Aging well
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Beginnings
“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” ~Fred Rogers On the drive from northern Michigan last week, I noticed a few maples showing blushes of red. And this week, the temperature in southeast Michigan is cooling down with the earlier sunsets. Sweater weather. As much as I appreciate the beauty of fall, these signals announce the end of long summer days and strike a melancholy chord in my heart. Autumn is an apt metaphor for aging. Autumn asks us to pause and take stock. How many seasons do we have left? Are we spending our time wisely and well? Are…
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Another Year: Thoughts on a Milestone Birthday
“Every birthday is a gift. Every day is a gift.” — Aretha Franklin A friend jokingly refers to the first week of August as my “birthday week” because I usually take full advantage of the opportunities to celebrate. This time around, however, I’m feeling a bit less celebratory and a lot more reflective. My driver’s license proves that I’ve landed on one of those milestone birthdays — the kind that inspires black balloons from the party store and bad jokes about seniority. For the past two years, I’ve facilitated a monthly workshop/discussion group titled “Aging with Grace & Courage” at a local library. Thanks to this group of thoughtful women,…
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Summer sunsets
“Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful, but because they are fleeting.” ~Richard Paul Evans One of my favorite summer rituals is watching the sun set on Lake Michigan. To fully appreciate a sunset, you have to pause on the beach to admire the fiery color show — and stay long enough to see the sun disappear below the horizon. Sunsets inspire all of us to be fully present, to savor the moment. As other beachcombers gather to watch and applaud the spectacle, there’s a brief but lovely sense of community. Sometimes I’m moved to tears. As today’s quote reminds us, summertime passes quickly.…
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Embrace your age
“Every year brings you closer to expressing your whole and healed self. I celebrate that. Honor it. Hold it in reverence. And I’m grateful for every age I’m blessed to become.” ~Oprah Winfrey The key phrase in today’s quote from Oprah is “your whole and healed self.” All of us suffer deep emotional wounds throughout our lives. Nobody leaves this world unscratched. One of the gifts of aging is the informed perspective we earn from years of experience. And how well we age depends on our attitude as well as the choices we make. We can dwell on the past and rehash our list of regrets; or we can move…
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Making the most of our days
“The realization that I may have only a few good years remaining has hit me with real force, and I have done a lot of thinking as a result… I try to figure out what I really want to do every day. I try to say to myself, ‘If this is one of the last days of my life, am I doing exactly what I want to be doing?’” ~Nora Ephron Today’s quote underscores an important conversation we started last night in my “Aging with Grace & Courage” group. We all agreed that we’re hyper-aware of the time we have left in our senior years — and we want to…
