By Jim Selman | Bio
Our
group of men met for our semi-annual retreat on Vince’s farm in New
Jersey. We’ve been meeting twice a year every year since 2000. Next
year will be a decade of friends coming together for no other purpose
than to support and empower each other in our lives. We’re older and
we’ve been through a lot together. What I’ve grown to appreciate is
that we’re all very willing, able and open to being vulnerable in
sharing our lives, our experiences and our wisdom with one another. In terms of the facts of our lives, I am sure we are[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
I
think that one of the things going on these days is that ‘Baby Boomers’
are waking up to the fact that they have a choice about how they age
and what it means to be old. The Boomer label is just a demographic
slogan. Personally, I don’t like being lumped into a single category
with 70 million other folks. This sociological category of “Baby
Boomer” (which is now almost synonymous with growing older) makes it
easy for us to slip into generalizations about age and aging,
generalizations that have been here for generations. Even when we
attempt to show how Boomers aren’t like other generations, we are
subtly reinforcing a profoundly negative and disempowering stereotype
of what it means to grow older.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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 By Kevin Brown | Bio
Increasingly I find myself thinking about the word
retirement and whether it has the appeal that it once had for the mature
worker. I remember, as if it were yesterday, my father talking about how he was
looking forward to retirement. After working long hours and raising a family,
there just did not seem much time for anything else. Through much of his
mid-life, my dad's job (conductor for the railroad) had him working away from
home and on the road during the week. Weekends were mostly reserved for rest
before returning to the job the following Monday. Often he would share how he
looked forward to being able to spend time doing the things he really wanted to
do. I just assumed that meant golfing and fishing simply because those are
about the only leisure activities that I remember my dad enjoying.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Retirement
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 By Mariette Sluyter | The Foundation LabRead the first part of this article here.
As the project began we hit many
roadblocks. (Blessedly, none of them were from funders or supportive
agencies, but from individual human beings.) Shock, laughter, denial,
repulsion and silencing. This came from youth, middle-aged people,
professionals and, most heartbreakingly, seniors themselves. The
attempts we made to overcome the roadblocks came from every angle. When
one approach failed,[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Mariette Sluyter | The Foundation Lab
Seniors Sexual Health was not an area I was particularly drawn to as
a 40-something community developer until a staggering statistic was
pointed out to me: oositive HIV tests among those over 50 have risen
from 7.5% between 1985 and 1998 to 13.5% in 2005. After some thinking about the statistic, my colleague Nicole Hergert with The Calgary Sexual Health Centre and I [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Health
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I
have enjoyed my short stay in Kiev immensely and am looking forward to
more exploring in this part of the world in future. I had the
opportunity to have fairly intensive conversations with only 60 or 70
people, representing a reasonable cross-section of the country (from
what I can tell). Aside from it being a very different culture (in
terms of language, alphabet, history and architecture), it was evident
to me that the people of the Ukraine share the same concerns, dreams
and issues that we have in our part of the world.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Jim Selman | Bio
One
of my friends who is about my age has been in a period of deep
reflection and growth. He recently shared that he was moving into a new
space of awareness analogous to the transition from adolescence to
adulthood. He said he was becoming profoundly aware that he has
something valuable to say and that part of his growing older is coming
face to face with becoming responsible for creating a new
‘presentation’ in the world. He struggled to express this
transformation: he likened it to learning a new language for expressing
himself as a person, as someone who has a very different and evolving
relationship with himself, other people, his circumstances and to the
future. He thinks this is what we must go through as we become Elders
in the truest since of the word. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Jim Selman | Bio
You hear about it and know it is true—the
body breaks down as we grow older. Naturally there are lots of
exceptions. If you take really good care of yourself, you might make it
to the end of the game without any major physical impairment. However,
for most of us we’re going to encounter some life-limiting change in
our bodies. I encountered my first this week.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Health
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I am spending a few days with my best
friends—11 guys who get together a couple of times a year to share our
experience of our lives and support each other through difficult times
or to celebrate accomplishments. We usually meet at Vince's farm at
least once a year. It is a magnificent property in Western New Jersey
with geese, chickens, horses, a couple of llamas and lots of deer on a
rolling green framing a revolutionary era stone house and two imposing
red barns. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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