Friday Happy Hour: Finding clarity everywhere I look

This week's menu: proud American ex-wives, midlife women claiming their sexual power, a beautiful death, and why I'm embracing the Japanese concept of yutori.

Hello friends!

Friday is here! We made it through another week. Whew! Are you as excited as I am for the weekend?

This week I change things up a little by focusing each week on just one of the four guideposts of my life—Clarity, Connection, Community and Creativity—so I can go deeper and wider in sharing all the goodness I find, here on Substack and elsewhere. I will rotate through these themes each week in my Friday Happy Hour series for paid subscribers.

If you have a book, poem, podcast, film, series, ritual or practice that is bringing more clarity into your life, I would love to hear about it in the comments. To leave a comment, click on the headline to jump to my Substack page and scroll to the bottom. Connecting with my readers is one of my favorite parts of writing these posts.

So here’s what brought clarity to mind, body, heart and spirit this week:

Clarity in divorce and new beginnings

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz is pre-ordered and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

lyz

, a journalist, writes the wonderful Substack

Men Yell at Me

. This American Ex-Wife is described as “a deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!) in America today, and an argument that the former needs a reboot.” We learn that nearly 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women who are tired, fed up, exhausted, and unhappy, and that far from the media portrayal of divorcées—sad, lonely, drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine—Lyz makes an argument for the advantages of getting divorced, framing it as a practical and effective solution for women to take back the power they are owed. This checks out in my experience. Divorce at age 62 has been liberating and empowering in so many ways. Among the sad and lonely moments, are so many more that shimmer with possibility. Listen to this great conversation between Lyz and

Sara Fredman

on Sara’s Substack

Write Like a Mother

. This quote in particular from Lyz jumped out at me:

“It has a happy ending, but the happy ending is not another relationship. The happy ending is community. The happy ending is peace and being able to be fully myself in a way that I've never experienced before.”

A full-bodied YES to that!

Clarity on why sexuality in women at midlife is HOT

Erin Keating, the smart and sassy host of the podcast Hotter Than Ever, is weekly listening for me and this week’s episode, “Claiming Your Sexual Power in Midlife with Eva Clay” had me turning up the heat—I mean, the volume. Clay is a sexologist, psychotherapist on a mission to illuminate the ménage-a-trois of soul, sex and science, and a seasoned practitioner of sexual tantra for over a decade. Here’s a little bit of what Erin and Eva discussed:

• Why midlife is far from a sexual retirement phase for women, but can be a vibrant era for sexual exploration and fulfillment

• How actively pursuing sex, pleasure, and orgasms contributes to women's empowerment, health, and overall success

• Unpacking the biology behind perimenopause and menopause and how it strips away the inclination to accommodate others

• Defining sexual archetypes in midlife: the Queen and the Witch  (spoiler: I’m a Queen but I’m working on my Witchiness)

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