Up Close: Melanie Notkin and Ari Goldman

by Steven I. Weiss

This week on Up Close, as we reach new stages in life, embracing who we are and who we’ll become can help us achieve a greater measure of happiness. We’ll speak to two people embracing new ways of thinking about their respective stages in life.

For Melanie Notkin, reaching her early forties without the husband and children she’d long planned to have offered an opportunity to look at life in a different way. Speaking for millions of women in the situation, she’s defined a group called the “Otherhood,” and we’ll discuss her book of that name.

But sometimes the most we can hope for with our old dreams is to get close to what we’d imagined, and acknowledge that achieving something, even in a less-than-perfect manner, is still worthwhile. Journalism professor Ari Goldman picked up the cello on the eve of his 60th birthday, deciding to simply do the best that he could. He chronicles that experience in “The Late Starters Orchestra.”

Watch the complete episode of Up Close on TJC on-demand on cable in the TJC Original Series/Interviews category. You can also watch highlights from the episode in the video above, or listen to the complete audio of this episode at the top of this post or by subscribing to our weekly audio podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/tjcupclose or on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tjcs-up-close/id807702211.