The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life

Burack-Weiss, a social worker specializing in working with the elderly, weaves writings from key female authors into this stirring and enlightening reflection on women and aging. The author chose her profession, she now recognizes, due to her own fear of aging, “shoring up resources of information and insight to sustain me when I became one of them.” Here, she turns to favorite writers, such as Maya Angelou, Joan Didion, and Marguerite Duras, who have “grown old in print,” calling them “my Lionesses. ” The themes she finds in their work include society’s lack of interest in “old” women and the conflict between mothers and daughters. The excerpted writings also reveal a wide range in responses to the aging process, from May Sarton’s sense of being surrounded by “loving kindness” to Marilyn French’s rage at dependency. Burack-Weiss writes frankly and eloquently about the difficulties of growing older, observing that “the threads that united the fragments of my personality into a coherent whole, a recognizable self, have grown slack” and left “bits and pieces of who I was to cobble together [into] who I will now be.” Filled with warmth, wisdom, and knowledge, Burack-Weiss’s work eloquently encourages dialogue and understanding about the inner and outer life of aging women. (Oct.)