It has finally happened. Jane Fonda is officially over 70 and appearing in the Netflix streaming series “Grace and Frankie.”_ Along with Lily Tomlin, the two women have a story to tell._
With Lily playing Frankie as a very funny new age woman equipped with multiple strategies for dealing with life’s absurdities, difficulties and worries._ She uses meditation, yoga, herbal and food choices to mitigate all problems. _Throughout the series, Frankie comes up with a stream of complicated and often bizarre treatments to help Grace through their period of shocked grief._ Jane as Grace is very different than Frankie being the sophisticated perfectionist. Grace has the desired amount of class and conventionality that has been honed after so many years._ Their shared predicament is that their husbands ask them individually for a divorce._ The husband’s clandestine secret is that they are gay, in love with one another, and want to live together._ During the run of the series, it is the woman’s relationship that deepens as their honesty and ability to share, as women do, bring them close to one another.
At the same time that I was being delighted by Netflix’s offering, I happened to catch the Blythe Danner film “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” Blythe plays a woman in her 70s who is widowed for a long time and lives with her golden retriever. Her daughter lives on the East Coast._ She spends most of her time with her women friends over a bridge table and finding activities to pursue. One of her friends played by Rhea Pearlman in always coming up with ways to keep their life exciting and often gets them into amusing experiences. Blythe, in the course of the movie, forms a friendship with the pool cleaner, falls in love with Sam Elliott who dies, does some speed dating and gets stoned. _
The movie, in my opinion, is almost a documentary coming so close to how life is lived for the over-70 woman._
It is most interesting to learn what the creative voices have to say about this demographic. _One theme established is that there aren’t many men around and those that are are sadly unappealing._ Women support other women at this time in life and have very close, meaningful sisterly relationships._
To fill time women find many activities aka Frankie and her prison student’s art classes, and her meditation tapes. Rhea has her interventions like: “How about a trip to Iceland?” And in the end Blythe has a smile on her face as she drives off into the sunset with an adorable dog sitting in the passenger seat.
It seems that we in the 70 and over demographic must have enough members to be generating this much interest in the media. I for one have realized that my life is rather a cliché._ Excuse me while I pack for my trip to Iceland.

Ellen Blaufarb is a marriage family therapist and is chair of the Bond Oversight Committee for the Benicia Unified School District.

Sharing is caring!