While I’m an elder, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to dying, that is until my brother, who’s 20 months younger, announced in...
Thinking About Death
While I’m an elder, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to dying, that is until my brother, who’s 20 months younger, announced in a recent late-night phone call that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. (To preserve my brother’s [...]
Pat Taub
Aging Thoughtfully10
Important Updates on How Heart Disease Affects Women
GUEST POST by Dr. JENNIFER BEALL and Dr. LEIGH ANN HIGGINS Did you know that the leading cause of death for women is heart disease? A recent study revealed that 68% of Americans were not aware of this fact. For a long time, the medical community assumed that heart disease affected men and women similarly, but we have now discovered that heart [...]
Pat Taub
Practicing Kindness to Overcome Despair
Despair has become my unwelcome visitor. Every time I read about the deteriorating conditions of life in Gaza my stomach churns. Tears come easily. This weekend I took myself to task, realizing I better come up with a strategy ASAP or I will be swallowed up by my despair over Gaza. Suddenly I remembered what worked for me in the past. [...]
Pat Taub
Writing A Eulogy And Finding A Poem
GUEST POST by JANE SESKIN I was about to cross the street when I looked to the right and saw my friend riding toward me. I knew it was Ann from her distinctive red bicycle helmet. She pulled over to the curb. We caught up on personal news and the state of the world. I left the encounter smiling. She was an energetic woman in her late 60’s [...]
Pat Taub
It’s Not Me, It’s Us
GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN Life-changing wisdom can come to us by surprise. I worked with the novelist and New Yorker editor Writer William Maxwell in his last decade. After he had died, I read that he had brought his fiancée Emmy to meet his father in 1945. His father, a somber man, was delighted, and advised his son, “If you [...]
Pat Taub
Aging Like A Wise Woman
Over coffee, a friend suggested that I write a blog offering guidelines for meaningful aging. This week I’m taking her suggestion to heart. Here’s what I came up with: Honor Your Failures Reframe your “failures” as risks you took where you stuck your neck out. Examine them for the lessons they presented and move on where you promise [...]
Pat Taub
New Year’s Resolutions for Growing Soulfully
Typically, we make New Year’s resolutions focused on improving our lives materially with pledges to diet, exercise, and travel to new destinations. But what if this year, your primary focus was on your internal self rather than your external self? In other words, resolutions to expand your soul where you grow in compassion. In a world [...]
Pat Taub
How Did You Get to Where You Are?
GUEST POST by SHIRLEY DELONG Remember when the only way to figure out how to get to a place you’d never been before was to use a paper map? If you were like me, you’d write down all the road names in order, each left or right turn you had to make, approximate mileage and some landmarks to help you know you were on the right track. Or depending [...]
Pat Taub
Competitive Grandparenting
GUEST POST By ANONYMOUS* In a clear sign of the sickness engendered by the long reign of patriarchy in Western culture, grandparenting is now seen as a competitive rather than collaborative endeavor. Despite research confirming the long-held notion that children with at least one grandmother alive are far more likely to thrive than those without [...]
Pat Taub
“I Hate Being Old!”
Currently I’m teaching the course, “Women and Aging” at Portland, Maine’s senior college. The first day, as we went around the room introducing ourselves, one woman defiantly exclaimed, “I hate being old. I hate my lined face. I hate not being able to move as well as I once did. I hate being too old to date because men my age [...]
Pat Taub
Autumn Is My New Year
While New Year’s Eve is the traditional time for making resolutions, autumn is my new year. Autumn’s entry into the darkness of winter beckons me to soul-search and reset my compass for the coming year. This call is reinforced by having a fall birthday–one I proudly share with Jimmy Carter. This year I decided to do more than [...]
Pat Taub