CAROLYN LEE ARNOLD: FIFTY FIRST DATES AFTER FIFTY
ON BIG BLEND RADIO: Carolyn Lee Arnold discusses dating and her new memoir, “Fifty First Dates After Fifty.” Watch here in the YouTube player or download/listen to the podcast on Spreaker, Podbean, SoundCloud.
The modern-day dating world can feel tedious, but what if it didn’t have to be? What if instead you turned your search for love into a sexy, fun social experiment? Author and researcher Carolyn Lee Arnold does just that in her debut memoir, “Fifty First Dates After Fifty,” (She Writes Press).
After Arnold, a free-spirited, 50-something longing for a life partner, breaks up with her non-committal Buddhist boyfriend (and holds a “letting go” ceremony to seal the deal), she challenges herself to go on 50 first dates during her search for a monogamous life partner. Set in the Bay Area world of personal growth workshops and spiritual ceremonies, this revealing memoir traces the adventurous path of Arnold’s universal quest for love. The goal of 50 dates with 50 different partners pulls her forward through the highs and lows of dating — magical and ecstatic, pining and painful — while her heart soars, falls and keeps on going. Buoyed by her dating project, she avoids settling for the wrong guy and discovers the type of man she wants.
Erotic in places, funny in others, this upbeat memoir about the search for a partner at midlife is a celebration of one woman’s unabashed sexuality. Join Arnold on terrible dates, great dates and everything in between as you follow her midlife journey of self-discovery and self-love along the way to finding Mr. Right.
CAROLYN LEE ARNOLD drew upon her 30 years as a social science researcher and 10 years as a relationship workshop assistant to create the dating project in “Fifty First Dates after Fifty.” A native Californian from Los Angeles with a New England education, Arnold found her true home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she prepared for dating and life by attending spiritual ceremonies, working in free clinics, leading women’s backpacking trips, hiking the local green hills, identifying as a lesbian-feminist in the 1970s and ’80s, and earning graduate degrees in women’s studies, statistics and educational research. “Fifty First Dates after Fifty” is her first book, and excerpts have been published in Persimmon Tree, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, and the Human Awareness Institute’s Enlighten Journal. An excerpt from her second memoir, about her lesbian-feminist years, has been published in Noyo River Review. Still a feminist, she lives in the Bay Area with her partner — one of her 50 dates. For more information, including dating resources, visit www.carolynleearnold.com
