I'm Laura Rowley, the new editor of Huff/Post 50, a veteran journalist and author. Although I fall just outside the cohort of 77 million people born between 1946 and 1964, I have nine older siblings who are part of the wave, and always felt it was my generation.
My background is personal finance and values. I'm a former CNN business news reporter, Yahoo!Finance columnist and author of 'Money and Happiness: A Guide To Living The Good Life.' I have a master's degree in divinity, and have been forever intrigued by how people can make better decisions to foster happiness. My book, for example, shows readers how to identify what they truly value and use money as a tool to achieve those things so they can be happy.
Last summer I joined AOL Daily Finance, part of the Huffington Post Media Group. I loved doing stories and videos about readers' financial and life challenges, and offering advice on how to rebound. Then one day, Arianna Huffington asked me if I would like to run Huff/Post50. Happy and comfortable in my job, I hesitated. Then I remembered that happy and comfortable is nice, but testing yourself by stepping into the unknown and embracing a challenge is better for the soul. It's like the year a friend invited me to run a half-marathon -- way outside my happy and comfortable four-mile jog, and at the finish line that September morning, much more satisfying.
One of the wonderful things about midlife is that you accumulate enough experience to frame your existence less in terms of risks and more from the perspective of adventure. While you can't generalize about a generation 77 million-strong, it's fair to say that Baby Boomers are optimistic, innovative and by virtue of their collective size, profound agents of change. Huff/Post50 is a celebration of their values: freedom, self-expression, resilience, the thorough questioning of conventional wisdom and the joy of hitchhiking on the road less traveled.
As Gloria Steinem noted in an interview with Huff/Post 50: "At 60 I realized this is a whole free, amazing, different, wonderful part of life that is not about looking backward, it's about looking forward."
Some changes, of course, haven't been chosen. Amid the economic downturn and housing crisis, readers have shared stories of job loss, broken relationships, health concerns, worries about children and aging parents. And yet they are resilient, tapping one of the most powerful tools of the human condition: Adaptation. Life changes, we adapt, we find a new path. It is never too late to reinvent yourself and follow your dreams.
This site is for you and about you, so please share your challenges, wisdom, experiences and questions. Let us know the stories, topics and trends that are most important to you. You can email me at huffpost50@huffingtonpost.com and participate in the discussion on Twitter @huffpost50 or Facebook.com/HuffPost50. I look forward to hearing from you.