I’ve had the opportunity to have a lot of fun conversations on podcasts and other outlets. Here they are:
I had a blast talking to Jacqueline Raposo and Ben Rosenblatt on Love Bites Radio:
It was also great to talk to Janelle and Rob Alex on the Mission: Authors Talk About It podcast:
And while I didn’t always agree with WABC’s Errol Gluck, I really enjoyed talking to him:
http://glucksolutions.podomatic.com/entry/2016-01-15T09_56_03-08_00 …
On the non-audio side, M.M. Finck at Women Writers, Women’s Books asks me some really interesting questions. Here’s our Q&A.
Sara,
I wondered if you’d listened to the three-part podcast by Dear Sugars advising single women in their late 30s looking for love.
Each episode to me highlighted some of the cluelessness you cover in your book about the way well-meaning people talk to older women who would like to be in a relationship.
For example, Part 1 featured Lena Dunham as an expert, though she is 29 years old, has a boyfriend, and a TV show about attractive girls in their 20s. Part 2 featured an economist scaring older women to stop being so picky. Part 3 featured Kate Bollick, which is great. But it unfortunately ended with advice from Cheryl to “get right” with yourself first and perhaps you’re the one you have been looking for.
I don’t doubt that the Sugars mean well, and are speaking from a place of love. And I have to admit that Part Two was so terrifying I decided to go on dates with single fathers. At the same time, perhaps because neither of the Sugars have been a single woman in her 30s for an extended period of time, I felt incredibly demoralized by listening.
Dear Grace, I totally hear you and if there is anything I would like to change about my past it would be not to waste time on listening to experts who told me that I should do this or that, or was not enough this, or first had to be this. And I would also have interrupted every “friend” who thought they had to give me advice because almost every time it was hurtful and pedantic. Did they really think I did not know that the perfect man does not exist or that marriage is not always simple (but I would have given everything to have some of their marital fights because they ultimately meant that there was a real connection in their life). None of these friends were perfect, as a matter of fact their lack of empathy showed that they were rather insensitive, something that surely can’t be said of me. Yet they were and are in a couple and I am still single in my early fifties. Was single for long spells in the past. I had some relationships in which I gave a lot of love, for which I had high hopes but which ended because the man could not love me back and I want more than some crumbs.
I think of myself as a wonderful lady; I am smart, kind, love life, have a good sense of humour, get things done. And I am certainly physically attractive. Yet I have not found love. I have decided to stop wondering why it did not happen and also stopped doing an active search or strategy; the latter made me feel uptight and unspontaneous and I never got any results anyway. Does it hurt that I am single and spend so much years of my life single? Yes it does and it always will. It’s my heart’s desire to find that one man who I love and accept and who loves and accepts. But I am no longer focused on it and I have decided to do everything I ever wanted to do in my life even if it is on my own. It probably helps that I had not too much trouble to accept that I would not have children. I would have had them had I met a partner earlier in my life but I was always at peace with the idea of not having children. I realise that for those women who found that very important, being single against your will is even harder.
The only advice I want to give you is to try to make every day a good day, even if your circumstances are not exactly as you would have wanted them. And I wish and hope that you will find love.
Thank you for your kind words. I hope you find love too!