Blog
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The Exact – and Estimated – Numbers in a 30 Year Marriage
- August 31, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: marriage
4 Comments
Happy anniversary to my husband and me. Thirty years is a long time! 1 wedding2 babies3 houses6 dogs15 cars360 mortgage paymentsWe lost2 fathers1 grandfather4 grandmothers We gained4 nieces3 nephews1 bonus father 4 dining tables7 sofas20,000 cups of coffee300 meatloaves500 pans of brownies116 birthday cakes900 barbecued burgers1500 ears of corn7,000 cut-up apples5,000 packed lunches8,000 loads of
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Inspiration to Chase Your Dreams!
- August 12, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: empty nest
Finding a purpose after the kids leave home is one of the hottest topics in my Facebook group, The Empty Nesters Community. Over and over empty-nesters ask, “How do I find my purpose now that my kids are grown?” I had the opportunity to talk with 3 women who turned their empty-nest into the chance
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The Painful Paradox of Successful Parenting
- July 12, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
I’ve had conversations – both virtual and face-to-face – with thousands of parents (mostly moms) since I began writing about empty nesting and midlife in 2011. Those parents range from exhausted first-time mothers to joyous and celebrating empty nesters. Each mother has her own parenting story to tell, her unique experience to share, her child
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Avoid the Biggest Mistakes in Retirement
- May 21, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Danielle Kunkle Roberts. She is the co-founder of Boomer Benefits where she and her team help baby boomers navigate their Medicare insurance options. She is a member of the Forbes Finance Council and writes frequently about Medicare, retirement and personal finance. Dreaming of retirement day is something that nearly everyone
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Do You Believe in Magic?
- March 24, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: family
I was at a chateau in the Burgundy region of France for my cousin’s wedding when a butterfly flew in my room. It hovered there for a few minutes, flapping its orange and black wings, just hanging around, and then it flew outside and landed on the hundreds-years-old stone façade, taking in the view. I
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The Hair I Always Wanted
- March 22, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: midlife
In 1978, there was no fashion love for straight-haired women. Every where you looked, curls and Afros ruled—big, haloed heads, bobbing up and down, all sassy and free and wild. I was obsessed with getting a perm. It started with Barbra Streisand in “A Star is Born,” her formerly ordinary long hair a mass of
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Is Anyone Listening?
- March 13, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: empty nest
When I was raising my kids, at the end of the last century, there was a lot of chatter in my life. Right before the explosion of the internet, texting, and email, so much of my time was spent talking to other people. If I wanted to order something from the Nordstrom catalog, I had
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Invisible But Not Unseen at Midlife
- March 5, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: midlife
Any discussion of middle age women is incomplete without touching on the fact – not the feeling, the concept, or the belief – but the fact that at some point in our lives, we become invisible to the world. As our youth disappears, these things may happen: our boobs droop and our hair thins, our
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Why Every Woman Needs Friends
- February 25, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: midlife
For women, friendships with other women are as important and life-sustaining — if not more so — than relationships with men. From the beginning of our socialization, we are focused on finding other females to bond with in significant and ego-affirming ways. Who among us didn’t have a best friend at some point or another
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The Search for Satisfaction
- February 11, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: midlife
My fellow blogger and writer Jen Mann recently wrote about her midlife crisis and the need to talk about her generalized sadness and dissatisfaction with where she is at this point. Coming from someone who is a humor writer with a huge following and many published books, I am sure that her revelation that she