Author to speak at St. James Place

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 9, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:10 a.m.

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Sara Davidson, at the top of her profession for 25 years, awoke one morning when she was 57 to find herself irrelevant.

Davidson, 65, author of “LEAP! What Will We Do With the Rest of Our Lives,” is speaking at 6 p.m. today at St. James Place, 333 Lee Drive.

“My life totally fell apart,” Davidson said. “I’d been writing television dramas for 25 years. I was the head writer on ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.’ In 2000, I found out that in Hollywood I’d become a non-person.”

Adding insult to injury, Davidson’s agent fired HER.

“It had nothing to do with me,” Davidson said. “I was told, ‘It’s your age.’”

Davidson had recovered from setbacks before. She’d get a new agent.

“But it was clear,” she said. “The party was over.”

Thanks to years of making good money, having health insurance and pension through The Writers’ Guild of America, finances weren’t an immediate concern, she said.

“It wasn’t about finances,” Davidson said. “I loved writing and work. When you’re a writer, you don’t think about retiring. It’s my identity. It’s something I want to do to my last moment.”

Accustomed to pitching winning ideas to television executives and magazine editors, she began to fear she had nothing fresh to say.

Then, her daughter left for college and a longtime relationship Davidson had with a man she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with ended.

“What was I supposed to do for the next 30 years?” Davidson said. “I mean, I wanted to read and garden, but for 30 YEARS!”

Davidson had entered what she came to call “The Narrows” — the transition to a different phase of life that we all make, voluntarily or kicking and screaming.