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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2026 |
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PROVOKED now comes on Wednesdays, too, with Well/Actually, our free health newsletter.
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I don’t write about politics in this letter. But Tuesday night wasn’t only about politics. It was about women.
Women showed up to vote, and women showed up on the ballot. Georgia elected the first Black woman governor in American history. In Texas, a mom who made her children and public schools the heart of her campaign unseated a three-term governor to become the state’s first Latina governor. Tennessee and Minnesota both elected their first women governors, one a Republican, one a Democrat. At least 17 women will be governors next year, a record. And the first Gen Z woman was elected to Congress the same night an 88-year-old woman won again.
Look at what so many of them ran on: the cost of living, child care, education, healthcare, caregiving. Those are the issues women over 50 live with every day, and the ones we write about here every week. And look at who won. Most of the women who made history at the top of the ticket on Tuesday are over 50. When the people in the room are your peers, what matters to us stops being a side issue.
Two stories this week sit on either side of that. Marie Newman held federal office and lost it in a primary, at a podium, with the cameras rolling. What she did next is its own kind of political story. And if you spent Tuesday night braced for the worst, whichever worst you feared, my piece on catastrophizing is for you.
More women are about to sit in the rooms where the big decisions get made. That's history, moving.
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After Congress, I Took the Wrong Job First |
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The night she lost her primary, Marie Newman smiled at the podium for one reason: it was over. But the next job she took turned out to be the wrong one, and 20-plus women called her asking the same question: Who am I now?
Read this piece
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MONEY
Social Security Counts Your Caregiving Years as Zero
BY MELANIE LOCKERT
Raise the kids, care for your parents, and Social Security may record those years as nothing at all. A caregiver credit has been introduced in Congress six times since 2016, and it has never passed. Until it does, here’s what those missing years cost you, and what you can still do about it.
Read this piece
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DEAR READER
A PERSONAL ESSAY FROM A READER
I’m 57. Stop Calling Me Brave for Having a Life.
BY NICHELLE HICKMAN
“What are you going to do with your 75-year-old mother?” her aunt asked. Take her to Mexico, it turned out, with six suitcases and a one-way ticket. After a layoff and a stretch of homelessness, she stopped asking permission to change her life, and she’s done being called brave for it.
Read this piece
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TAKE NOTE
Timely and worth your attention. |
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🧓 THE SECOND SHIFT JUST GOT LONGER
American women can now expect to spend about seven years of their adult lives caring for an aging relative or friend, up from six in 2011, University of Michigan researchers report, while men’s share held steady at four. Spouses split evenly, about a year and a half each. The extra years come from caring for parents, grandparents, extended family, and friends. It costs her, too: new Pew Research Center data find that 36% of full-time working women caring for a parent say it has hurt their finances, compared with 22% of men, and 40% say it has taken an emotional toll, compared with 22%. Three extra years of unpaid work. None of it shows up on her Social Security statement.
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✍️ THE EDITOR WHO BUILT THE ROOM
Marcia Ann Gillespie, who became editor-in-chief of Essence in 1971 at just 26, died Oct. 31 at 82. She spent nearly a decade turning it into essential reading for Black women, then ran Ms. from 1993 to 2001. Along the way she and Gloria Steinem co-founded Liberty Media for Women, a group of women investors that bought Ms. in 1998. She didn’t wait for the media to make room for women it ignored. She built the room.
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🛋️ COMFORT BINGE
Jamie Lee Curtis, 67, got the idea for her new NBC sitcom, Newlyweds, from a limo driver in his 60s who mentioned his “new wife.” Téa Leoni, 60, plays a widowed teacher who marries a professor, played by her real-life husband, Tim Daly, after a whirlwind romance. Curtis plays his ex. People over 60 falling in love fast, with the ex still in the picture? Yes, please. Fridays on NBC, next day on Peacock. Want more Jamie Lee? Read our take on her reign of defiant honesty.
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KEEP PROVOKED INDEPENDENT
Women over 50 deserve a publication that takes them seriously.
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Is Catastrophizing a Mental State or a Secret Power Move? |
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If you spent Tuesday night bracing for the worst, you’re in good company. Sometimes catastrophizing is anxiety. Sometimes it’s being the one who saw it coming while nobody listened. How to tell a real alarm from a story you’re telling yourself, from a lifelong catastrophizer.
Read this piece
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“Love this article! It was so inspiring! I’m new to PROVOKED and already in love with it. I'm pushing my 60s and I can relate to these words. Life is what you make of it. Own it and raise a glass to all the women out there for your accomplishments, obstacles, and challenges that life throws at us!” —Sharon on Oh, This Old Thing? Why Compliments Make Accomplished Women Malfunction |
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Want to be featured next? Comment on your favorite piece—we read them all.
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Are We on the Road to Gilead? Margaret Atwood Doesn’t Say No.
The Handmaid’s Tale sounds like a worst-case scenario. History suggests otherwise.
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Your Life in 18 Words
The Minimoir Challenge: your whole story, or one true moment of it, in exactly 18 words. Readers ages 45 to 90 have already posted theirs on the wall.
Read them, then write yours
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🥫Forget the bunker-and-bullets stereotype. A growing number of women are getting serious about being prepared for whatever comes next.
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🧶 Two women at lunch yesterday asked me if crochet is hard to learn. It isn’t, and Woobles kits are how I teach grandkids and grown-up friends alike. They also make great little gifts. |
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