Embrace Your Aging

Who is that little girl? We all have one inside of us. Sometimes I’m more aware of her than at others. Sometimes I wish I knew her better than I do. All the same, I do know she is by my side, all the time. So, who is she, and what is she up to now? We all have childhood memories, some good, some not so good. Some memories are indelible, while others seem to require extra work to retrieve. Sometimes it seems pretty clear how a childhood event impacted us throughout our lives;

What is it that I really need? After spending many hours in reflection, reading, talking, meditating and who knows what all else, I am finally able to perchance solve this puzzle. My needs are sometimes hard to identify-- at times shifting and at other times so continuous that they feel like background noise rather than an entity that deserves attention. The place for me to start is my need base, which has been defined by my prior life. When I was working fulltime I needed to

Another opportunity to change! How is it that with the new year we imagine all the ways we will be different NEXT year? We could make that decision to change on March 1 or May 15. The possibility is always there, and yet, with the turn of the page of the calendar, the new year just feels like the right time to make that personal change that has been nagging at us for months. It’s also the time of the year for reading articles on how to keep the new year’s resolutions and why

Last week I watched my fifteen-year-old grandson belt out the old Beatle’s tune “Come Together”, a peace song originally written to support the presidential campaign of Timothy Leary against Ronald Reagan. I doubt this modern teen knew the song’s background, but he did a fantastic job of putting the message in my head- as well as prompting my legs to want to get up and dance! The juxtaposition of fond memories from the 60’s with the sight of my teen- age grandson singing as

Well that was a bummer! Things don’t always go as planned. I’m wondering, as we get older, do we run into more road blocks and curve balls, or is it just that I can’t remember all of the challenges I had to overcome or redirect when I was younger? In any case, here I am, today, overcoming one more bump in the road. I stopped to talk with my neighbor this morning when we were both out walking. Given that I hadn’t seen her in a while, I wondered how she was doing. To my surpris

I just read an op-ed on how boomers are being ignored; how TV, commercials, movies and music are all geared toward the younger generations. We older folk are left out. The article exhorted our country, if that is possible, to remember our numbers, our power, and our pocketbooks before dismissing us. I tend to agree. The message behind the article was an implicit recognition of one of the challenges of being an aging boomer. After a lifetime of being special, of both being

My husband is turning 80 next week. Eighty is a big number. He keeps saying that he feels like 40. At forty he had already given up his special feat of jumping up on kitchen counters from a stand-still position. At forty he had already been diagnosed with a heart condition, an ailment making any 40 year old feel old beyond their years, but one that didn’t slow him down. Today, at 80, he doesn’t feel like he thought he would at 80. He feels like 40. So what does it mean to b

I survived Irma. After ‘weathering’ many life adventures, including Hurricane Sandy, Irma felt like the biggest, scariest, most daunting meteorological happening yet. I guess the fact that it was the biggest Atlantic hurricane ever, that it covered the state of Florida, that it kept holding at a Category 5, all contributed to that feeling. I have to wonder, though, was part of my concern related to my age?.... When I was younger and lived through blizzards, or even a few hurr

I just moved. ...Again. Risk averse, I am not. Afraid of change, not me. After years of embracing change, sometimes thinking that I thrive on chaos, I have learned that change has its advantages- and some disadvantages. Looking at the world through a different lens can be, literally, eye opening. It’s like sitting on one side of the room and never noticing that the pictures behind me are crooked- until I move my chair and sit on the other side of the room. A clearer view Movi

As I talk about embracing your aging, the implication is that – while aging has its challenges- we should still appreciate the aging process. Yes, that is true. On the other hand, something that we often tend to overlook, are the true gifts that are part of the package called aging. Wisdom is one of those gifts. Thirty –three years ago I walked in a march in response to the hateful killing of a young gay man in Bangor, Maine. Thirty –three years ago, the gay rights movement