Landmark birthdays—you know, the ones with a zero at the end—never bothered me. But for some reason, the year before a big one always hit me hard. Blowing out 19 candles signaled that I had just one year to enjoy the rest of my tenure as a carefree

teenager. Turning 29 meant the clock was ticking on my twentysomething status. And celebrating my 39th started the countdown to my induction into middle age. Don’t even get me started on 49, which was accompanied by a more intense version of the same foreboding: “This is it! The final year before all hell breaks loose!”

So far, all hell has not broken loose.

Instead, my twenties ended up being an exhilarating marathon of love, career and travel. My thirties were a joyous blur of childrearing and community building. And my forties were a decade of personal and spiritual growth. I’m a relative newbie in the 50-plus camp, but every day I’m more curious about the challenges, evolutions and epiphanies that lie ahead.

Looking back, I think the reason for my uncertainty about aging is that midlife is often depicted as a big ol’ dead end. In corporate America’s quest to sell expensive face creams, prescription meds and self-help books, we are constantly being told what we’re getting less of as time goes by: Less career opportunity. Less time with our kids before they grow up and leave us. Less sex drive. Less memory retention. Less muscle mass and collagen. And let’s not forget less estrogen! We’re regularly reminded how that elusive little hormone is plummeting faster than we can say HRT.

It’s enough to make you lock yourself in your anti-aging-cream-stocked bathroom and cry. Until you realize that buried under all this negative midlife hype is a muffled little message trying to break through to the surface—the news that in our 40s and 50s we actually have so much more, not less, of some significant stuff. And that we have so much more to offer the world.

For one thing, we have more experience—which gives us more perspective, clarity and insight. Hopefully, we have more focus on what matters in life, as well as more compassion for ourselves and others. We have more humility—we definitely have a surplus of that. Midlife is also accompanied by more meaningful relationships. More self awareness and confidence. More peace of mind. I would argue that for some women, this life stage also comes with more sex appeal, stamina, career growth and glow—c’mon, have you seen J.Lo lately? I know in my heart that more adventures, connections and illuminations lie ahead. In fact, ladies, I would argue that life can be more interesting and fulfilling than it’s ever been.

It can be more beautiful.

That’s not to say we don’t feel our age sometimes. Reading glasses suck. Crow’s feet are no fun. I’m not in denial or suggesting the struggle isn’t real—just ask my soaked sheets after an occasional night sweat. Like you, I want to know why it’s suddenly so challenging to keep the weight off, or have a glass of wine without waking up at 3 a.m. My girlfriends and I discuss these topics all the time. Almost every conversation touches on something involving our age, and it’s not all superficial (like who’s going to be the first to try a cosmetic procedure). Heavy issues like career uncertainty, health scares, empty-nest syndrome, midlife dilemmas, and aging parents are also top of mind. But no matter how real and fraught our discussions are, they always end with us laughing about how we’d rather be this age than 25. Or even 35.

I’m a person who likes to dig for answers. However, during my quest for age-related enlightenment I found that most women’s health and lifestyle resources clump all females into one huge demographic. But do those workouts and beauty regimes fare as well for us as the thirtysomething set? Is that career and financial advice relevant to someone who’s been in the workforce for more than two decades? Are we facing the same relationship challenges that we did when we were younger? No, no, and absolutely not. I wanted information specifically tailored to our age group, that was relevant to us right now. But it just wasn’t out there.

That’s what I want More Beautiful to be for you: an age-appropriate resource, sounding board and community all in one. Together, we’ll come up with strategies and solutions for both our serious and not-so-serious midlife issues. We’ll put everything into perspective—did I mention we now have more perspective? I promise, we’ll tackle even the hardest topics with lively discussion and a good dose of humor.

It may not always be fun getting older, but supported by a community of likeminded women it feels totally doable, even exhilarating. So c’mon, grab your Peepers and all the self-compassion you can muster. Together, we’re gonna do this thing.

xo Maryann

This story first appeared in More Beautiful, a new website and podcast geared toward women in their 40s and 50s. Please visit More Beautiful for more stories, more conversations, and more inspiration for smart, savvy women navigating midlife.

