Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

We live in a deeply misogynistic world. Perhaps no group of women receives a greater share of that misogyny than older women. But there can be a pleasure in defying the expectations of our world and our culture and flourishing as you become older, when the world turns its venom on you. In this powerful book, mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie offers a different perspective on getting older. Rather than resign yourself to a decline in your older years, Blackie suggests looking at life's latter years as an opportunity to learn new things and pursue desires and identities for yourself that previously felt out of reach. Drawing on mythology and cultural images, Blackie finds fulfilled and feisty role models in Western stories about older women and presents these possibilities to the reader as aspirations. Hagitude is about finding a new way of thinking about your elder years, reclaiming your life from our culture's misogynistic expectations and liberating yourself so you can go out with a bang and not a whimper.