Solitude has become an everyday thing. It is my way of staying true to the one within me. My new world of social relations is enriched by the presence of this one. I am alive as never before.
I’m Just Trying to Have a Good Day
Imagine what your ideal typical day would look like. Not a holiday or a ‘best day of your life’ kind of day, rather, what would it look like if you could map your ideal typical day? A day that if you had to live it 365 days in a row would leave you feeling resourced and joyful.
Independence
As a disabled person who has kept a semblance of independence, while dealing with utter physical dependence. Losing my independence, and becoming reliant on others, has paradoxically shown me what independence really is. It isn’t what I’ve been taught. In fact, it doesn’t rest upon any physical condition at all.
Check Your Ageism, Science. It’s Unbecoming
Calls for a de-youthanized science are not lofty, liberal political appeals; they are attempts to actually purify gerontological science and practice. A de-youthanized science means a more valid, generalizable science—a science, for example, that adequately samples older adults in the service of providing sufficiently evidence-based recommendations for diagnosis and treatment
Dispensability
As I reflect upon the improbability of my ripening, I often turn with delight and inspiration to the life and death of Nelson Mandela. Mandela taught us that giving the self, once it has ripened, is elder wisdom, and the apotheosis of maturation.
A Guiding Star
When I was a toddler, I used to sit for hours on the floor under my maternal grandmother’s frame of stretched cloth and look up to watch her sew beads and spangles onto fabrics that became wedding gowns, banners, flags, altar cloths, and other decorative pieces.
What’s Your Relationship with Aging?
Our relationship with aging can remain as a loving friendship throughout our lives when we understand that it’s a cumulative experience that provides us with an ever-changing variety of psychological and spiritual gifts –– if we are open to anticipating and accepting them.
Humility
A great way to start this piece would be to say, “I haven’t much to say about this topic,” and leave it at that. But, I’m not that humble. I am, in that regard very much an elder-in-training.
