This is (Almost) 52: Empowerment Author Meg Stone Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"Nothing is surprising about being a childless, queer Gen-X-er in my early 50s, because I grew up having no idea what my life would look like."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.” (*The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire is exclusive to Oldster Magazine. ©Sari Botton)
Here, Meg Stone, author of The Cost of Fear: Why Most Safety Advice is Sexist and How We Can Stop Gender-Based Violence responds. -Sari Botton
PS If you’re enjoying the work I do here at Oldster, please consider supporting it by becoming a paid subscriber. 🙏
P.S. A reminder that in my book, everyone who is alive and aging is considered an Oldster, and that every contributor to this magazine is the oldest they have ever been, which is interesting new territory for them—and interesting to me, the 59-year-old who publishes Oldster. Also, I’m trying to foster intergenerational conversations in which elders learn what it’s like to be younger, and younger people learn from elders what it’s like to be older.
When you see a piece featuring someone younger than you, try to remember when you were that age and how monumental it felt. Bring some curiosity to reading about how the person being featured is experiencing that age. Or, if you prefer, wait for the next piece featuring someone in your age group. In the last few weeks alone, I published pieces by several people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Not every piece will speak to every reader. I’m doing my best to cover a lot of ground and be inclusive. Please work with me! Thank you. 🙏 - Sari Botton.
Meg Stone is the author of THE COST OF FEAR: Why Most Safety Advice is Sexist and How We Can Stop Gender-based Violence (Beacon, 2025). Since 2005, she has served as the Executive Director of IMPACT Boston, an abuse and violence prevention organization. Meg’s writing has been published in Huffington Post, Newsweek, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Dame, and Ms. She lives in Cambridge, MA, with her partner Mal and a shockingly large collection of musical theatre cast albums.
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How old are you?
I’ll be 52 in August.
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
I don’t associate myself with a numerical age, but I feel deeply identified with Generation X. As I push past 50, the number of times I’ve explained myself by saying “I’m a Gen X woman” has increased exponentially.
As kids and teenagers, Gen X lived through one of the most consequential successes of public health, as well as a number of profound failures. We were kids and teenagers at the dawn of the movement to stop drunk driving, which succeeded at decreasing alcohol-related traffic deaths by 50% between 1980 and 2000. People with wide-ranging interests and politics showed that they could work together to solve a problem. Everyone from grieving parents to health experts to the police to alcohol companies used facts and evidence to guide them toward solutions that actually worked. The combination of designated driver campaigns, sobriety checkpoints, changes in state and federal laws, and even a few cheesy after school specials worked.
But while we got quality information about drunk driving, we got a steady diet of lies about violence. Though most violence against children is caused by people they know, we were inundated with “stranger danger” campaigns. Cops came to my first grade classroom said we should never to talk to strangers. There were pictures of missing children on milk cartons and a lot of us grew up with a low key fear that someone would abduct us. (A 1987 poll by the public option research firm Roper found that 76 percent of children were “very concerned” about being kidnapped.) So while our fear was directed at strangers, most of us never learned how to recognize coercive control from people we knew. Most Gen X women I know are still afraid in dark parking lots or walking alone at night. If I hadn’t started working at a domestic violence crisis center when I was 19, I’m sure my fear of strangers would still persist.
My sophomore year of college I took a class called Child Abuse and Domestic Violence. Some less-than-conscious part of me was drawn to gender-based violence. One day, the guest speakers were a woman who worked at the local domestic violence crisis center, and a survivor who was getting support from the organization. I remember listening to them speak and feeling like I’d found my home. I would go on to do five internships at YWCA Battered Women’s Service, change my major to Women’s Studies, and devote my life to abuse and violence prevention.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
Just right. Though I only feel in step with peers who are also LGBTQ+ and childless. Our milestones are not as recognizable as the heteronormative ones like engagement, marriage, kids, and grandkids, but if I were to define them they would be: (1) Joy and terrified excitement of coming out; (2) Grief and anger with people you love who react badly; (3) Creating a chosen/queer family with an urgency that borders on fanaticism; (3.5) Getting entrenched in how perfect your chosen family is and how horrible your genetic family is; (4) Gaining more nuance and perspective on both families and forgiving a lot of people including yourself; (5) Settling into yourself, realizing that a backpack covered with political buttons is not your whole personality; (6) Seasoned and wise; and (7) Full on queer elder. I am in the seasoned and wise life stage and I love it in ways I could not have predicted when I was sadder, angrier and more entrenched in the earlier stages.
