What Fifty plus women really need!

There is nothing more important than going for your biggest dreams to keep you thriving at any age but especially after fifty.

Why do I know this? Because I had a dream too. A big one.

In 1989 I declared that I wanted to be an artist, most specifically, a writer and director. And even more specifically I wanted write and direct film with strong female heroines concurring both personal and political set backs.

I came of age in the era of Reagan and Bush. Even though our world had come a long way since my mother’s generation after the women’s movement. I was raised in the backlash of feminism.

No one backed me. And I mean no one. My parents told me I should teach art. My grandmother said, “but someday you want kids.” When I asked my teachers for letters of recommendation, they told me that I should be an actress as I was such a pretty girl. Others said that film was a man’s game. And one teacher even brought out a history of film Dictionary to prove to me that it was about as likely that I could write and direct my own films as winning black jack in Vegas. The house always wins he said. And the house was built by men.

Meanwhile my classmates: boys I dated received wonderful recommendations about their future potential.

But there were still kernels of hope to hang on to Penny Marshall, Jane Champion, Rebecca Miller. Women who were doing what I dreamed of doing. There were a few of them. And I hung on to them like dog hung on to a ball sock.

I applied to film school, I didn’t get in. So I did the next best thing. I applied to M.F.A. Programs in Playwriting. Although theater was also steeped in sexism. It was a smaller playground and a landscape I was familiar with as I had been working in theater since girlhood.

The theater was good to me. In the mid-1990s, there was a whole movement of female solo performers. I loved that women were getting out there. Oh so brave, we were standing alone on stage. Theaters were producing us!

It was only years later, I realized that why theaters were producing solo performance women. Because it was cheap. They made large profits on our shows.

While male playwrights were getting produced with cast sized of eight or 10, elaborate sets and costly budgets, I was raking in a good profit for theaters. I had a simple set, (a chair and a desk), one actor: me, one writer: me and a reputation for being a workhorse. Yes, my work was good, bold, thought provoking, critically acclaimed but Artistic Directors knew a cash cow when they saw one , and I was it.

I traveled all over the place with my one woman show: city after city. It was exciting, hard, powerful. And yet, the cast parties were incredibly lonely. It would usually be me and the stage manager having a beer and a stale piece of supermarket cake.

I knew I had hit an all time low when I tried to recruit a taxi driver to have a celebratory drink with me as he pulled up to my hotel room in San Francisco. He was gay and on the clock.

He said no.

I was like most female artists of my time. We claimed our art, occupied some small territory but never got to big arenas or big budgets.

I remember crawling into my bed and thinking. I still want to direct and write a film. And I kept trying for it. Pouring over photography magazines. Reading about film directors. Renting so many DVDS that that the staff at our local Blockbuster knew my name.

Reading scripts and critical analysis. I kept it to myself.

I kept writing scripts. I wrote for both the theater and film. And I only wrote the stories. I wanted to see. Stories about women.

And finally in 2003, I sent a screenplay about a powerful female friendship to a producer. It got optioned. This was it: my big break. Wonderful producers. We loved each other. We loved the script. Game on.

It went no where. A few meetings. A few expensive lunches. A few comments from Executives “this just doesn’t make me feel good as a man.” And then as all producers have to do, when something isn’t selling, they moved on without me.

So I went back home, to the theater where I knew I could eek out a living using my creative mind. And I did. I wrote my biggest hit. It got a lot of attention. HBO called. I was over joyed. They wanted to develop my play into a possible screenplay.

More expensive lunches. Legal contacts. Wonderful conversations and again it went no where.

But it was ok, I got pregnant with twins. No, this isn’t a story about a woman who gave up her vision because the meaning of motherhood gave her everything she wanted in life.

However I did fall in love with my babies. And at the same time, I felt more engaged as an artist than ever. Have you ever seen how a baby wakes up every day with the kind of awe and wonder? When I slowed down and noticed, I was stripped bare — only to notice the incredible in the mundane. And I wrote a beautiful play about this while my twins were strapped on to my chest.

