“It’s a ‘zine! It’s a movie! It’s a sit-com! Actually, it’s an intimate glimpse into Sandra Butler’s personal journal as an 83-year-old queer Jewish feminist activist leaving her Bay Area home to
live close to her daughters in the Red State of Arizona.”
“…The ensemble of characters at Desert Manor are hilarious, jaw-clenching, at times worthy of a Jack Russell Terrier head tilt. ‘Caught between not wanting to be a burden and wanting to be taken care of,’ Butler’s writing is tender, funny and unequivocally relatable.”
—Karen Lee Erlichman, D.Min, LCSW is a psychotherapist, spiritual director, writer and mentor.
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 good cheer she could muster. 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.
Now available:
Welcome to my website.
This site is a collection of my writing over the past 46 years, giving the reader a sense of where I’ve been and the concerns that have drawn my personal and political attention.
My new book, Leaving Home at 83, portrays the challenges of leaving my home and community of 50 years and starting anew in Tucson. At 86 and counting, I’m busy writing the next one! This old woman still has a lot to say!
Enjoy. Don’t be a stranger. Be in touch.
Previous Books:
The Kitchen is Closed: And Other Benefits of Being Old
In this funny and intensely personal collection of essays, Butler chronicles her experience moving from aging to old.
With its sharp humor and refreshing honesty, The Kitchen Is Closed is a must-read for aging women, eldercare workers, and adult children who want to gain a fuller sense of their mother’s life.
It Never Ends: Mothering Middle-aged Daughters
Being a mother is rarely easy. Being an aging mother with a middle-aged daughter presents its own complexities, challenges, and rewards.
This book explores this experience, opening the path to further conversation about the difficulties and richness of this time.
Cancer in Two Voices
“This landmark feminist perspective on breast cancer…is an indictment of the medical profession’s casual attitude to women’s illness, an also a touching chronicle of two women in their forties grappling intellectually and emotionally with premature death.”
– Publishers Weekly (1988)
Conspiracy of Silence
In 1978, this book was published and became a cornerstone in the activist/feminist movement to end sexual assault.
“…The raw impact is enormous.”
– Publishers Weekly (1979)