Naked at the Helm: Independence and Intimacy in the Second Half of Life by Suzanne Spector

Naked at the Helm: Independence and Intimacy in the Second Half of Life by Suzanne Spector

At age thirty-nine, Suzanne Spector found herself looking at what conventional 1950s thinking had brought her. Yes, she was a wife, mother of three, and successful school director. But she was also neglected in a sexless marriage, and feeling and as if the passion and juice of life had passed her by.

She began with two questions: Who am I, really? and Is it too late?

After divorcing her husband, Suzanne set out to discover who she was as an independent woman with curiosity, questions, and lust for life. Tracing more than four decades of self-discovery and intellectual, spiritual, and creative exploration, Naked at The Helm is Spector’s story of becoming the captain of her own ship in midlife. Her adventurous journey led her from a nude beach on Ibiza at forty-one to a Siberian banya at fifty-five to a hot love affair at eighty. Her intellectual quest, meanwhile, led to a second career as director of a world-renowned psychology center, while deep friendships with women, including her daughters, sustained and nourished her through decades of global travel.

These probably would not be the tales your mother or grandmother would tell about her life, but this eighty-six year old’s ebullient memoir of the second half of her life will move you to weave some rich new yarns into the tapestry of your own story. And no, it’s not too late.

Suzanne grew up in Rockville Centre, New York and graduated from The Birch Wathen School and Barnard College. She earned an M.S.W. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in psychology from The Union Institute.

She was the founder and Director of The Center for Open Education in Bergen County, New Jersey and became the Director of the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, California.

She took up writing in her late seventies and considers it her third career. She was a winner of the 2019 San Diego Memoir Showcase writing competition on the topic I Didn’t See That One Coming. Her entry, Dancing Hearts Emoji was performed in the Showcase in October, 2019 and published in the award-winning anthology Shaking the Tree: Brazen Short Memoir, Vol,3.

Comfortable in her own skin, wrinkles and all, Suzanne continues to embrace life with an expansive verve.