We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo! Shine:
Jane Fonda doesn’t lie about her age. She’s 73 and happier than she’s ever been. That’s saying a lot when you consider her 20s: sex symbol and rising star in Hollywood. And her 30s: Academy Award winner, blockbuster romantic heroine, and controversial activist. And her 40s: exercise guru, comedienne, and movie mogul. These days, she’s a mom, a grandma, a cancer-survivor, a best-selling author, an ex-wife times three, and a girlfriend. She’s also a sexpert. In her new book Prime Time, a memoir-style self-help guide to embracing your “third act," Fonda gets frank about life in your 70s. Her book offers financial advice, funeral-planning straight talk, mental health and exercise, and lots of sex. We only had a few minutes with the living legend, so we went straight for the last item on the list.
Shine: Is life really better in your 70s?
Jane Fonda: As I was going through my 60s and entering my 70s, I realized I was happier than I’d ever been. I didn’t expect to live this long, much less to be happier; I wanted to know if this was unique to me. For this book, I spent four years interviewing doctors and researching this very subject. I came to understand a majority of people in their 60s and over feel the same way.
S: So you're saying those of us in our 30s can look forward to a better time?
JF: My life is much better now. My "good old days" were really more so-so old days. The 30s and 40s are very hard. If you have kids, you have figure who you are in relation to them and to your husband. I was not a very good parent, I suffered eating disorders and I had a hard time in my marriage. The 40s, you have perimenopause and you don’t know who you are anymore. In my research, I discovered that in your 30s and 40s you’re still experiencing the effects of an unhappy childhood. But an unhappy childhood has very little effect on you at an older age.
Learn Fonda's frank advice when you read more.