2026 Greetings to you all!

We send best wishes for this new year to all our subscribers and blog participants.
At this, the 10th anniversary of our book, 70Candles! Women Thriving in Their 8th Decade, we’ve been busy working on our 2nd edition.
We share the explanation for this and our thoughts at this remarkable moment, in the book’s opening welcome note that follows.

Welcome to Our Second Edition!

We recently learned that the publisher of our first edition, Taos Institute, will no longer carry print publications after the end of 2025. We know there have been many changes since we began this project 15 years ago, but we believe this book continues to be incredibly relevant. Hence the birth of our second edition, with print and Kindle versions available on Amazon.com. Welcome!

As we prepared to publish this new edition of 70Candles! Women Thriving in Their 8th Decade, we took the opportunity to look back both on our original process and on more recent developments since we began the modest project we launched in 2010.

We began as members of the Silent Generation, the last of whom turned 70 in 2015. We hoped what we found would help the Baby Boomers coming up behind us, those born between 1946 and 1964, those who’d begin to turn 70 in 2016.

First, of course, we reviewed the literature that was available. And then, with the help of a younger techie colleague, we started our blog 70Candles.com — which, to our amazement, continues to be active today. It contains an ever-growing treasure trove of conversations among women across the country and the world, sharing their joys and challenges at this stage of their lives. We’ve even enjoyed some recent recognition, as 70Candles.com was rated by FeedSpot as #56 in the top 100 women’s blogs of 2025. And we continue to receive feedback from bloggers, such as this recent comment: “Thank you for your support. One of the problems with aging is that one becomes a stereotype. 70Candles! is one of the few places where aging women are still granted individuality.”

Anyone can access the blog, but we recommend becoming a subscriber, at no charge. That way, you will receive email notices as soon as a new entry is posted.

Shortly after initiating our blog, we began to host gatherings across the country for women at or near 70. We wanted to see if there were similarities, or perhaps geographic or cultural differences between groups. There was laughter and tears at every gathering. Women delighted in conversations with agemates about anticipating and living in our 8th decade.

Recognizing how meaningful these groups were to participants, we initiated a 70Candles.com Gatherings page. It can be accessed on the blog, where to-date 68 women, from Halifax to Hawaii and beyond, have expressed interest in being part of a similar conversation group. Many offered to lead or organize a gathering in their geographical area. If you’re interested in such a group, check out that list, or add your name and email address to initiate a group near you. Our booklet, 70Candles! Gatherings: A Leader’s Guide, is available on Amazon to help you get started. You can contact us at 70Candles@gmail.com if you find someone near you who may have omitted their contact information. We will try to help.

This book, then, combines insights from our original research and, mostly, what we learned from the earliest blog posts and the gatherings we hosted. In 2015, and now in 2025, as more and more women turn 70, questions and answers continue to emerge about what to expect and how to navigate this stage of life. We know the need for guidance persists, and we’ve seen how our book has been helpful—for many years, now.

In the chapter “What Lies Ahead,” you will find a vignette about Nina. It offers predictions about life in the future for women our age, predictions that have in many respects already become our reality. We do now live in a world with self-driving cars, drone deliveries, and multifunctional wrist devices. Screens of all kinds keep us connected (and disconnected), and much of what we need can be easily ordered online. Because more of us are living to 100, five generations might gather.

And so, women now in their 70s face a present in which they find common themes and anticípate a future full of surprising innovations. Psychological and medical research is rampant with the urgent messsage that loneliness and isolation are dangerous—at any age, but perhaps particularly as we age. More than ever before, we now understand the importance of social connections—of love, and friendship, and companionship. Publishing this second edition of 70Candles! continues our mission to bring 8th-decade women together through the book, the blog, and actual in-person gatherings. This project continues to warm our hearts…and we hope yours as well.

Warmest regards,
Jane and Ellen

Screenshot