My mother had demonstrated that the best way to defeat the numbing ambivalence of middle age is to surprise yourself - by pulling off some cartwheel of thought or action never even imagined at a younger age.
Gail SheehyAh, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.
Gail Sheehychildren may need challenges and high-risk conditions in order to develop the self-generated immunity to trauma that characterizes survivors. To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.
Gail SheehyJournalism today is obviously in a major transition. Going to journalism school, learning how to write, working your way up in a little paper in Decatur, Georgia and then moving to Atlanta and then maybe to New York: it's just over. You have to have a whole other set of skills now. You have to be a videographer, you have to do social media. You can't do a long, thoughtful, insightful piece if you don't have the time to do reporting, particularly reporting around somebody who doesn't want to be known or an issue that doesn't want to reveal itself.
Gail SheehyThis is a woman [Hillary Clinton] who for many of her 52 years never cared a fig about her appearance, but in the chrysalis of transformation from political wife to independent woman, the jawline has been chiseled, the dominatrix eyebrows weeded, the weight dropped, and the result is a woman who obviously enjoys for the first time being called beautiful.
Gail Sheehy