I’ve always been a little bit of a chatterbox. In the seventh grade, my music teacher threatened to ban me from the middle school concert because I couldn’t stop talking to my BFF during choral practice. Once, during my teenage years, a homeless man in New York’s Penn Station looked up from his spot on the terminal floor to tell me and my sister (another chatterbox) to shut up because our animated conversation was interrupting his nap. And early on in my career, as I played back a recording of me interviewing someone for a magazine, I realized that I was doing almost as much talking as my subject.

Damn, girl.

Through the years, I’ve learned to cut back on the chatter and make a conscious effort not to interrupt when someone else is talking. But sometimes, especially when I’m excited about the subject at hand, I still find it challenging to shut up for an extended period of time.

Sure, the gift of gab can work to your advantage in social situations like parties and job interviews. But besides getting you kicked out of choral concerts, it does have its drawbacks. The most important of which is that while you are talking, there’s one extremely important thing you cannot do very well.

You can’t listen.

The older I get, the more I realize how crucial it is to be able to listen. And I’m not talking about that half-assed “yeah, yeah, I hear you” look you give people when you’re pretending to listen but are actually preoccupied with your thoughts. I’m talking about really, truly listening to someone. I’m talking (there goes the talking again) about being in the moment, fully engaged in what another human being has to say. Without thinking about your to-do list, or about where you have to be in a half-hour. And without worrying about the next thing you need to say.

“The practice of listening is one of the most mysterious, luminous and challenging art forms on earth,” writes Mark Nepo in his beautiful book Seven Thousand Ways To Listen: Staying Close To What Is Sacred. “The task is to slow down enough and be present enough to enter each moment that calls…Are you letting fresh experience enter and combine, or are you obsessed with sorting and analyzing what comes your way? Are you able to listen and receive, or are you observing and manipulating? We all do both.”

As a journalist, I’ve found that shutting up and listening is the only way to get a good story. Yes, starting an interview with some friendly banter can help put my subject at ease. But I can’t ask those “in the moment” follow-up questions—the ones that often yield the juiciest quotes—if I’m focused on checking items off a prepared list. And I certainly won’t pick up on the person’s mood if I’m not quietly observing those gestures and tones that reveal a lot about someone’s personality.

But what about those deadly silences that might erupt if I lose track of my agenda or don’t formulate a response quickly enough? It’s a normal impulse to fill those awkward moments with chatter, but then nothing unexpected has time to develop within them. The person doing the talking has no room to reflect or reveal something deeper. Some of the best quotes have come from my sources after a long, borderline-awkward pause. So I remind myself it’s OK to let them happen.

This concept also rings true with my interactions with my kids. My daughter started conversing at 6 months, probably because I talked to her nonstop. But whenever I took a break from telling her to “look at the doggy” or “see those pretty flowers on the tree,” that’s when I got to enjoy her babbling and cooing and smiling at me. I’d given her time to absorb what I’d said, then look around and formulate her own reactions. Again, a lot of great stuff can happen during those pauses.

The older I get, the more I understand the virtue of restraint. We go through life striving to be more outgoing, more revealing—especially in this age of social media. But sometimes it makes more sense, and allows us to let more in, to go slowly.

We all want our lives, our relationships, our communication with people to be meaningful. Sometimes we want it all to be extraordinary. We want the most important people in our lives to understand that we understand them. That we hear them.

A few years back I took voice lessons with a great teacher who taught me that yes, sometimes you need to hold a note for effect, but other times you should just release it. Now, as you can imagine, I am inclined to sing the hell out of something. To belt it out. But there’s a time and place for lingering, and sometimes holding back is the way to go.

For many of us, restraint is difficult. (But there’s so much to express! So much to let out!) But Nepo explains that listening itself is the ultimate form of connection. “We speak deeply by listening with heart to the Source, no matter who or what conveys it,” and by translating that presence not just into any old speech, but into meaningful speech. So that when something finally comes out of your mouth, it’s more than fluff.

