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Amazing Grays, baby boomer women, boomer women, Maggie Crane, Maggie Rose Crane, midlife, midlife crisis, midlife women, online book promotion, women in midlife, women's nonfiction
Amazing Grays: A Woman’s Guide to Making the Next 50 the Best 50
Maggie Rose Crane
Self-Help
FTA Press
281 pages
Prior to publishing her book, AMAZING GRAYS, Maggie Rose Crane spent a decade crisscrossing the country conducting leadership and life-skills workshops for women. Born on the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation, she has experienced many life passages common to her peers: college, marriage, divorce, single motherhood, career changes, and creating a blended family. At the core of her message, shared through writing, speeches and workshops, Maggie exposes the fears and anxieties that haunt many midlife women – and reveals how to mindfully navigate the turbulence with wisdom, perspective and practice. She also serves as a guest editor for the Dove Real Women/Real Beauty Campaign website. (www.dove.com) Born and raised in Wisconsin, Maggie now resides on the West Coast. You can visit her website at http://www.maggiecrane.com.
Maggie Rose Crane has written an informative and engaging book for boomers who are unwilling to become feeble old women with boobs in their laps, dreams on the shelf, and “Memory Lane” their only destination. This book is for maturing women who are staking their claim as part of a dynamic and growing movement of ‘Amazing Grays’, women who want to challenge stereotypes about aging and 
create a fresh start for the second half of life – but aren’t quite sure how to pull it off.
When an epiphany in the hair salon convinced Maggie to try life without hair dye, she found herself face to face with the fears and questions that unsettle many maturing women living in a culture obsessed with youth and manufactured beauty…
Who am I now that I’m no longer young and fertile? Will I still be desirable as I age? Will I be invisible? Is this the beginning of the end? Is it too late to make a difference? And how on earth do I stop coloring my hair if I want to?
Balanced somewhere between a memoir and a how-to, Maggie uses her personal journey as a springboard to shatter stereotypes about aging. She shares her most poignant insights and experiences on what it means to be a woman “of a certain age,” and offers suggestions on how to mindfully chart a graceful course through the physical changes, emotional challenges and mental gauntlet of aging. With honesty, humor and plenty of research, Maggie lights the way for women who want to live with vibrancy and joy – regardless of their hair color!
In this provocative and touching book, Maggie explores, with humor and compassion, the many aspects of growing older – from changing social and family roles to changes in body and appearance, even changes in perspective and purpose. She shares how redirecting her focus from her packaging to her essence gave her the perspective to age mindfully and joyfully (after, of course, a bit of kicking and screaming).
Table of Contents:
- Young…Forever?
- What if It Really Is All in Our Heads?
- The Culture Made Me Do It
- The Key to Aging Gracefully
- Shift Happens (When You Choose It)
- How Do We Age?
- Back to Your Roots
- Becoming a Silver Sage
- Riding the Cycle
- Why Are Hormones So Darned Important?
- Natural vs. Synthetic Hormone Replacement
- Sex, Stereotypes and Statistics
- A Weight is Lifted
- Boomer Angst
- Follow Your Bliss
- A Code You Can Live By
- The Happiness Quotient
- Turning Within
- The Workings of a Conditional Ego
- Practice makes Present
- The Power of Grace
AFTER SPENDING THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES in a Madison Avenue culture of youth and beauty, many of us are feeling uncertain of our place in a society that seems not to honor or appreciate the aging. Our roles are changing and we are beginning to question the time and energy we put into maintaining the look our our youth. We wonder:
Will I be invisible as I age? Will I be respected? Will I be loved? Why do my looks matter so much? What am I so afraid of? Who am I now that I’m no longer of reproductive age? Will I still be important? Will I be seen as a person of interest? Is everyone this scared of dying? I’m a Boomer…can’t I do this my way?
Thankfully, we boomers now have information available to us that has turned the whole notion of what it means to age on its head! True to our history, we’ll continue to make it up as we go along, testing the waters and pushing into new possibilities.
One thing f or certain is that whatever we counted on to define us in the past will change in the future. Appearance, talen, roles, responsibilities – it all changes. Rsisting change – trying to hold on to what was – is like holding your breath and hoping you’ll eventually get your way. It just doesn’t work.
We have come to a crossroads, and the direction that each of us chooses to take will determine how we experience the rest of our life.
Rather than sit back and allow our fears of aging to determine our experience of aging, let’s take hold of the wheel and steer ourselves toward a new reality, one that supports us in being vibrant, active and engaged members of society. Rather than hide away any evidence of our years, we can shift our focus to a more authentic and joyful way to age: with grace and intention…and gusto!
It’s a scary, sweet, and exciting time of life; an opportunity to redefine who you are now, and decide…
Who will I become?
Purchase AMAZING GRAYS: A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO MAKING THE NEXT 50 THE BEST 50 at Amazon!
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