I just finished reading Mary Pipher’s book Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age.”  Pipher is a clinical psychologist and author of Reviving Ophelia, a 1994 best seller about the challenges of raising today’s teenage girls. 

Pipher illustrates her observations about aging with stories about her own experience and that of a diverse group of women, mostly from around Lincoln, Nebraska where she lives.  She acknowledges the mistakes that led to her insights, and we benefit from her experience.  She urges us to seek new sources of joy as we age and shows us where we might find them.

According to Pipher, recent census data from the United Kingdom tells us that women between the ages of 65 and 79 are the happiest people of all.  Not sure what that means for us 80-somethings.