Editor’s Note: Willa Bernhard, Ph.D., a psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice in New York City from 1970-2002, is a member of the Human Sexuality Program at Weil-Cornell Medical College who currently spends half the year in Sarasota and the other half in New York City. In addition to her research project on women over 60, she serves on the boards of various foundations.

When I was in my early 70s and ended my practice as a psychotherapist, I wondered what life for other educated, middle- and upper-middle-class women who were in relatively good health was like as they got older. I wrote down 45 questions that interested me, and asked friends and colleagues to suggest women they thought would be interesting to talk to. Everyone said, “I know a terrific woman you should interview,” and so the 50 interviews I have done in the past five years became a study of vital women between the ages of 60 and 96. Half the women were married and half were widowed or divorced. All of the women enjoyed the interview and many have said they found the questions to be therapeutic.

Click here to learn the eight reasons why 60+ women are happier than you think.

The questions I’ve asked include: how they’ve changed from midlife on, how they assess their personal development, how they view themselves and life at the age they are now, what enhances their lives, and what their present and future concerns are. I’ve asked many of the women I’ve interviewed about their sexuality at the age they are now because there has been almost no attention paid to sexuality in women who are 60 and older.

Some of the many observations that I found most interesting are the following:

Almost all the women I’ve interviewed feel they’ve changed positively since mid-life and feel better about themselves than they did when they were younger. They have come into their own and developed aspects of themselves they didn’t have access to before. Many of the women who consider themselves late bloomers had difficult early years and made strides they never would have believed possible when they were younger. These women take particular pleasure in life after 60. Their heightened self-esteem has been one of the advantages of being older.

Ruth is a striking example, a late bloomer who, after completing a Ph.D. thesis that was very well-received when she was 70, has emerged from that success with a new sense of herself. She danced into our interview saying, “I’m 70 and I love being this age. I have never been as happy in my life.”

An interesting and important discovery was that growth for many followed a crisis in their lives, and that growth can happen at any age. When I interviewed Helen she was on a book tour promoting the second book she’s written in the past few years. Helen’s much-loved husband had died when she was 79. She was more depressed than she expected to be since her husband had been ill for a long time. Although she’d never been a writer, her granddaughter sent her a journal with the suggestion she write in it every day. She did, and when she felt happier some months later she showed the journal to a son — who is a writer — asking him to tell her honestly whether what she’d written would be of value to other widows. He sent her journal to his agent who sent it to a major publisher. When I met Helen, her first book was in paperback and she had developed a group of new friends around the country who had communicated with her because they had been so helped by what she’d written. Helen said she could never have imagined the richness and enjoyment in her life now.