70Candles! JANE GIDDAN AND ELLEN COLE
Women In Their 8th Decades
O
n her move from Alaska to upstate New York, Ellen, stopped in Dallas, Texas, to visit Jane, her dearest ‘old friend’ since age 14. The pair were now approaching their 70th birthdays. They shook their heads, unable to fathom the passage of time. They did not think of themselves as ‘old,’ which was a term that conjured up memories of their own grandmother’s knitting in their rocking chairs. Still energetic and contributing members of society, but without role models, both Ellen and Jane were both haunted by negative stereotypes of old ladies. They worried about the coming decades, but had not a clue about the reality of life at 70 and beyond. Being academics, they began reading all they could find about aging in both scholarly and popular literature. They learned that there had been a gain of 30 additional years of life over the last century. They found lots of ‘old granny’ studies focused on decline, illness, decrepitude, and disability. Ellen’s husband suggested they write an article called Look At All The Pills On Granny’s Night Stand. 8
They knew there had to be more than that, so they decided to ask women themselves. They assembled groups of women in or near their 70s in cities across the country. They developed a list of questions about the joys and challenges of turning 70, and each conversation group began to develop a life of its own. Conversations were inspiring and informative—lots of laughter and a few tears, many similar issues and some unique to the individual or the community. A group of AfricanAmerican women, who grew up in the Jim Crow years, shared stories of past and present racism, and noted that ageism was not ‘their issue’. What every group had in common was valuing time spent sharing their personal thoughts, experiences, and feelings with other women of the same age. For Jane and Ellen, the next logical step, then, was to start a blog, a place where women anywhere could gather together and join the conversation, virtually. Entries could be archived for ongoing interchanges. They sought and achieved a diverse, world-wide audience
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