Alone at fifty By Michele Tjaden, an Experience 50 Podcast listener Why is it so many people think that because I live alone, I must be lonely? I went through a divorce at the age of 52, and have lived alone for 7 years. What comes as a surprise to…
Category: Midlife Perspective
Making Friends Over 50
How to make friends after 50 By Mary Rogers You need to make friends. Somehow, it just happens. We look around and realize that our social circle has shrunk like comfy jeans in the dryer. Maybe our posse never was as big as we wanted but now, yes now, we…
Mary’s Podcast Playlist
Experience 50 listeners regularly ask me which podcasts I listen to when I’m not recording my own. Okay. Sharing my podcast playlist feels a bit like telling you to look in my purse. I can’t explain how everything got in there and I may feel some shame. Loser lottery tickets,…
Happy 50?
Happy knows happy at 50. Just because your hair is thinning, your son is flunking out of college and you can’t seem to muster the courage to take your mother’s car keys away, you could still be happy. Yes, really. It does seem that with age the sweet get sweeter…
Modern Elders
This column appeared in the January 12, 2019 edition of Northern Express. Each of us has a role to play in keeping young professionals in our region. In my case, it’s a matter of returning a favor granted to me when I was a young professional. There is a new…
Midlife Talking Heads
Best Experience 50 Lyrics EVER Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime puzzled us 35 years ago, but now it makes perfect sense. I just had to get old enough to understand! And you may find yourself Living in a shotgun shackAnd you may find yourself In another part of the worldAnd you…
What are you doing?
Are we growing or aging in our 50s? Am I growing? Certainly. When we were younger, we focused on the next achievement, and the next, and the next. That doesn’t seem as important to me now at 55. Or maybe the types of achievements have changed from the more obvious…
A Family Reunion Gone Very Badly
Originally published in Northern Express BY MARY KEYES ROGERS | NOV. 17, 2018 When it came to my attention that my deadline for this column would coincide with the midterm elections, I figured my rage or joy would fuel my words. Hardly. Election day came, and then it went. Meh. Some wins,…
Support Mary’s Addiction
So, I have this little addiction to podcasting. You may drink too much, shop too much, or gamble too much. I podcast. It could be worse, I know. If I could choose my addiction, it would be shopping because the day after a shopping binge I could take everything back…
Bystander Failure
From across a four-lane thoroughfare, I witnessed something. It was Labor Day weekend and I now find myself feeling ashamed by how I responded; or rather, how I failed to fully respond. Maybe. I think that when you and I hear stories of bystanders failing to help a stranger in…
A SHEW OF ILLUMINATION | Why 4th of July Fireworks matter to me
A SHEW OF ILLUMINATION originally published in Northern Express BY MARY KEYES ROGERS | MAY 19, 2018 For anyone with an overactive love for snow, they can still find a dirty pile of winter stubbornly refusing to melt. But there is reason to believe that this seemingly never-ending season is in fact…
Another opinion on gun control
Something surprising happened when I took on the challenge to write my opinion column on gun control. Originally published in Northern Express Something surprising Mary Keyes Rogers Full disclosure: I have never touched a gun. I am terrified of guns. My only interaction with guns has been my emotional response…
Jails and Prisons: The New Asylums
Welcome to Experience 50. When did Americans decide that incarceration was acceptable housing for the seriously mentally ill? Have you noticed that in midlife you’ve become less tolerant of things that fundamentally make no sense? I, for one, am so frustrated by government and institutional policies that ignore the experiences…