View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the richness and promise that shape the second half of women’s lives.


Hi. My name is Nina Collins. I founded and run a social platform & website  for likeminded —  and by that I mean educated, savvy, witty — women over 40 called The Woolfer.

I wrote a book on Aging without Apology called What Would Virginia Woolf Do? and I also have a masters in the field of Narrative Medicine, which is the study of how we tell our stories in the context of aging, illness, and death. I have a life coaching certificate and have worked in palliative care and end of life settings, and all this activity comes out of a deep interest in how women, particularly, handle transitions of loss.

I’m going to share with you Five Things I’ve learned about women & aging — from some of the practical, the Health/Medical issues that people don’t like to talk about but which are so very real, and also mostly manageable, to the sexual, which encompasses, of course, both physical and psychological issues. I’m going to share with you wisdom I’ve gleaned from the stories and experiences of tens of thousands of women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond, and I’m going to talk about loss: death, divorce, the empty nest, the fear and also the freedom of irrelevance and invisibility. I’ll also talk about community, and how much we need each other to make it through our complicated lives. As one Woolfer said to me recently “It’s our job to stay alive for each other.”

I’m so looking forward to having this conversation with you, to share some of the resources and humor that have helped and inspired me, and to really show you that this idea that we can blossom in the second half of our lives is far from an empty promise.

The richness that awaits on this side of 50 is truly surprising. We’re going to have a lot of fun talking about it, and exploring why.