Lynne is the author of Dakota Blues, a novel about a woman’s midlife journey, reinvention, and finding one’s power in the second half of life. Her blog is  AnyShinyThing.com , and you will thank me for leading you to it. Everything Lynne writes makes me wonder why I didn’t think of writing exactly the same thing.  Maybe it’s because Lynne has that magical ability to get to the heart of what is important and to explain it in a way that enhances all of our lives. I am honored that Lynne is the first guest blogger on Guerrilla Aging:Navigating the Third Half of Life.

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 I began with the best of intentions.

When Renee invited me to blog about Guerrilla Aging, I figured it would be a snap, since I’m all about reclaiming our voice, power, and independence in what she brilliantly calls the third half of life. I live GA, because I refuse to play.

So many things I might write about.

I could tell you about the roots of my rebellion: a brutal childhood that made me crave my own job, car, and life. I was an early fan of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, not for the loony libertarianism, but for the concept of the sanction of the victim. The lesson of the story, as I understood it, was that you always have the power to step out of the game, to walk away and create your own rules. The only crime is to remain in place, accepting unearned punishment. As a desperately unhappy teen, I read this book a dozen times, and Rand’s message sank in. Now at almost sixty years of age, I will not wail and gnash my teeth about sagging skin and aching joints. I struggle every day to rise above it, to live beyond it, because I will not be a victim.

Or we could celebrate as I share with you all the cool stuff I’ve been learning lately about the aging brain and its emerging strengths, based on the great book “Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain,” by Barbara Strauch, Science Editor for the NY Times. For one example, people in the third half tend to be more optimistic and happy. They have a greater ability to regulate their amygdala, the emotion-generator of the brain, and they do this across the board even though it takes more effort and energy.

Or you could celebrate the fact that sometime in middle-age, the brain gears up, not down. It begins to reach across the corpus callosum to the opposite hemisphere, thus using both sides of the brain for problem-solving. This ability adds a layer of depth and nuance to our reasoning that one researcher says, “approaches the level of art.” Yep, that’s us. Totally bitchen.

Or I could give you dozens of reasons to feel powerful enough that your Homeland Security Alert System goes to RED when you see yet another damn article on the Huffington Post about certain celebrities caught looking – holy hell! – old. And once you do feel powerful, you’ll begin to scoff and click away from these articles instead of looking for reassurance in the deterioration of another woman’s face.

But I won’t talk about any of that, because none of it seems important right now. A few days ago, twenty children died in a classroom in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty kids who will never have the luxury of wondering if they should update their hairstyle or get a little work done, or if the culture perceives them as invisible.

Last week, Renee said, “My vision for this blog is to have a format for women in the third half of life to speak about what is real.”

This week, I say to you with all the pieces of my broken heart, your LIFE is real. Go live it.