About Sandra
Sandra Butler is a Jewish lesbian-feminist, mother, lifelong activist, and the author of six books. Each is centered on the need to document what had been considered unsayable. She has written about violence against women, death abbreviating the life of a lesbian couple, mothering middle-aged daughters, and three books spanning the decade of her eighties. Those represent the first 88 years and are captured at sandrabutler.net. What’s ahead remains to be seen.
Sandra Butler is a Jewish lesbian-feminist, mother, lifelong activist, and the author of six books. Each is centered on the need to document what had been considered unsayable. She has written about violence against women, death abbreviating the life of a lesbian couple, mothering middle-aged daughters, and three books spanning the decade of her eighties. Those represent the first 88 years and are captured at sandrabutler.net. What’s ahead remains to be seen.
More Books by Sandra Butler
Now What?
Notes From the Front Lines of Old Age
For Everyone Old, Getting Old, or Loving Someone Who Is.
“Now What? Notes From the Front Lines of Old Age” is Sandra Butler’s bracing, big-hearted follow-up to “Leaving Home at 83.” At 88, Butler writes about what most books on aging won’t go: the actual, daily reality of living while old—its limits and liberties, its indignities and unexpected surprises.
These crisp, witty reflections move through doctors’ offices and dining rooms, laundry rooms and long afternoons. We meet new neighbors and old fears; hear the clatter of hearing aids and the hush of hard decisions. Butler chronicles the body’s negotiations, the bureaucracy of “care,” the tenderness of friendship, and the stubborn joy that keeps surfacing anyway. The result is not a how-to, but a how-it-is—told with the honesty and humor that made “Leaving Home at 83” so loved.
Perfect for:
- Readers who want the truth about aging without sentimentality
- Daughters, sons, grandchildren, relatives, partners, caregivers, and clinicians seeking humane insight
- Seniors looking for honest, unvarnished accounts of aging and its challenges
- Book clubs ready for lively conversation and real-world resonance
If you’ve wondered what comes after the move, the upheaval, the reinvention in Sandra Butler’s last book, “Leaving Home at 83”—this is the dispatch. “Now What?” answers not with a plan, but with presence. It says: this is old age as it’s lived—complicated, courageous, often funny, and still yours.
$18.95
Leaving Home at 83
So, You Think 83 is Too Late to Start Over? Think Again!
Join Sandra Butler as she leaves her home and community of fifty years to move into a residential facility in an unfamiliar city. With meals, activities and proximity to her children, what could possibly go wrong? Well, as it turns out—just about everything.
Butler vividly portrays the intricate challenges of this late-life transition, capturing the struggle to adapt to an institutional setting with whatever cheer could be mustered. Each day was a new adventure, pretending all is well for her children, trying to make conversation through masks and faulty hearing aids, and the anticipation of a dinner that might, just might, be flavorful.
Butler’s funny, honest account brings a welcome and necessary perspective to the inevitable moment when we end one chapter and begin whatever comes next.
$18.95
$18.95