Practical information to get your personal affairs in order compiled in one easy-to-read volume. Based on a seminar developed by the authors.

A stressful, protracted divorce. A difficult, painful death of a beloved husband. And suddenly, after age 50, you’re on your own again. Your children have moved out, your parents are aging fast or deceased, your friends’ lives continue onward, seemingly unchanged. Being suddenly single after age 50 can be terrifying, but eventually it can also be liberating. It can be fraught with worry and decisions you’re unprepared initially to make, but it can also be a time to reevaluate, reestablish, and reinvent. It can be financially and emotionally unstable at times, but it can be the start of a new chapter, or the discovery of someone you didn’t know you were, or could become, after the grief of a loss so difficult. Long-time friends and authors Barbara Ballinger and Margaret Crane have a lot in common. Both lived in the same city for years. Both are writers. Both married their husbands right out of college. Both are mothers of grown children who have left home. And both had aging parents when these difficult journeys began. Both found themselves alone, husbands lost to divorce and death, two separate situations that were equally traumatic— for Barbara, a divorce that took four years to end, and for Margaret, a five-year, gut-wrenching siege of myriad cancers that ended in death. Barbara and Margaret struggled but discovered not only that their new lives were, indeed, worth living, but that the insight gleaned from their experiences could help other people in similar straits. The result is Suddenly Single After 50, an honest and riveting, yet funny and poignant guide that provides advice for those who find themselves divorced, widowed, or otherwise suddenly single just about the time they start getting those AARP cards in the mail and while many of their friends are gleefully discussing retirement plans and toasting milestone wedding anniversaries. Suddenly Single After 50 is told with authenticity, wit, and compassion. They discuss living alone, attending social events alone, eating by themselves, sleeping alone, walking and traveling alone, then how they also came to feel they were not alone, not really, with loyal friends and family. They share how their once right-sized houses suddenly felt empty, too big, and too full of stuff that no longer made sense. They write about all the legal and accounting woes that befell them. And they tell readers what it’s like to be over 50 and dating again—after decades out of that scene, which had changed in unfathomable yet often hilarious ways. Suddenly Single After 50 addresses what life is really like when it’s suddenly shaped as single. It helps readers understand the grief, frustration, and sadness alongside reawakening into the world. Anyone who finds themselves suddenly single in middle age and beyond--or knows someone who is--will find in these pages both advice and reflection, support, and a way forward.

A beloved French author, journalist, editor and fashion blogger, at 49 years of age, makes a deliberate choice to remain single and celibate, a truly liberating decision that opens up a number of questions about the over-sexed society in which we live.

From the acclaimed author of Imagine Wanting Only This—a timely and moving meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society. There is a silent epidemic in America: loneliness. Shameful to talk about and often misunderstood, loneliness is everywhere, from the most major of metropolises to the smallest of towns. In Seek You, Kristen Radtke's wide-ranging exploration of our inner lives and public selves, Radtke digs into the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another, and the distance that remains. Through the lenses of gender and violence, technology and art, Radtke ushers us through a history of loneliness and longing, and shares what feels impossible to share. Ranging from the invention of the laugh-track to the rise of Instagram, the bootstrap-pulling cowboy to the brutal experiments of Harry Harlow, Radtke investigates why we engage with each other, and what we risk when we turn away. With her distinctive, emotionally-charged drawings and deeply empathetic prose, Kristen Radtke masterfully shines a light on some of our most vulnerable and sublime moments, and asks how we might keep the spaces between us from splitting entirely.

Originally published in hardcover in 2021 by Aladdin.