Cheers to Sisterhood, Storytelling and a New Era

As we hit a full decade of telling tales, we’re partying and sharing some big news.

Chit-chatting at the “Pay Me” TueNight Live event in 2021.

There’s a certain magic that happens when women of a certain age come together. Maybe it’s our years of experience, wisdom and grit that creates this immediate warmth — a “we get it” vibe.

This past weekend, I was craving that kind of in-person connection. After the chaotic horror that unfolded in the Middle East this week, and the accompanying emotional weight we all felt, I was eager to attend a cozy gathering in my friend Susan’s home with the author Farnoosh Torabi. Farnoosh is a well-known and much-loved money expert. But her new book, A Healthy State of Panic, is not so much financial tips as it is personal stories about growing up as the daughter of Iranian immigrants in the ‘80s, and how we can allow fear in our lives to serve us and embolden us to take risks.

The group of 20 or so women at the event went around the room introducing ourselves. We each mentioned something we were grateful for — and so many of us mentioned the thrill/the peace/the joy at just being in a room with other people, the opportunity to sit with other women and just be. A sanctuary. Over the last week many of us had been in chat groups or online threads. Some were heated and ugly, some were kind and understanding, some were polarizing and harmful. But here, here we could look each other in the eye — New Yorkers from all different kinds of backgrounds — hug each other and feel that warmth of female connection. Nothing like it.

That afternoon reminded me of one of the chief reasons I started TueNight 10 years ago. (Yes, T. E. N.… W. T. F!…  years ago. But before we get all shocked at how time flies when you’re telling stories...)

Celebrating our first year with a little book of stories!

The idea was to tell the stories that were not being told: authentic stories from women in midlife, who are aging differently than any generation before them. But more than that, it was to find connection with other women from all walks of life and to share stories that used to be taboo — you know, menopause, sex and aging, choosing not to have kids— but were so real to the women I know. In the 10 years since, a lot of those topics have thankfully entered the popular discourse. There is an entire movement around saying your age and talking out loud about menopause. Gray hair is firmly in the cool category. ( Obv, I am biased.)

An early pre-launch brainstorm with friends in 2013 (Top row, L-R: Me, Susan Linney, Kate Kudish Zachs; bottom row: Kristin Romey, Kat Borosky, John Shankman)

Back in 2013, I was 46 and, as I wrote in this essay that kicked things off, I started to feel like the world had shifted around me. I noticed that, “at work, young women with topknots and thick black glasses eye you like a strange, irrelevant species. They don’t understand your references (Riot Grrrls not Pussy Riot). Wearing vintage is suddenly called ‘Grandad’s Style’ and it feels like everything old is rebranded as something new.” I was in a generational Twilight Zone. 

Loneliness had crept in. Where were these women like me who feel like, yeah, maybe we’re getting older, but we are still making shit happen:  traveling, forging new relationships, creating new careers for ourselves…

I enlisted friends Adrianna Dufay, Kat Borosky and Susan Linney into the endeavor in 2013; we hoped to tell these stories and also just have fun together making a website. We wanted to hear other stories from women about their experience in midlife — the difficult, challenging, thrilling and definitely the weird. There was Susan’s journey to sobriety and Deesha Philyaw's trip to find freedom post-divorce. We also tried to shine light on tales far removed from what then felt like the typical midlife topics. These were not about anti-aging serums or staying fit after 40;  these were emotional shifts and lifestyle changes that our Gen-X generation was uniquely poised to tell.

With TueNight, I aimed to mirror my own personal challenges and evolution. In the last decade, I survived ovarian cancer, gave up on fertility treatments, attempted a million diets and then gave up on those, too; went gray, lost a close friend and broke up with another, lost two cats and got a dog, deepened the bond with my partner, watched in horror as Roe v. Wade was dismantled, witnessed some of my favorite places shut down, revamped our website and then moved our digs to Substack.

There was a big mindset shift in that timeframe: My 40s was when I realized oh, hey, I’m getting old(er); my 50s is when I actually started to accept it. 

