 By Jim Selman | Bio
This has been a sad week. My partner’s mother died at the
age of 94. Even when the end is expected (and perhaps even welcomed after a
long period of decline), it nonetheless has a powerful impact on those who
cared. All of the clichés aside, there just isn’t much to say to the bereaved
other than “I am sorry for your loss.” As we get older, death and dying becomes
a larger part of our day-to-day reality as we lose friends and loved ones. For
“Mimi”, there weren’t many left. She outlived almost everyone of her
generation. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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One of the things we need to learn if we haven’t learned it by the time
we reach retirement and our ‘golden years’ is how to deal with loss.
Aside from the obvious loss of friends and family though death and
incapacitating illness, we have a host of other things we can ‘lose’,
such as systems of support, material possessions, our physical
abilities and perhaps most importantly—possibility. Not everyone
experiences loss and certainly not in the same way. But loss, whether
real or perceived, is one of the primary factors that can either keep
us trapped in the past and living into an ever narrower future or it
can be a source of great learning and freedom as we grow older. Buddha taught that suffering is due largely to our attachments.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Don Arnoudse
Bio
For as long as I can remember, I have been an optimistic person. I’ve
always taken great pride in my natural inclination to see a ‘silver
lining in every cloud’. ‘Making lemonade out of lemons’ was one of my
favorite clichés. Imagine
my surprise when, in a recent conversation with Ann, my personal coach,
I heard her say she felt a deep shiver of sadness while listening to
me. It brought me up short. I had been talking about turning 59 years
old, how good life was right now and, at the same time, how acutely
aware I was of how fast time was flying by. When I stopped, took a deep
breath, and listened to my body, I realized that deep down there was a
pool of sadness within me. This is an emotion I’ve kept at bay for a
long time.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment
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By Marilyn Hay
Some
bodies weather age better than others. In my case, arthritis has
invaded my whole spine and all major joints, so my mobility has
diminished quite significantly over a relatively short period of time.
While I was never much of an athlete, I was always on the go, with
energy to burn, traveling pretty much constantly in my job and for
pleasure … And then, because of the unbearable pain and attendant
exhaustion, I just had to stop. I couldn’t do my job any longer. I
scarcely remember the first two months of this change of lifestyle as I
spent most of the time sleeping. When I woke up enough to really look
around, I realized I was no longer the person I had been.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Health
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By Shae HaddenBio
My very first job was as a nursing assistant in a chronic care
hospital. At the tender age of 14, I donned my starched nurse’s cap and
white uniform to spend several hours each day tending to those who
could not care for themselves. Natural processes critical to the body’s
survival—eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, moving, breathing—had
become a moment-by-moment challenge for many of the people we cared
for. Most had lived in this state for innumerable years—there were few
new faces in the wards and even fewer visitors during the two summers I
worked there. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Health
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By Stu Whitley
Bio This is the fifth in a five-part series.
Is there any joy to be found in sadness? I believe there is. Sadness is
almost always about loss. If we are able to examine in a
serious way the nature of that loss, I think we would find a validation
of what we took to be good. In other words, sadness can be a
reaffirmation of the virtues we hold dear. This can be a bit tricky
though. For example, if one regrets the passage of youth for its own
sake, enormous and ultimately futile effort is needed to ignore the
ceaseless transformation that the natural world presents.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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Ronni at TGB recently took a whack at being inundated by wrap-around sexually explicit media
and how it can negatively stereotype older folks whose libidos are in a
state of “natural” decline. I wonder if a declining libido is natural.
If we know of examples of late-life lust, then it can’t be natural. It
is a choice.[ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Fearless Aging
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