REVIEW: Midlife Private Parts, Edited by Dina Alvarez and Dina Aronson

Reviewed by Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

The idea for Midlife Private Parts: Revealing Essays that Will Change the Way You Think About Age edited by Dina Alvarez and Dina Aronson (Regalo Press; 2025) was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a time when the world felt scary, when we were all isolated and at sea, two brave midlife women used their time to connect us all, by way of stories.

For one of them, it started as an Instagram post, for the other it was a Substack newsletter. Soon they were gathering these emerging midlife voices, their stories unfolding, their passions and dreams merging and melding into this inspiring anthology.

The stories are as unique and varied as they are representative of this inevitably shared phase of life. The writers who contributed their powerful stories started out as business owners and teachers, doctors and marketing specialists, school counselors and psychotherapists. In midlife they have re-invented themselves as entrepreneurs and podcasters, debut authors and life coaches, storytellers and CEO’s. They write about body positivity and newly discovered sexual intimacy, about grieving the loss of family members and forming new friendships. Their styles range from the hilariously irreverent to the deeply vulnerable. Their messages run the gamut, too, from practical advice from leading gynecologists to inspirational stories of businesswomen moving from burned out with boredom and fatigue to on fire with ingenuity and savvy.

One of my favorite stories comes from Sari Botton, publisher of Oldster Magazine. In her essay “Naturally…A Girl,” she explores the feeling of not fitting in, of always being a tad out of step with her peers in passing through various life stages and reaching certain seminal milestones. Botton explores these out-of-sync phases — too late with her period, too early to adulthood after her parents’ divorce forces her into caretaker and homemaker roles, not drawn to motherhood like her peers, early to menopause after a medically necessary hysterectomy — with a focused attention and deep self-inquiry that eventually gets to what she sees as the heart of the matter. Her explorations lead her to embrace her off-script, out-of-step, to-hell-with-timelines essence, living a life of art, friends, marriage, and deep curiosity about the human condition.

Maybe I was so drawn to this book because its stories of transition and transformation mirror my own midlife reckoning. Several years ago, I closed my small private practice after more than thirty years in healthcare, no longer taking care of children and families as a pediatrician. Now, I’ve merged my two passions — medicine and writing — into a new position as writer-in-residence at a large urban family medicine residency program. I lead doctors-in-training in close readings of literary work; then we write reflectively to prompts I create to help them explore their relationships with their patients and colleagues and their journeys as physicians. We connect through our stories, much as Alvarez and Aronson’s collected stories connect readers to something larger than themselves.

Midlife Private Parts is disrupting the worn-out narrative on female aging, leveling the playing field, and proving that midlife can be replete with burgeoning self-awareness, exciting new beginnings, and limitless possibilities for authentic transformation. In their introduction, Alvarez and Aronson tell us that their purpose, their hope, in writing this book is that “in reading these pages, you will see your struggles and triumphs reflected in these powerful, poignant stories. Most importantly, in reading these pages, you will feel connected to a big and beautiful sisterhood — one that sees, hears, and understands you.” If my own experience is any indication, I believe they succeeded.