Aging as a Woman
As a sociologist, I’ve spent my career examining how personal experience is shaped by institutions; how the behaviors, attitudes, and thoughts we assume are simply “ours” are, in fact, socially constructed. Here, I turn that same lens on myself.
This blog is where I explore aging as a woman, using my own observations and experiences as a starting point for larger questions: What does it mean to age as a worker, a mother, a spouse or partner, a friend, a community member? How do our roles shift, and how do we shift with them…or against them?
This is my corner for that exploration. I’m not here with answers so much as honest questions, offered with the hope of being relatable and genuine rather than polished or prescriptive. I’m searching for some deeper meaning in womanhood and aging, and I suspect I’m not searching alone.
If you’re asking similar questions of your own life, I hope you find some comradery here, or at the very least, a place that feels welcoming to the questions you’re carrying.
—Marcella Gemelli
Posts
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Delighted with Themselves
What’s allowed the witch at Halloween, and what’s sold to the rest of us. I’ve been passing by the same house on my drive home this week, the one a few streets over that goes all-in on Halloween: fog machine running, a scarecrow slumped against the mailbox, tombstones in the grass, skeletons in various poses,…
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“Us Gray-Haired Ladies Have to Stick Together”
I’m at the grocery store doing the mental math I always do — which line is shortest, and which cashier is fastest? Because I’m there at least weekly, I know all of the people who work these registers by face and rhythm, so this is a calculated decision. The worker I sometimes steer clear of…
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Starting here: what I’m noticing at 50
I noticed it first in small, almost embarrassing ways I caught myself pausing before answering a question I would have answered instantly a few years ago, not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I wanted to actually mean what I said. I stopped finishing sentences the way I used to, the ones that…
Videos
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
—George Eliot
