CUT LOOSE
(Mostly) Older Women on the End of their (Mostly) Long-Term Relationships
Although breakups—whether celebrity or everyday—are a constant source of fascination, surprisingly little attention has been given to women who are cut loose in their later years. This is a book about (mostly) long-term relationships that have come apart. Each woman involved, the majority of whom are over sixty, tells of her experience through journal entries, essays, poetry, or stories. Although in many senses they have been abandoned, they have also been set free, untethered, and, for some, liberated sexually, mentally, or emotionally.
The book is divided into two major sections. The pieces in the first part are personal narratives. Among the varied voices, we hear from women in both heterosexual and same-sex relationships who have been left by their partners or who have decided to leave them. In the second section, the contributors look at being left and leaving from psychological, sociological, economic, sexual, medical, anthropological, and literary perspectives. Other essays explore the shared experiences of specific classes of women, such as single women, widows, or abandoned daughters.
Poignant, compassionate and insightful! Cut Loose is about the resiliency of women, showing how they gain the strength necessary to cope with life's most difficult emotions.
What was home / Laurie Silver
"Chapter four you break up": a journal / Octavia Nevins
Growing up middle aged / Marita Lopez-Mena
Reflections on April Fool's Day / Diane Raymond
Talaq, divorce / Zohra Saed
No more romance for me / Sue O'Sullivan
From Buddy to Joe to Harriet / Harriet Luria
So much for "Happily ever after" / Naomi Woronov
Dear Harry: unsent e-mails to an Ex / Susan Becker
My own dance / Margie Kaplan
Event horizon / Mary Stuart
The only life I have / Janice Stieber Rous
"Observing the cormorant" / Phyllis Berman
"Trashed" / Carol Burdick
Marriage comes and goes, but sex is forever / Anne Simcock
Last love: the nature of romantic rejection / Helen Fisher
Leaking affections: a socio-psychoanalytic view / Catherine B. Silver
What's really going on here? The therapist's perspective / Marilyn Ogus Katz
Divorce is economic suicide / Nancy Dailey
Single women at midlife: the always, already dumped / Nancy Berke
Snow white and rose red meet their "Prince" / Isabella Giovanni and Annie Peacock
Left alone: deserted by death or divorce / Merle Froschl
Splitsville: break-up literature / Nan Bauer-Maglin
Break-up art / Louise Weinberg
"Unholy matrimony" and "The chore" / Diana Festa
About the contributors
Widows' Words
Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between
Edited by Nan Bauer-Maglin
Gray Love
Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60
Edited by Nan Bauer-Maglin and Daniel E. Hood
