Criss, I'm just in the middle of reading a book called The End of Old Age : Living a Longer More Purposeful Life by Marc Agronin. He's a geriatric psychiatrist with years of experience helping people deal with the changes of aging. He talks about the stages that we have to go through when we come to a crisis point such as making a major change, loss of a close relationship or dealing with a health crisis and how we need to find our way through and find the meaning in the new situation. It is similar to working through the stages of grief. All these changes can make us feel like we have lost control and don't know who we are anymore. It can be quite frightening and it seems to me that women deal better with such changes. I think we are used to having major changes in our roles through marriage, pregnancy, parenting, caretaking, etc. I just grabbed it off the shelf in the library and it has turned out to be such a good find. You might find it helpful too.