That said, I have a couple friends who are around the same chronological age as I am, but who came out much later. Despite our similar ages, I feel like their elder.
What do you like about being your age?
I like having clarity about my purpose in life. I’ve been in the same job for 20 years and with the same organization for 23. I know what I’m doing, but I’m also constantly growing, changing, and questioning. I like feeling skilled and capable, and trusting myself to take thoughtful risks.
What is difficult about being your age?
Pain and soreness. I’m more physically active in my 50s than I was in my 20s. I lift heavy weights. I practice Brazillian Jiujisu, a martial art that involves sitting on your opponent and trying to choke them. I run three miles once a week, though a lot of people can walk faster than I run. But at my age, being active means being sore. Some part of my body hurts most of the time—my feet, or quads, or these tiny muscles in my forearms that I’ve never thought about before I turned 50.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
Nothing is surprising about being a childless, queer Gen-X-er in my early 50s, because I grew up having no idea what my life would look like. Other than the occasional gay man who did our hair or made floral arrangements, all the adults I grew up with were heterosexual parents. On top of that, executive directors of mid-size nonprofit organizations are not compelling TV characters like cops and doctors, so I couldn’t look to the media for role models. So going back to the previous question, the only thing that’s surprising is how many ways the muscles in the human forearm can be made sore by Brazilian jiujitsu.
My partner Mal and I were among the first same-sex couples to get legally married in Massachusetts in 2004. So I’ve had the traditional milestone of a wedding, but instead of showers or shopping for dresses with champagne-drunk bridesmaids, we spent our engagement demonstrating, lobbying, and fighting a proposed constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as one man and one woman. So rather than a milestone, our wedding felt like getting to be part of history. Either that or just activism as usual.
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
It has given me clarity and confidence. It has taken away the ability to get up after long periods sitting without feeling sore.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
I feel less attached to the people I love and more connected to them. I used to be afraid that my friendships weren’t strong if I didn’t see people frequently or have holiday traditions that approximated a heteronormative family. Now, I love spending time alone. I trust my community and I know I can nurture relationships without overwatering them.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
I never had children. That is my biggest departure from age-related milestones. I’ve watched a lot of people go from provisional adult to real adult when their first kid is born, and then from joyful chaos to calm with a pinch of sadness when their kids leave the house. Since I didn’t have those obvious milestones, my transition to adulthood and my later transition to middle age have felt less obvious.
My partner Mal and I were among the first same-sex couples to get legally married in Massachusetts in 2004. So I’ve had the traditional milestone of a wedding, but instead of showers or shopping for dresses with champagne-drunk bridesmaids, we spent our engagement demonstrating, lobbying, and fighting a proposed constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as one man and one woman. So rather than a milestone, our wedding felt like getting to be part of history. Either that or just activism as usual.
I’m only making this connection now, but I love to-do lists. I insist on writing mine on paper because I LOVE the physical sensation of crossing off tasks. I need my milestones to be small and numerous and personal. And I need to feel in my body (or at least in my jiujitsu-sore arms) what it’s like to reach them.
(Ed. note: I totally relate! - Sari See:)
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
My favorite age is my current age, 51. I imagine 51 will be my favorite age for the rest of my life, because it’s the age I was when my first book came out. Publishing a book was a dream I feared I’d never achieve, so I always associate my current age with the delight of walking into a bookstore and seeing my book on the shelves.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
My friend Martha Thompson is my aging role model. My favorite thing about Martha is that she never treats younger people like mentees just because we’re younger, and that inspires me to treat her as a friend, not a “wise older friend.” It gives me hope than when I become a queer elder, I don’t have to sit on a rocking chair and dispense wisdom while ranting that the kids who didn’t grow up in the middle of the AIDS crisis don’t know anything about anything.
