Half a Century: Conversations at 50

As the author approached her 50th birthday, she began to wonder how other people her age were experiencing the prospect of their 50s, and so the idea for this book was born. She wanted to both understand her own generation and gain a sense of what being in our 50s means in the 21st Century now that life expectancy (in the developed world, at least) means 50 is closer to midlife than ever before.Over the course of a year she spoke with twenty-one people born between 1959 and 1969 in Australia and the United States; ten women and eleven men. Her questions were wide ranging but mostly she let them talk. People discussed their state of mind, relationships, attitudes to religion, dying, health, discrimination, advice to their younger selves, lessons learned, regrets and what had changed or stayed the same over the course of their lives. Here are their stories.