The following stories are all true. They are from clients, friends, women on planes, trains, subways, buses, conferences and strangers in coffee shops. Important details have been changed to protect the identity of the women who shared their loves with me, but everything from the heart has been left as it was at the moment it was told. The stories are written here in a "stream of consciousness" style, flowing freely from my memory of the telling. I am especially grateful to the women; those now over the age of seventy-five, who blessed me with their loves because we tend to forget, categorize, and dismiss the depth of love and romance in older people as we do the intensity of teenage love. This book was never intended as therapy but to reaffirm for women of every path that they are not alone in their need to love and be loved. I think of it as a gathering of women somewhere safe where we take turns sharing our stories of love lost and found and sometimes lost again - and when the telling is done, we hug and hold one-another and say, "I know - I understand." In spite of my own fears, I know it's okay to be powerful in love, to be empowered by it and to be vulnerable in it. I'm sorry I cannot tell, in this little book, the remaining hundreds of stories stored in my memory files. Perhaps another time...
About the Author: Bette Epstein lives in Dallas, Texas where she maintains a circle of "extended family" and makes a living doing the work she loves, but her heart is in Kentucky. She is a mom, grandmother called Sugar, sister, devoted friend, hypnotherapist, dowser, teacher and mentor to young women. Bette loves life, HaShem, her family, her dogs and cat, younger men, her friend-girls, dancing, telling stories and laughing and then dancing some more. Bette thinks of her life as improv because she just sort of makes it up as it goes along, pausing now and then to be grateful. She was blessed by the friendship and mentoring of wise older women beginning with her mother, Winnie. Some of the things she learned from them: Hope is not a plan!; there are three things in life that will always win - ego, hormones and gravity; if it ain't cute, cover it up; there is such a thing as really bad sex; pain is a given, but misery is a choice; and there is no audience, so go ahead and dance . . . sing, love.