Q. Why do you media people talk only to married couples? It's as though you didn't care about us women who are alone. We are the ones who need your help the most. Especially around the holiday season, when loneliness comes calling.

A. Your complaint is both relevant and familiar. As the editor of 50 PLUS magazine in New York, I often heard from disenchanted single women exasperated by the inordinate amount of attention directed exclusively at married partners.

One woman wrote: "If you run one more cover showing a lovey-dovey couple walking along some deserted Caribbean beach I shall personally come to your office and punch your stupid face!"

My perturbed correspondent proceeded to describe how her life as a widow suddenly was vastly different. She assured me, in no uncertain terms, that we editors must address her problems, her desires, her lifestyle--or we would lose her as a subscriber.

I dutifully marched into my publisher's office and suggested there was a readership segment we weren't serving. He asked for details. "I'm talking widows, divorced women, even those gals who never have married," I said.

He turned momentarily pale and proceeded then to unfurl a lecture. To wit: if he granted my wish, to include a special four or six-page section devoted to women alone, we surely would alienate our better advertisers. "We'll lose the automobile ads, the hotels and motels, the liquor trade," he explained, becoming animated at any threat to his Christmas bonus. "We'll never again get a brandy ad..."

A year later, I was back in his face, suggesting this time that we address single women through a newsletter. "Okay, just don't spend too much of your budget," he said. "Spoken like a publisher," I said to myself.

We called it "Turning Point" and our single women friends rallied behind this modest, 8-page newsletter. In the inaugural issue I wrote about Jean, age 60 and divorced, who explained in a letter to the editor that "We are today's invisible women, alone and relegated to what I call 'The Holding Pattern' of life.

"In my little circle are three of us," continued Jean. "All active, well-educated and whose children are through college. We now find ourselves with a tremendous void. Even though we continue in our activities--golf, music, volunteer work--we still have no one at home. And, to be alone at this stage in life is devastating..."

Even though this all happened a decade ago, I know that women alone continue to face the same dilemma, even as they feel the same hurt, loss, and alienation. Author Caroline Bird addresses these problems in her 1995 book "Lives of Our Own" (Houghton Mifflin, Co.), writing: "We are mainly older women whose marriages are behind us. Although you don't hear much about us, we are a bigger part of America every year." Bird reports this under-served population, numbering more than 14 million, continues to grow at the rate of more than one million a year and that "the hardest battle is the one we have to fight with ourselves."

Yes, the woman alone--the woman who feels abandoned, rejected, bereft-- must first convince herself that she still counts; she matters, and there is plenty of life left. She must accept that the women who survive, and triumph, in advancing age are those who can adapt to change.

Moreover, as she confronts her own aging, she must listen to Caroline Bird, who reminds that "The price of staying young is arrested development."