What We Can Learn From Gloria Steinem.

January 21, 2020

This month sixty years ago, Gloria Steinem moved to New York to pursue her fledgling journalism career and, a dozen years later at age 38, started the pioneering Ms magazine. Given how influential she was in co-creating the modern women’s movement, the 85-year-old Steinem has some words of wisdom to offer those of us who are in the early stages of creating a “Modern Elder” movement.

“We’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond 50, 60, or 70….many people can only see a blank screen, or one on which they project disease and dependency. This incomplete social map makes the last third of life unknown country….We may not yet have maps for this new country, but other movements can give us a compass….first, rising up from invisibility by declaring the existence of a group with shared experiences; then taking the power to name and define the group; then a long process of ‘coming out’ by individuals who identify with it; then inventing new words to describe previously unnamed experiences.”