Among many other topics, she offered wisdom on aging and grief

Gloria Steinem, who died Wednesday, at 92, will be remembered for her advocacy for women’s rights and her determination to challenge conventions (“At Smith and beyond, her words resound,’’ Page A1, Sept. 4). She spent much of her life challenging us to talk openly about subjects that were often ignored, among them, particularly in her later years, aging and grief.

She celebrated aging when many tried to resist it. Her assertion, “This is what 40 looks like,’’ became a longstanding rejection of those expectations, even through her final decades of life.

She did not treat grief as a taboo topic either. She shared in a 2024 interview that grief is an expression of the love that we have for others in our lives. Grief and love are distinct emotions, but in this sense, they are also inseparable. This is an important lesson for us to remember as we reflect on Steinem’s life and influential legacy.

We have difficulty talking about aging and death as a society, and many families do not know how to approach end-of-life conversations. They often happen during medical crises when families are already overwhelmed with decisions. Grief support is such a significant part of hospice and palliative care because it is intended to support the family as they process the loss of a loved one, but we should not wait until the final days to have these conversations.

Steinem devoted her life to encouraging people to talk about the hard issues. Her passing offers another opportunity to do that.

Diana Franchitto

Foxborough

The writer is the president and CEO of HopeHealth, a Providence-based hospice provider.

She helped us imagine who we would become

“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry,’’ Gloria Steinem famously observed.

In my preteen years, working women were nurses, teachers, secretaries, or housewives. So I fantasized about marrying a writer, never imagining I might become one.

Steinem was only some 16 years older than I am, but she and her generation of second-wave feminists helped make my life possible.

Wendy Kaminer

Boston