastard" was released this year. We talked about claiming our narrative at this stage of our lives.  We discussed the difference between Elderotica and Seasoned Romance Stories.  When I asked about being objectified as sexual beings, Stella turned that around to finding the freedom of being able to walk down the street without being harassed, and the freedom to be more playful in our relationships. We talked about the benefit of finding supportive writers groups, both in person and online.  It was a fun discussion. I think you will enjoy it. Episode Takeaways: 1. Read books, and watch movies that show possibilities of this part of life. 2. Find ways to build creativity into this part of your life. 3. Enjoy your body. 4. Learning and sex until rigor mortis.  Thanks so much for listening. Subscribe on Apple Podcast, Stitcher , Google Podcast. or Spotify Follow up on Facebook and Instagram You can email me with questions or comments at [email protected] – Wendy Green is a Certified Life Coach, working with people going through the sometimes uncomfortable life transition from full-time work to “what’s next.” Find out more about Wendy’s 6-week “What’s Next Transition” Coaching workshop – You can find Stella at stellafosse.com or email her at [email protected]  Other resources mentioned Writing Open the Mind by Andy Couturier  Fifty First Dates After Fifty by Carolyn Lee Arnold  Fear of Dying by Erica Jong Naked at our Age by Joan Price  Forever 51 by Pamela Skjolsvik ============================================ Show transcript And welcome to the Hey Boomer Show, which is live every Monday at 1:00 Eastern on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. My name is Wendy Green and I am your host for Hey Boomer. And hey, Boomer is a show for those of us who believe we are never too old to set another goal or dream, a new dream. It is for lifelong learners who want to find meaning and purpose in their lives and live the best part of their life in this next chapter. Every year I put together an Alzheimer's walk team and every year I get a bunch of people that come and walk with me and we raise money. Last year, we hit the championship level. We raised over 1000. So this year I am asking you to join our team. There's a couple of ways you can do this. You can join the local team here in Greenville, South Carolina, and walk with us and help raise money for that. Or you can join our our hey boomer team and walk in your community. So for now, I have a Greenville team. I have a hey boomer team in California and I have a Hey Boomer team in Maryland. And anybody that joins our team, I'm going to give them this cute, hey, boomer hat so that you can wear that when you walk and you can wear it afterwards proudly as a member of Hey, Boomer. So all you have to do is go to act.Alz.org/goto/HeyBoomer, join our team and support the hopeful end of Alzheimer's. I also want to say that I am not anti retirement. anti retirement, but I don't recommend it for almost anybody because retirement means withdrawal. And if you withdraw from life, you really are giving up on life. And what happens is that every day starts to run into the next. You become bored and lethargic. You find yourself spending more time on the couch than doing just about anything else. And I want to encourage you, as I said in the opening, this show is about living your best life in this next chapter. So I have a six-week group program called What's Next? And you can find it and get more information about it on HeyBoomer.Biz/coaching. There you'll find a synopsis of what the group coaching experience is about. A little video from me and an opportunity to sign up for a free 20 minute consultation so that I can learn more about you. You can learn more about me. And then we can make a decision whether this is a good fit for you or not. So there's no obligation. Check it out at heyboomer/coaching and get set or get your mojo back if you feel like you've lost it. Now to talk about what's coming up. Kathleen, A Berry PhD and coeditor of "Unmasked: Women write about sex and intimacy after 50" said, "When we think of erotica, we don't usually link it together with middle aged women." In fact, it is middle aged women who are finally liberated to fully experience the sensuous delight of erotica. They have reached the point in their lives when they are no longer encumbered by the risk of pregnancy, nor zapped by the physical ramifications of menopause. And there's another aspect to this topic. Ageist thinking says that older women become matronly and we lose our beauty. And the idea of older women having sex seems almost unappealing in our society. There are a few examples of women over 50 being sexual in the media. I'm sure that or I hope that you all have seen Grace and Frankie with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. And there's a new movie out with Emma Thompson called Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. And in this movie, Emma Thompson plays a widow who has never had a satisfying sex life. She is curious and she's nervous. She hires a sex worker. This movie explores her journey to becoming comfortable with her own sexuality. It is available on Hulu. Good luck to you, Leo Grande. So today we're going to talk about the idea that we are all sensual beings into our sixties, seventies, eighties and beyond, and that we can all make our own decisions about what is right for us regarding sex at this stage of our life, really at any stage of our life. So let me bring Stella on and introduce you. Hello, Stella. I want to thank. Thanks for having. Me. Oh, I've been looking forward to this. And so is the audience. I've heard a lot of people say, Oh, I'm going to watch. I'm going to watch. So brief bio. Stella is a former biotechnology writer who advocates for the creative power of older women. Her books include "Aphrodite's Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica After Midlife", "The Erotic Pandemic Ball," And ooh, did you hear the Thunder? And her debut novel at age 68, "Brilliant, Charming Bastard." She is currently teaching romance writing to seniors and writing a book about creative retirement. Stella lives with her partner in North Carolina. You can follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and she blogs on her website, which we will get to, and I'll share all of her contact information later. So, Stella. Yes. So, you know, in my coaching practice, I always talk to people about reinvention. And many people have a really hard time thinking about what they're going to do next. They had their career and That was that was who they defined themselves as they didn't have an idea of what was next. So I'm curious about your reinvention journey from tech writer to writer of erotica and the ups and downs of that. Oh Well, I always wanted to be a writer. In fact, my childhood goal was to write my first novel by the time I was 25. So I missed that by 50 years. As you said, it's never too late. So I went to college in the early seventies when there was a total double standard about writing anything sexual. Philip Roth's novels were literature. Erica Jong's novels were trash. And so that's that's what it was like when I came up. And I certainly never thought about writing erotica back then after college, after I got my degree in creative writing, which when I moved to New York, I was told would get me. If I had that plus $0.25, I could get a ride in the subway. So I went back to school, got a master's in biology, and had a career writing FDA submissions, which are about as asexual as you can get. And when I was starting to think about graduating from that career, if we don't like the word retirement, maybe we can. Graduation. I happened...