Somewhat.

I don’t want to pretend that aging is all fabulous because we know it ain’t. There are the painful losses, the painful joints, the fear of someone never hiring us again, but ALSO the feeling like we KNOW our shit backward and forward (but also, what was your name?), and the people in our lives matter much more deeply. I feel so much gratitude.

Back to TueNight….

We hosted parties in all kinds of spots — from the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn to this home in Manhattan. This was our “Body” theme in 2015.

Since those early days, scores (and I do mean scores) of women have participated in TueNight: told stories, created graphics, helped out at our live shows, introduced us to new folks, all to make TueNight a creative place for raw, honest, real midlife expression. This here is a list of pretty much everyone. We’ve published nearly 2,000 stories over the past decade; hosted 25 live storytelling events, received a a Webby nomination (for Ovarian Rhapsody) and two Webby honorees for the newsletter and the site, just 6 months after we launched. I want to give a big hug and a particular thank you to Liz Katkics Thompson, who, for the last two and a half years, has been our social media/ everything editor and has truly kept TueNight charging along in style.

This week Anne Helen Petersen of

Culture Study

published a Substack post called “How Millennials Grew Up and Got Old” and I gotta tell you, it feels like my Dinosaur Jr. essay over again. Anne wrote:

Something interesting happens when you realize your generation isn’t the center of the discourse anymore. I’m not even talking about being the locus of cool. More like: You just seem to matter less. People are less anxious about you, less mad about you — if anything, they seem slightly annoyed by you. You’re no longer the future. You’re the well-worn middle.

We even had a few notables tell stories! From our “First Jobs” event in 2020. (L-R: Mallory Kasdan, Robin Gelfenbien, NY Attorney General Tish James, Dee Poku, Stacy London, Me, Adrianna Dufay.)

Exactly. Welcome, Anne. I can’t help but feel bumped to the next age block. But I care so much less. I’m 56, and yup when I’m 66 I’ll be like, “Gosh, remember how young and dumb I was 10 years ago?” But for now, I feel excited about moving into my fabulous grand dame era.

Here’s the part that’s a bit scary to say out loud. At the end of this year, the TueNight chapter will be coming to a close. Candidly, it's been an absolute life-changing blast to do TueNight, but maintaining it has been challenging. (I do have a day job!)  And I want to find new avenues to write. We built the site 10 years ago to process a life phase that felt surprising and new, and now, not only have many of us adapted, but there's also a proliferation of platforms addressing midlife —  it feels less urgent.

Or maybe my muse has left the building. I need to honor that.

I’m not quite sure what I want to do next. I know I’d like to do more writing ( that might be here on Substack from time to time) and I have been trying to find time to work on a book for years. Midlife teaches that embracing new challenges often means bidding farewell to the familiar — or “jumping into that fear,” as Farnoosh says in her book.

Buttttt… before all that wrapping up and such (which I’ll talk more about as the year closes), we are going to do what we do best: come together to share stories. Yes, friends, there will be a huge, awesome 10th ANNIVERSARY BIRTHDAY BASH!! And YOU are invited!

Our theme for this one is “Ambition.” It’s a word that has been rolling around in my head for a while. When we’re younger we visualize this upward trajectory for ourselves, that career ladder to climb, the relationships we desire. Now, in our 50s, I think we’re more interested in finding the things that comfort our souls, bring us joy. We keep our loved ones close, we seek our “good life.” And we want to spend time with other women like you.

I hope to see many of you either at Caveat on the Lower East Side in NYC or online, where we’ll be streaming the event. Because it’s not just TueNight we’re celebrating. It’s YOU. (And you and you and yes, you.) It’s US. It’s the WE who stumbled into this stage of life with ideas about who we are and who we’d like to be. And dammit, we are, all of us, still becoming. That’s always worth a party.

(And, well, this grand dame does like throwing a party, after all.)

Thank you for being a part of this incredible labor of love and for joining us on this journey. Here’s to the stories we’ve shared, and all the ones yet to come…