If you live alone, if your family is scattered far and wide, if you recently lost a partner or spouse, if you can’t afford the plane...
family10
Don’t Dismiss the Foremothers in Your Family
I have friends who insist the women in their families didn’t provide examples of independence and/or positive aging. This observation can be skewed by the fact that our mothers and grandmothers didn’t live in our enlightened era where women are consciously aging with an awareness of ageism and sexism, and where the anti-aging industry [...]
Pat Taub
Letting Go of Regrets
All things considered I’m managing my old age fairly well. I can check off most of the boxes for health, family, etc., but when it comes to handling my regrets, I’m often stalled. To this day I’m haunted over screaming matches with my teenage sons, impatience with my mother when she was dying, love affairs I allowed to go on way [...]
Pat Taub
Easing into Old Age
My grandmothers and mother lived well into their 80’s, transitioning into old age with only minimal complaints. While they followed healthy diets and exercised moderately, they didn’t obsess over their daily routines, or fret about their extra pounds or wrinkles. They simply didn’t stress about aging. Granted they lived at a time [...]
Pat Taub
You Can’t Make Old Friends
GUEST POST by MARY LOU SMITH* When I was young, I would hear my elders say, “My circle of friends is getting smaller,” The words passed right over me, without listening or understanding. Now that I am eighty-three, I am in the midst of living those words. The recent death of my soulmate, friend, and “sister” Lucille, of fifty-three [...]
Pat Taub
The Gift of Grief
GUEST POST by JACOB WATSON At first and for many months after my wife died, I felt brutalized. Grief is brutal, a word I used often when my grief was fresh. Then slowly, way too slowly for inpatient me, a transformation began to happen. I remembered a class I took in my doctoral program taught by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the feminist author [...]
Pat Taub
Living in An Upside-Down World
At a recent wedding reception, I found myself in conversation with a woman marine biologist with a sad face. When she shared her concerns about the warming oceans and her despair over the failed response of government leaders to address our diminishing sea life, I attributed her sadness to that shared by climate scientists who keep telling [...]
Pat Taub
Finding Freedom
GUEST POST BY MARY LOU MACKIN Twenty-two years ago, I stood before a judge in a courtroom full of strangers trembling and bewildered, to petition for a restraining order from my abusive husband. I was the mother of a one-year old son, and I was terrified for his future more than my own. I felt the sudden presence of someone by my side, [...]
Pat Taub
Gardening Up To The End
GUEST POST by LISA SAVAGE Around where I live people grow food starting in earnest this time of the year. No matter what our religion or political persuasion, once the soil is warm and dry enough, we all of us poke in some seeds. Some years it rains so often that the seeds fail to germinate and instead rot in the ground. It’s not great [...]
Pat Taub
Death Journaling
GUEST POST by FRANCESCA LYNN ARNOLDY* My Death Journal is a gift for my beloveds that I have been lovingly creating for many years. It’s meant for my end of life—whenever that occurs. My family members know of its purpose and where it lives. My Death Journal contains mementos, messages, song lyrics, poetry, quotes, wishes for care if and [...]
Pat Taub
Wise Women Speak
As a young woman, I never would have predicted that landing in my eighth decade would usher in the most content state of my life. I expected the challenges of being in an aging body would sour my mood. Instead, I finally grew up. I learned to reap the lessons from all my years of soul-searching, growing from romantic heartbreaks, career [...]
Pat Taub