Martha is a retired professor and self-defense teacher who has said many times, “I have retired from some of my professions but I have not retired from my passions.” She does academic research that inspires her, no longer constrained by the demands of academia. She’s respected and beloved in the feminist self-defense community and involved in local activism. At the same time, she is also truly retired. She travels, takes care of her grandkids, learns new languages, participates in book clubs and otherwise enjoys her life. Martha is a true role model for how to stay vibrant and change with the times wihtout letting go of the hard-won wisdom of previous generations.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
My “fashion statement” for most of my adult life has been, black jeans are dress pants, all shoes must be comfortable, and throwing a scarf over anything makes it an outfit. Not a lot has changed in that regard. That said, I was an outlandish dresser as a teenager—I once wore a plastic sail boat on my head to school, another day I wore a Kleenex box on my head. On top of that, I always wore bright, clashing patterns and mismatched socks.
Health-wise, my biggest adjustment is needing more time for rest. I can only stay vibrant if I have a lot of down time. When I was younger I loved inviting people over, but now, my favorite thing to do on a weekend is get in my pajamas, cook dinner and go to bed early.
I’m more physically active in my 50s than I was in my 20s. I lift heavy weights. I practice Brazillian Jiujisu, a martial art that involves sitting on your opponent and trying to choke them. I run three miles once a week, though a lot of people can walk faster than I run. But at my age, being active means being sore. Some part of my body hurts most of the time—my feet, or quads, or these tiny muscles in my forearms that I’ve never thought about before I turned 50.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
I refuse to stop lifting heavy weights and I refuse to take up a calm, sensible martial art. Intense exercise makes me feel vital, alive, and strong, and I’m not willing to give that up.
What turn of events had the biggest impact on your life? What took your life in a different direction, for better or worse?
My sophomore year of college, when I still thought I wanted to be a high school teacher, I took a class called Child Abuse and Domestic Violence. Some less-than-conscious part of me was drawn to gender-based violence. One day, the guest speakers were a woman who worked at the local domestic violence crisis center, and a survivor who was getting support from the organization.
I remember listening to them speak and feeling like I’d found my home. I didn’t have much in common with either of them, but they felt like my people. I wanted to be where they were. Where they were was a cramped office near the back door of the Dutchess County YWCA. I would go on to do five internships at YWCA Battered Women’s Service, change my major to Women’s Studies, and devote my life to abuse and violence prevention. My political beliefs, my understanding of the world, and my ability to understand my own experience as a survivor are what they are because of that day.
What is your number one regret in life? If you could do it all over again, what is the biggest thing you’d do differently?
My number one regret is how steep my learning curve has been around anti-racism. As a white woman who leads an abuse and violence prevention organization, I am part of a long and painful history of white-led programs working to end gender-based violence while perpetuating—or disregarding—racism. People of color are more likely to experience all the abuses my organization works to prevent, yet white women too often are the ones setting the direction of the work.
I have made a lifelong commitment to anti-racist work, and I have showed up as an ally a number of times. But my regret is all the times I’ve fallen short and then gotten defensive about it. Instead of taking responsibility for my actions and trying to work through my limitations, I have tried to justify my lack of bravery by pointing to other times I’ve been brave, rather than challenging myself to do better.
This harm I caused in these moments does not negate the other times I’ve been brave or effective, but pretending it away is a specific kind of racism. It’s a kind of racism that says if I do the right thing sometimes, nobody should expect more of me. As one of the “good” white people I’m exempt from the accountability I insist on for others. One of my most important commitments is to keep working to shift that pattern.
I like having clarity about my purpose in life. I’ve been in the same job for 20 years and with the same organization for 23. I know what I’m doing, but I’m also constantly growing, changing, and questioning. I like feeling skilled and capable, and trusting myself to take thoughtful risks.
What is high up on your “bucket list?” What do you hope to achieve, attain, or plain enjoy before you die?
My bucket list has only one item: I want to ride on the back of a motorcycle.
Is there a piece of advice you were given, that you live by? If so, what was it, and who offered it to you?
