More about the Author

Jennifer Feuerstein (Pen Name Jennifer DiVita) (above) graduated from college with degrees in broadcasting and journalism to tell stories through media. But at the ripe old age of 31 (gasp!), when she returned to work after raising her three children, she was told she was ‘too seasoned’ to be on TV as a news reporter.

So, in 2008, Jennifer shifted to working in the field of gerontology (or the study of being ‘too seasoned’). It was serendipitous as it placed her on a new trajectory that would become her passion. Through the lens of her new career, she witnessed aging from both ends of the spectrum. Her first experience working with older adults was with ‘young’ fifty-five-year-olds who had early onset Alzheimer’s and needed a nursing home level of care (really bad aging). Then she worked with ‘old’ people-entrepreneurs in their seventies who were launching businesses and star athletes in their eighties competing for bodybuilding titles (really good aging). She saw the uniqueness of aging, and it gave her a perspective that few people have.

In 2014, Jennifer rose the ranks from an entry-level position in gerontology to become Associate State Director for AARP Michigan, a role she has held for nearly a decade.

In 2016, she began working for WOOD-TV and ABC4, Michigan-based ABC & NBC news affiliates, to be an on-air personality (ironically, she has only grown more ‘seasoned’ and doing more TV at nearly 50 than ever before). In her role as the Encore Years expert, she produces commercials to provide tips on all things related to the 50+ population. In 2020, she began co-hosting the weekly TV show called “Real Possibilities,” with topics relevant to older

adults. The show airs on TV stations throughout Michigan and on social media throughout the US.

Jennifer has been an aging influencer now for fifteen years, and in 2022, she was named one of the “50 Most Influential Women in West Michigan” by the Grand Rapids Business Journal.

She’s a talented public speaker and uses humor to address the upside of going down over the hill and uses the arches of shoes to tell the arches of life. (Jennifer competed in a Toastmaster’s competition and won the regional trophy for the best humorous speech-she was a shoo-in). She has spoken at hundreds of events and has been a prominent presenter and keynote speaker at various conferences.

After reading far too many academic-style, non-fiction books on aging, all with footnotes (pun intended), Jennifer was inspired to write a women’s fiction novel that tells the heart and soul of aging with more art and less science. So, with her curiosity about what it means to grow old, her knowledge of the aging process, and her own mid-life gaffes, Jennifer returned to her first passion-writing-and penned her debut novel, Not Your Shoe Size. It’s a witty and thought-provoking story about the internal tug-of-war every woman faces in wanting to age well in an ageist society. Her hope is to entertain and educate through fiction about finding the silver lining after becoming silver.

Jennifer can be followed on social media: Facebook.com/jenniferdivitabooks  and on her websites jenniferdivita.com  and notyourshoesize.com.

Not Your Shoe Size

By Jennifer DiVita

Overview

Traveling through life at the same pace, long-time best friends, COLETTE and JULIA are not on the same course. They transition through the aging process in opposing ways from childhood to elderhood. They experience changes-physical, emotional, and spiritual-all related to getting older in this life journey differently. Each decade of their lives (written as individual chapters) weaves together simultaneous stories and milestones of aging. Colette and Julia approach life from vastly different perspectives on how to age gracefully.

The two characters exist in every woman as we all grapple with ageism, mortality, and purpose from youth to old age. The aging journey does not come with a universal roadmap. Women can’t type the destination into Google Maps to see where the roads-or, in this case, the years-take them. The closest thing they have for navigating the aging process is a repetitive selection of resource books that begin with “How to…” and “The Guide for…” and “(Fill in the blank) 101”. These non-fiction books focus on topics like dementia, caregiver burnout, and, most horrific of all-wrinkles (tongue-in-cheek, of course). Others contain daunting Herculean efforts like defying aging and anti-aging (and you know what the opposite of anti-aging is, right?!). Many do focus on positive topics of aging, except they’re mostly non-fiction. They all have their rightful place, but what’s missing in the marketplace are fiction books that capture the heart and soul of growing old. Few fiction books have been written with raw, relatable stories of what it means to age. Real stories. Witty stories. Poignant stories. Stories focused on the aging process.

We live in a society that says ’60 is the new 40′ and that getting older is to be feared and is met only with negative effects and decline. To play into these fears, the anti-aging industry is a multi-billion-dollar business. Women are inundated with messages to fight against the battle of aging, and somehow, they can outwit it, outspend it, or outgrow it. Spoiler: They can’t.

Not Your Shoe Size is a witty and thought-provoking story of growing old a decade at a time. This coming (of a certain) age women’s fiction novel provides readers with hope and

humor, rawness, and reality, great success, and epic failure when it comes to trying to figure out the end game of the experimental process called aging.

The book gives women permission to choose for themselves their own path of aging. Every woman fights an internal battle of wanting to be okay in her own skin-complete with silver streaks, love handles, and crow’s feet. At the same time, they want to recapture their lost youth by buying into (and lots of) the societal pressure of Botox and Retinol, creams and serums, lotions, and potions (oh my!). The battle is real. The struggle of wanting to both embrace aging and defy it is an internal conflict every woman faces.

Not Your Shoe Size offers women hope that life gets better as they get older and that their adventures never end. The story gives women a sense of normalcy that hot flashes are (really) hot but only temporary; gray hair might make you look older, but it’s easy to maintain; and caregiving is exhausting and rewarding at the same time.

If you’ve seen one 70-year-old woman, then you’ve seen one 70-year-old woman. No two women are alike as they age because aging is an experiment of one. The biological, physical, emotional, and spiritual processes may be similar but not identical. The idea for Not Your Shoe Size was borne out of Jennifer DiVita’s desire to share with women the real transitions they’ll encounter. But instead of presenting it in another academic-style resource guide with footnotes (pun intended), this work of women’s fiction shares the insights of life transitions through a captivating novel with characters all women can relate to. Colette and Julia teach the readers a thing or two about growing up and growing old and help them embrace the changes as normal. Life is not just about surviving in the elderly years but thriving in them.