Gail Sheehy
Gail Sheehy
Gail Sheehyis an American author, journalist, and lecturer. She is the author of seventeen books, including Passages, named by the Library of Congress one of the ten most influential books of our times. Sheehy has written biographies and character studies of major twentieth-century leaders, including Hillary Clinton, both presidents Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Her latest book, Daring: My Passages,is a memoir...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth27 November 1937
CountryUnited States of America
Eventually, all mentor-disciple relationships are meant to pull apart, usually sometime in the mid-30s. Those who hang on, eventually the mentor drops the disciple, and that's no fun.
As we reach midlife in the middle thirties or early forties, we are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to pursue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties.
Transformation also means looking for ways to stop pushing yourself so hard professionally or inviting so much stress.
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning. As Dostoevsky put it, "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." The real fear should be of the opposite course.
If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living.
Like everyone else in the first weeks after the tragedy of 9/11, I was looking frantically for some way to help.
There is nothing in the world as great as finding your sexual excitement in your fifties.
There certainly are middle-aged children who have an oh-my-God, Mom's-gone-wild reaction if Mom starts to date. But what they should recognize is that if Mom has a boyfriend, she won't be nagging them about how they have to come to her for Christmas.
It seems like, to me, somewhere between 30 and 35 is a really, really good time to turn your eggs into babies.
I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.
I'm a liberal, but I think there's so much that the private sector can do and does do.
Character is what was yesterday and will be tomorrow.
Back in 1968, when I was 30, my entire life blew up. I had a life plan, and it collapsed for no rational reason.
I actually interviewed other people about myself, and that alerted me to the fact that I had to really investigate my memories.