For Keeps Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance

by Zackheim, Victoria

• ISBN13: 9781580052047
• ISBN10: 1580052045
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-23
• Publisher: Seal Press

Summary

Nearly every aging woman has a complicated relationship with her body. For Keeps, an inspirational collection of personal essays from writers on their ever-changing bodies, will resonate with every maturing woman. 

Editor Victoria Zackheim brings together women with unique voices who have all struggled, at one time or another, to make peace with the bodies that at times they don’t even recognize as their own. From a mastectomy that renewed one woman’s lease on life, to the emergence of gray hairs and wrinkles, each woman addresses aging, illness, injury, and life circumstances with humor and grace. 

These empowering essays explore the many ways that aging can be a positive, revealing transformation; Ultimately, For Keeps challenges every woman to rethink the way she sees her body through various life-altering changes in order to lead a more healthy, satisfying, and productive life.

Author Biography

Victoria Zackheim is a screenwriter, playwright, and the editor of six anthologies, including the highly acclaimed The Other Woman. She wrote the documentary Where Birds Never Sang: The Story of Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camps, which aired on PBS nationwide. Zackheim teaches creative nonfiction in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and is a frequent speaker and writing instructor. She lives in Northern California.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Every Eyelash, Mole, and Freckle	p. 1
Impossible Geometry	p. 14
Ex-Large	p. 27
What I Gave Up	p. 37
Death Becomes Her	p. 45
My Mother's Body Image, My Self	p. 57
Heavy Lifting	p. 67
The Body Is My Land	p. 79
How I Learned to Love My Body	p. 91
Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses	p. 103
Belly Wounds	p. 114
The Puzzle of My Body	p. 120
Dead Bone	p. 131
Spiraling Down: Overcoming Depression	p. 143
Kashim Hahayim	p. 152
Some Other Day	p. 163
Truth, In the Middle	p. 176
Afghanistan	p. 187
Betrayed	p. 198
The Teardrop	p. 210
The Best Birthday of All	p. 222
Full Exposure: What It's Like to Be the Only Naked Woman in the Room	p. 229
Feel the Pain	p. 233
Making Joy and Love in Seasoned Bodies	p. 242
Holes	p. 252
Joyride	p. 261
Divorcing My Breasts	p. 269
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.