What if we stopped separating women by age and started connecting them through experience? I have been thinking about that question for a long time because I consider myself a multigenerational connector. My Sunday Stories are not meant for one particular decade of womanhood. They are for women of all ages because I have learned that wisdom, curiosity, heartache, courage, and reinvention do not belong to a number on a birth certificate.

We are so accustomed to putting women into decades. Eighteen. Thirty. Fifty. Seventy. Ninety. As though each number creates an entirely different woman. Life does not work that way. A young woman can carry wisdom far beyond her years. A woman in midlife can discover an entirely new beginning. A woman who has lived seven, eight, or nine decades may hold a story that could save someone younger years of heartache. Every age has something to offer, and every age has something to learn. That realization has changed the way I think about Honey Good and the stories I want to tell.

Why I Want to Speak to Women of All Ages

When I began writing, the people working with me insisted that I write only for women over fifty. “You need a niche,” they told me. I listened because they had more experience in the digital world than I did. Yet somewhere inside, I knew I was ignoring my own instinct. I connected with younger women then, just as I do now. I have friends, colleagues, daughters, granddaughters, and acquaintances of different ages, and I have always been fascinated by what happens when women with different life experiences sit together and talk.

Over time, especially after my Ultimate Concierge became ill and I suddenly found myself in the driver’s seat of our life, I learned something about myself: I have to trust my own instincts if I want to be content. That realization has been very freeing. I am no longer interested in joining cliques or thinking exactly like everyone else. At the same time, I adore bonding with women of every age. In that sense, Darling, I have my cake and eat it too.

When I feel something in my gut and get that familiar adrenaline rush, I pay attention. Sometimes I act first and worry about the result later. Doing something new takes courage, energy, and mental strength, but I have learned that living only by what feels safe is not very interesting. My first lesson to women of all ages is this: push fear aside long enough to listen to your instinct. I have made mistakes. Plenty of them. But nearly every mistake taught me something and eventually carried me to a new height. Now I am listening to that instinct again, and I believe it is time to take Honey Good in a new direction.

A Woman Is More Than Her Age

Every morning when I walk into our kitchen, I notice the large clock on the wall. When I write, I glance at my watch. When I pick up my iPhone, there is the time again. We have been trained to measure life by clocks and calendars. But I would rather measure mine by stories and lessons. At twenty-five, I wondered about a million things. At forty, I had matured into a woman who could see possibilities opening before her. At fifty, I thought I was old. At sixty, I became a writer. At seventy, I finally stopped assuming I was over the hill and began to soar.

Why? Because time itself became my teacher. With time came lessons, experiences, mistakes, relationships, losses, adventures, and knowledge that no book could have handed me in quite the same way. Birthdays tell us how long we have been alive. They do not tell us how much we know, how curious we remain, what we still want, what we are capable of beginning, or whose story we may need to hear.

I have been a student, wife, mother, grandmother, widow, girlfriend, world traveler, shopper who shopped until she dropped, hostess, businesswoman, author, Florence Nightingale caregiver, and reinvention artist. Occasionally, I have also been the woman who walked straight into trouble simply because I wanted to see what was on the other side, and somehhttps://www.honeygood.com/honey-goods-favorite-items-in-her-closet/miow I thrived. I have made mistakes and wonderful decisions. I have changed my mind. I have started over. That collection of experiences is what I bring to the table.

 

I Have Earned My PhD in Living

A woman, whether she is twenty-five or seventy-five, does not necessarily need someone standing over her and telling her what she should do. Sometimes what she needs is another woman saying, “Let me tell you what I learned.” That is where I come in. I am not your therapist. I am not your life coach armed with a perfect five-step program. I am Susan Honey Good, and I like to say I have earned my PhD in living.

My education did not come primarily from hundreds of advice books. It came from authentic participation in a grand-scale life. I have spent a lifetime collecting things that cannot be purchased: wisdom, experience, resilience, curiosity, and a healthy dose of nerve. And I want to share those things with women of all ages.

I want to talk about choosing a partner, recognizing your value, friendships, money, style, travel, entertaining, confidence, fear, heartbreak, work, reinvention, loneliness, invisibility, family, illness, beauty, joy, and mistakes. In other words, I want to talk about the business of being a woman. Not an older woman. Not a younger woman. A woman.

What Happens When Generations Mix

I know I am a connector of people across generations because I have watched what happens when age stops being the organizing principle. Think about family holiday dinners. I have attended dinners where everyone loves one another, the food is delicious, and the hostess has thoughtfully arranged every detail. Yet I have noticed something interesting about how different families seat their guests. At some tables, the generations are separated. Young people sit with young people. Older adults sit with older adults. Children are placed together. It is very orderly. At other tables, everyone is mixed together. And that is when something wonderful happens.