I love musicals, and I love show tunes. I don’t listen to any other type of music and my ignorance of pop or rock or country music reaches ridiculous heights. (I recently mixed up Amy Winehouse and Tammy Wynette because there’s a syllable in their last names that kind of sounds the same!) Even more than show tunes I love obscure show tunes, and songs that were cut from musicals before they went to Broadway.
So, the piece of advice I live by comes from a lyric from the musical Violet, which is about a woman in the 1960s who is convinced that a television preacher can heal a scar on her face. She takes a bus from North Carolina to Oklahoma to meet the preacher and most of the musical takes place on the bus. (You have to really love musicals to watch a bunch of people on a stage pretending to be in a moving vehicle for an hour or more!)
At the end of Act I, she clashes with the man she will later fall in love with. He is angry that she is chasing fake healing while ignoring his very real feelings for her. They get into a beautifully musicalized argument, and he sing/screams at her, “You can’t ever get enough of a thing you don’t need.” And after I heard that lyric, every mistake I was making in my life became clear. It was the most concise description I’d ever heard of the perpetually unsatisfying experience of trying to will someone to become the person I wanted them to be, accepting crumbs of the kind of love or attention I wanted, and stoking false hope that if I just worked harder, they would change.
Of course, that line is in the 1998 off-Broadway recording of Violet. When the show was rewritten for its run on Broadway with Sutton Foster in 2014, that lyric was cut.
What are your plans for your body when you’re done using it? Burial? Cremation? Body Farm? Other?
I want to donate my body to a medical school so I can be dissected in a cadaver lab by a first year student. That way the last thing I do on earth will be an act of recycling.
And what do you expect to happen to your “soul” or “spirit” after you die?
I have no belief system about what happens after we die. I hope the books I’ve accumulated will go to people who can appreciate them. I hope my clothes wind up in a textile recycle bin instead of a landfill. I hope any positive contribution I’ve made to the work of preventing abuse and violence will be remembered and preserved so future generations don’t have to reinvent too many wheels. Most of all, I hope the people I love won’t be too diminished or devastated by losing me. Grief saps people’s energy, and I don’t want my passing to sap too much energy from anyone, especially those who are doing important work in the struggle for justice.
The piece of advice I live by comes from a lyric from the musical Violet, which is about a woman in the 1960s who is convinced that a television preacher can heal a scar on her face. At the end of Act I, she clashes with the man she will later fall in love with. He is angry that she is chasing fake healing while ignoring his very real feelings for her. They get into a beautifully musicalized argument, and he sing/screams at her, “You can’t ever get enough of a thing you don’t need.” And after I heard that lyric, every mistake I was making in my life became clear.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
I have created a universe of unnecessary turmoil over my birthday. Some years I get overwhelmed by a lot of attention, other years I avoid attention and then get disappointed that the day feels too ordinary. Other years I have great birthday celebrations that are fun, hilarious, low-key, or heartfelt in exactly the way I need them to be. I can never predict what will feel right in a given year, which makes it hard to plan.
I was overwhelmed with writing my book and navigating IMPACT Boston through a major growth period the year I turned 50, so I’m forever grateful to my partner Mal and my sister for planning a better party than anything I could have done on my own. I’m always grateful to my friend David for treating my birthday like it’s special and for being compassionate and patient in the years when I agonize over how to celebrate. This year, I’m presenting at a conference on my birthday, and I am less anxious because I get to focus on something that is both a deep expression of me and not about me.
Wait a second. Are people giving you shit over your definition of “Oldster”? Jeez. One of the reasons these interviews are so powerful is that they wobble through different life phases, which provides perspective on all of them. Plus our definition of “old” varies as we ourselves age. Yesterday’s old (“I can’t believe I’m fifty!”) is tomorrow’s wistful glance back in time (“I can’t believe we were all still living together as a family back then!”) Meanwhile, one of the many things I loved about this particular oldster was her confident expressions of style as a kid. She’s queer as hell, if you define “queer” as determined to be authentic no matter what anybody thinks. And a hat made from the driver’s ed manual is the definition of that. You go, juvenile Meg. You’ll become an awesome “oldster.”
Really loved this one-thank you!