Now that her daughters are adults, Carlotta Stankiewicz thinks a lot about how she and her sister will take care of their parents, who split up decades ago and live two time zones apart. And really, nobody among the foursome gets along with the others as well as they might like.
She’s also getting remarried in the spring and just quit her job, mindful of how difficult it might be to re-enter the workforce as a woman of a certain age. It’s a lot, but you wouldn’t know it from how well she finds the humor in the chaos.
This point in Carlotta’s life is one of the more vivid examples of that essental conundrum of middle age: finding the line between your options and responsibilities. After a career helping to build someone else’s legacy, she’s thinking of her own. She’s taking a leap and betting on herself, in part to set an example for her daughters. And she’s chewing over a puzzling question: After a contentious childhood, what do you really owe your parents?
We also discuss a few online dating hacks for 50-plus-year-olds, making a list of things she still wants to be able to do in her 70s and beyond, and waiting out Texas’s death sauna before you can clean out your attic.
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Cortés burns his boats
Yet another reference to the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
Jitterbug phones for seniors
Outlive by Peter Attia
Episode 58 with MaryBeth Lewis-Boardman
Balancing the opportunities of a new life amid the chaos of your old one.