A great-grandmother asks her college-age grandson what he is studying. A young mother admits she is exhausted, and an older cousin reassures her, “You are not doing anything wrong. This is simply a hard season.” A child listens to a story from someone seventy years older. An older relative asks a younger person about technology, music, dating, or work. The children listen. The adults listen. The older relatives listen. Before long, the table is laughing loudly, and nobody seems particularly interested in clearing the dishes. That is multigenerational connection.

We often separate people by age because we assume they have little in common. Children need children. Young adults need young adults. Older people need older people. I do not believe that. A child may need an older woman’s patience. A young woman may desperately need the perspective of someone who has already survived the decision she is facing. And an older woman may need the energy, humor, ideas, and fresh questions of someone decades younger. When we separate women by age, we lose stories that might have helped us.

 

The Evening That Proved It to Me

Years ago, I saw this idea come alive when The New York Times asked me to host a multigenerational salon in our home. To be frank, I was beyond nervous. I wanted the conversation to flow naturally, and I was bringing together ten women between the ages of twenty-eight and ninety-one who did not know one another. Their lives could not have been more different.

Among them were women interested in politics, a dog walker, a young mother, a hairdresser, an interior designer, an investment consultant, a marketing executive from a large beauty company, an author, a great-grandmother, and my own mother at age ninety-one. When they arrived, I gave each woman a journal and a pen and invited everyone to sit around the coffee table in our living room. I thanked them for coming and asked each woman to introduce herself and share a short story.

Then something magical happened. The older women began asking the younger women questions. The younger women asked the older women questions. Nobody needed encouragement. Nobody checked the age of the woman sitting next to her before deciding whether her story was interesting. They talked. And talked. And talked!

The conversation continued for more than two hours until the photographer finally interrupted because she needed to leave. The women did not want the evening to end. In fact, they asked me to turn it into a monthly gathering. They had stopped looking at one another’s ages and started looking at one another’s lives. That evening has stayed with me. Different generations. Different histories. Different stages of life. Yet once we sat down together, the women talked about love, friendship, children, careers, beginning again, technology, beauty, style, pets, and the hundreds of things that make up a woman’s life. Nobody cared about the age factor.

Wisdom Does Not Travel in One Direction

I am not suggesting that a twenty-eight-year-old woman and an eighty-year-old woman are living identical lives. Of course they are not. But underneath those differences, women across generations often find themselves asking remarkably similar questions:

• What do I want?
• Who can I trust?
• What do I do when life does not turn out as planned?
• How do I travel alone?
• How do I make better use of my time?
• Where should I invest my money?
• Should I go back to school?
• How do I stand up for myself?
• Should I leave this relationship?
• Am I too old to begin again?
• Am I too young to ask for more?
• Should I wear the red lipstick?

The circumstances may change, but the questions travel from one generation to another. That is why I believe wisdom does not move in only one direction. Older women have lessons to share with younger women, but younger women also have enormous amounts to teach those of us who came before them. We need one another.

I Want My Stories to Travel

This brings me back to Honey Good. I do not want to put women into boxes marked by decades anymore. I want my stories to travel. I want a younger woman to read a Sunday Story and think, I never thought about it that way. I want a woman my age to read the same story and think, I needed to hear that today. And I would be delighted if the two of them talked about it with one another.

My Sunday Stories will continue to come from the life I have lived and the lessons I have learned. There will be stories about love, courage, mistakes, style, friendship, reinvention, beauty, money, family, caregiving, fear, illness, joy, loneliness, and the complicated, delicious business of being a woman in today’s world. Some stories may make you stop and think. Others may send you into a daydream that you decide to turn into your reality. Some may simply make you smile. But I hope each leaves you with a little knowledge, a new question, or a reason to begin a conversation with another woman.

And Now, I Want to Hear From You

I do not want to do all the talking. That is why Ask Honey matters so much to me.I want to know what keeps you awake at night, no matter your age. I want to know what excites you, what frightens you, what decision you keep postponing, and what dream you are secretly afraid to claim. Tell me about the relationship you cannot figure out. Ask me about starting over, friendship, marriage, money, style, loneliness, travel, confidence, family, work, or a dream you believe you may be too old, or too young, to pursue. No question is too young, too old, too complicated, or too unexpected. Write to me at AskMe@honeygood.com.

And there is something else I have been daydreaming about. I would love to create another place where women of all ages could gather around these conversations, almost like that salon in my living room years ago. A place where a woman in her twenties could share a question, a woman in her forties could offer what she has learned, and a woman in her seventies or eighties could add a chapter none of us had considered. A modern multigenerational table. For now, it is a dream taking shape in my mind. But Darling, you know me. When an idea gives me that familiar rush of adrenaline, I tend to follow it.

Sometimes the thing we need most is not advice from an expert. Sometimes we simply need another woman, perhaps decades younger or older than we are, to look across the table and say: “I’ve been there. Let me tell you what I learned.” That is what I want Honey Good to become. A table with room for every generation. And I hope you will pull up a chair.