I have always kept this blog and my subscription newsletter, “The Charmed Monday Minute” (www.victoriamoran.com/contact) separate and discrete, but someone sent me a “Question of the Week” for the newsletter that so touched me I wanted to share it with you, too. If you get the newsletter, pardon the repeat. Look at it this way: less to read. Another hundred-and-eighty-nine seconds to stretch or pet your cat or eat something delicious.

How can mature women have enchanting lives? I recently got a divorce after 29 years of an unfulfilling marriage. Earnings are small but I’m willing to start a new life with a positive outlook. – RG

Congratulations on your positive outlook and your new life! In so many ways, you’re at the best time of life. You have only yourself to take care of. You don’t care about “what people think” the way you once did. And you have the opportunity now to do things you only dreamed of at twenty-five.

The three challenges for a brilliant life in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond are: (1) health, (2) finances, and (3) a youth-oriented culture. You should be able to conquer all of these. First, health. You can rejuvenate and revitalize yourself at any age. My formula is MEND: meditation, exercise, nourishment, and detoxification. Become intoxicatingly healthy. Read books like Younger Next Year for Women, by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD (you’ll exercise six days a week for the rest of your life after reading this); and my Younger by the Day (the only daybook in the rejuvenation genre).

As for finances, get thee to a good financial planner—one who charges by the hour so she’s not trying to sell you something—and find exactly where you stand. It’s hard to live within your means when you don’t know what your means are. Then brainstorm wonderful ways for bringing in more cash. If you’re working, love your work, bless your money, tithe your income, and build your prosperity consciousness. (You’ll love The Game of Life and How to Play It and the other works of Florence Scovill Shinn–who really came into her own after a divorce back in the days when divorce was scandalous.)

Finally, the youth culture. We can’t really complain about it since we (I assume you’re a boomer, like me) invented it. The way to live at peace with the things are is to be comfortable with yourself. You don’t have to be twenty or thirty or even forty to be okay: you were okay before you took physical form, you’ll be okay when you leave it, and you’re certainly okay now.

Walk the lovely middle path between being the age you are, but living in a way that makes you feel ageless. Take really good care of yourself so people who see you think “attractive woman,” no age attached. Keep up with the culture: knowing about the music and pop culture of today doesn’t mean you have to like all of it. Just don’t get stuck in 1978 or 1996 or wherever you may have stopped being in touch with things. Keep up with technology. It’s where the world is now and where it’s going. And finally, identify with your core self, your spiritual essence, the part that never changes. That’s who you were at the junior prom and it’s who you’ll always be.