We are living longer and each stage of life seems to last longer, according to Sheehy, the best-selling author of 11 books including Passages, Silent Passage and, most recently, New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time.

"Today, adolescence goes on into your twenties; 30-year-old men often still live with mom; baby boomers tell me they don't feel 'grown up' until well into their forties," Sheehy explained during a recent Center for the Arts appearance. Sheehy, who appeared at Mainstage on Thursday, March 14, was the third speaker in the 1995-96 Distinguished Speaker Series.

"No one ever prepared us to live long enough to forget the name of our first husband. No one ever prepared us for the possibility of seeing our grandchildren go bald," Sheehy mused of the lengthening lifespans.

Sheehy, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair where she has penned noted portraits of political leaders, and a frequent contributor to New York magazine, calls the later years a "second adulthood." Earlier retirements, as well as late-career unemployment, have made "second adulthood" a lengthy and significant period of time in one's life.

Sometime during your late forties, you enter "the infancy of your second adulthood," says Sheehy. "Middle age" is apparently out. The early fifties have become a sort of "Middlescence, when a 'little death' occurs. Many people report a need to find wholeness then," she explained.

Menopause still occurs on time physically, Sheehy said, but does not carry the emotional significance it once did. Sheehy recalled being booked on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss her book Silent Passage, which is about menopause. "They told me they had a harder time booking guests to talk about menopause than they had booking women who had killed their husbands. I suggested, 'Why not have them on the same show-they are probably the same people.'"

Sheehy calls today's budding seniors, born between 1935 and 1945, "the silents." A group to which she concedes to being a member, they generally have the most difficulty adjusting to today's changes. And, she explained, part of the problem is that they were "just born too soon.

The sudden loss of their career by men in their fifties is another area which Sheehy has examined, including interviews with successful corporate executives laid off at Kodak in Rochester just a few years before a normal retirement. Many of these men go through a period of crisis, but emerge to direct their energies into new pursuits. "One in 10 now works for non-profit companies; many discover art, music or gourmet cooking at this point," she explained. "But, the single most important factor in getting through such a crisis is the comfort of nurturing love.

"The secret is to search for meaning...find your passion and pursue it strenuously," Sheehy advised those entering their "second adulthood." Pointing out that one in three girls born today will live to be 100, Sheehy explained that people need to plan to "manage an extra 30 years."