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Boomers, join these conversations for choices on growing older your way.

The 76 million baby boomers who once could not imagine life beyond age thirty now find themselves not only crossing the threshold of mid-life, but continuing to get older. For this youthful, active generation, the reality of aging can be a profound--and rude--rite of passage as confusing as the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and one for which society provides few tools. In Keep Choosing, Keep Living, three cousins invite readers to engage in a compelling conversation about what it means to "come of older age" in America, and to consider the real choices they can make to shape their lives.

Law professor Marilyn O'Leary, business consultant Sylvia Gaffney, and banker Jeanine Catalano are thoughtful, successful professional women-experienced speakers, writers, and leaders who "have it all" in terms of cultural expectation: close-knit families and successful and satisfying careers. Yet, at mid-life and beyond, each found herself pondering the realities of aging. They invite you to join in personal conversations about how the choices we make as we age determine what coming of older age will be like for us.

For many of us, the first startling inkling we have that we are older women comes from our own reflection in the mirror. “What Emily Dickinson said is true: ‘Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought,’” says Jeanine. “One day I got up in the morning, washed my face, looked in the mirror, and it was almost like an electric shock that threw me across the room. I looked in the mirror, and somebody had transposed my mother’s face onto mine. Her face was in the mirror looking back at me. And I had never thought I looked like my mother! I suddenly felt older. After all, my mother is twenty-plus years older than I. It reminded me of what Bernard Baruch said, ‘To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.’ In my case, it was closer to twenty. ” “My changing looks is what started my fretting over coming of older age,” says Sylvia. “It all began with what I call mirror wonder: I would pass by a mirror and wonder who the heck that person was staring back at me. The extra weight, the wrinkles, the waddle, the un-toned body, and that chemically-dependent blond couldn’t possibly be me. Then I felt remorse for caring so much about issues that are so mundane. After all, I’m an evolved, intelligent woman. Was I being shallow because I’d identified myself with the physical me for so many years”? For Marilyn, the realization came when she glanced in a mirror at the Honolulu airport. “Here I was, on my way to a long-anticipated vacation in the sun, and I could hardly believe the face looking back at me was mine. I knew that nothing I could do to my face or hair would change the fact that I was getting older, and that it showed!”