What are you looking forward to in 2016? Let’s hope it is the state altering power of touch. While even our touch receptors start to betray us in our 20s, diminishing by about 1% a year, our centenarians still appreciate a good, ( but gentle please) hug. Many of your friends may have lost a…
Well, you made it another New Year’s. It’s time to accept that you may be headed to the elite status of healthy, active, nonagenarian. So accept the role and define it for 2016! For fun, try starting a family tradition now! Many cultures have traditions to ring in the New Year and ensure anything from…
Our culture tends to romanticize things or speak in euphemisms about the hard stuff. Nobody tells new mothers just how challenging the 24 hour presence of a newborn is. It would sound ungrateful. We soldiered on in relative silence, and unless you have the luxury and the joy of a family nearby that consists of…
One of the most telling examples of our culture’s regard for elders is the way caregivers often relate to them. Well intentioned caregivers often talk down to the person at home, as if they were children. I remember resisting baby talk when I was raising my daughter and the same is true with elders. They may be frail, have trouble seeing, or hearing, or walking, but they are not incapable of irony, or a witty response, a good giggle, or having some silly fun. They can also do alot for themselves with some help. For example, if seeing is difficult, operating…
Aging is truly a bittersweet saga, full of enormous grace and beauty and crushingly painful limitations. Crushing because no matter how hard you try, the limitations cannot be vanquished. I have met some amazing women: artists and musicians in their mid-80s who are sharp and intellectual, who have beautiful perspectives on life and have many…
Don’t Boss the Boss! My good friend Becky Peters at Lifespan, a high quality geriatric management firm here in Santa Cruz told me this: “Don’t boss the boss!” She could not have been more correct. One thing I have learned, and if you stop and look within a moment, no one perceives themselves as old!…
We are starting to notice and internalize that we are going to live a lot longer than anyone thought. And the odds keep going up. In 1972 here in the states, the average years left, after turning 85, was 5.5 years. By 2010 that had jumped to 6.5, which is impressive! Partly due to a…
The Dog Friends One never knows what the group you call family will consist of. We are all so far flung from our natural extended family that in a crisis they could not do much for us. With a distance of 100 miles away or more , they can’t wrap there arms around you, make a…
I took my Mom out for lunch today. I watched her marvel at the hub bub and pace at The Buttery and I can’t help but reflect on the world now and the world she grew up in. She once rode 2 miles to town on a cardboard box, like a skim board being pulled…
The Crucible As the number of people caring for an older adult rapidly increases, the conversation is, at last, bubbling to the surface. Questions of deep emotion are being asked. Because the pioneers who have been caring for a family member or PIN, (person in need), are no longer laboring in silence. They want to…
Navigating Olderhood 