Yet in between the pumping of breast milk, the sticky plates and diaper rash, I would in the tiny minutes before sleep think about my dream. My precious dream of making a film. Of hearing my words said on screen (not stage) and directing the photography images to dance with my words. I would drift off to sleep now thinking of Lynn Shelton or Miranda July. Then a baby would cry and I would rise to tend to the task at hand.

Then in a blink of an eye, I was no longer a mother of young, young ones. They could feed themselves. They could walk to school on their own.

Another mile stone passed. I turned fifty. I also lost sight in my left eye. My right eye was still fine but if there was ever moment when I realized I wasn’t going to be around forever and that dreams, like everything else, have a shelf life, it was on my fiftieth birthday while toasting my new decade to come.

I had done so much. I lived a good life. I had almost everything I wanted-except that one dream I had as a young adult. I realized that for many decades I had listened to some really sexist messages and internalized them. How could I not? Through the turbulent twenties, the tiresome thirties, fabulous forties, I had heard again and again some lie about what was possible and that I should settle in.

As I raised my glass to myself, I decided that I would do whatever the hell I wanted.

And then there was a sign. I went to my daughter’s guitar recital, two hours of sheer boredom watching novice players while drinking warm lemonade.

Then Barbara took the stage. A white haired woman, slightly plump, and very beautiful. She got up to play the drums. She did a rollicking version of “sweet home Alabama.” That ended with a bang. When she hit the final beat, I jumped to my feet giving her a standing ovation. My daughter was mortified.

I knew I had to meet the bad ass white haired drummer.

After the recital, she told me how she had all her life had wanted to play drums. She had tried to break into the music business as young girl but found it impossible. And when she turned fifty, she decided to go back and try again.

Soon I met others like Barbara, women who not going gently into old age but who were going to kick ass until their asses were buried. There was Carol, who gave up her accounting job to open one of the best bakeries in Los Angeles, Catherine, an actor and mother of four who at age fifty decided to make her own film with no voice to guide her but her own.

When I saw other older women being visible with their dreams, it gave me the courage to try.

It took me only six months to from page to shoot. Yes, sometime the decision is the longest part of the process. Once you really decide to go, you go. And like a ship with wind on your sail, you glide with grace.

I wrote a short about climate change and women-two things I care deeply about. I then applied for a small grant for funding. I got it.

I started interviewing crew members. And because I was a first time film maker with a macro budget, all applications were young adults. I realized that everyone on my crew was at least 20–25 years younger than I.

No one wants to look like an old lady. That’s why women fall prey to drastic measures. It isn’t our fault. We get messages screaming at us every day that we aren’t enough. And once you hit fifty, the message is it is all too late — especially for women.

But let me tell you a secret. Young adults know how old you are. They don’t care! Actually, all they want is to see a woman, much like their own mothers who isn’t settling soft. Who isn’t packing up and leaving before the applause. They want to see women drenching every drop out of life.

Young adults will help you. They need you. And you know what. You need younger friends.

What is also great is that you’ll meet another important young adult, You! Your young adult self. The young adult inside of you who looks in the world and wants something.

There still isn’t enough talk about women’s aging or menopause. At least any talk about it without an eye roll or a grunt. But here me out, I honestly think if women went for their biggest dreams and did what they wanted to do, this whole hormonal shift would work itself out. And the world would be better for it.

On the final day of my shoot, my director of photography came to get me to look at some establishing shots. The sun was just coming up it was the kind of winter day in Southern California that makes people in Nebraska pack their bags. There were tall ladders, cameras and women taking pictures.

“Would you like to view the landscape?” My director of photography asked. I nodded.

I climbed the huge ladder. High above all the cast and crew who were busy prepping for the day’s coverage. I looked out over the valley that was the a golden hue.

Yes, I saw the landscape. I saw my climb. I saw all that brought me here. The view was amazing. Today is the first day of my the rest of my life..

Whatever you dream of doing, start.

After all, you aren’t dead yet! Anything can happen!