I just love that. Because we all want our lives, our relationships, our communication with people to be meaningful. Sometimes we want it all to be extraordinary, in no way superficial or ho-hum. We want the most important people in our lives to understand that we understand them. That we hear them.

Nepo wrote this book after he learned that he was losing his hearing. They say we don’t realize what we have until it’s slipping away, so maybe he was only able to comprehend the gift of listening as his ears began to fail him. Luckily, he grasped the beauty and complexity of this ability—including the fact that listening involves much more than hearing. It requires you to open your heart and mind as much as your ears.

Why bother? “Because listening stitches the world together,” Nepo writes. “Listening is the doorway to everything that matters…And none of what matters reveals itself unless we stop to listen…This is the work of being human, from which no one is exempt.”

One day during her second grade year, my daughter came home from school with her first big assignment: to write a report on an ancient Egyptian god. For my child’s subject, the teacher chose Nephthys, a goddess who had two crucial but vaguely similar jobs: to supervise the work of housewives, and to lead women into the underworld.

Nephthys was also famous for killing her husband, disguising herself as her sister, then getting her brother-in-law sloshed and seducing him into impregnating her. Nice role model, that Nephthys. She makes wearing a vile of blood around one’s neck or stepping out of a limo without panties look like the work of Mother Theresa. … //READ MORE

The other day on the phone, my mother told me again. “You do too much. Why do you do this to yourself? You’re always running around. You should learn how to say no.” She’s said these things to me for years, partially because she remembers how exhausting it is to be a mom. But also because she can’t understand why I take on so much responsibility that falls outside what she considers the normal realm of family obligations.

Sure, I’m taking care of a home, a marriage, two kids and a dog, as well as attempting to get a new business off the ground. I also freelance, volunteer a lot of time to my children’s school, attend conferences, and very often host meetings and get-togethers in my home. This is stuff my mother didn’t do when she was raising a family—partially because she wasn’t cursed with the same kind of frenetic energy I have, but also because she had no real need—like I do, living so far from my family back East … //READ MORE

My daughter and I recently saw The Giver, a film set in a utopian society that has eliminated its history and the human emotions associated with it. A boy named Jonas is trained by someone called the Giver, an old guy who has stored inside him all the community’s memories—feelings included—and must transfer them to his protégé.

After watching the movie, it occurred to me that people roughly 35 and older should serve as “givers” to the next generation, and the memories we should pass down are that of a former technological age. Think about it: Today’s kids are the very last generation to have parents who were raised before the digital revolution. This is a big responsibility for all of us who were born in 1980 or earlier. Our children need to “receive” this precious knowledge from us, before words like “Xerox” and “collect call” are forgotten and the emotions associated with these experiences have gone the way of the typewriter. … //READ MORE

I may have the only kids in America who don’t go gaga over Disney World.

After a recent five-night stay in the “happiest place on earth,” I realized that my children have much different happiness criteria than the Mickey Mouse-and-rollercoasters recipe that floated my boat three decades ago. Yes, they enjoyed Space Mountain, shooting targets with Buzz Lightyear and eating popcorn at 11 o’clock at night while watching fireworks. But for them, Disney World wasn’t the dreamy, end-all vacation it had been for me when my parents took me at age 10. Besides the fact that Disney is now competing with high-tech video games and lowered attention spans, why was the experience so different for my kids?

Full disclosure: When we visited Mickey’s hood last month the temperature in Orlando, Florida, was close to 100 degrees, with 90 percent humidity. It was peak tourist season, so of course the lines to all the rides were excruciatingly long and the restaurants overflowing, despite our savvy use of FastPass (a great new service for those who like planning ahead) and online dinner reservations. But those weren’t the deal breakers for my kids, ages 11 and 8. Sure, they bitched and moaned about the heat and the crowds. But the real complaints were about stuff I never anticipated. … //READ MORE