Other people mark their 50th birthday by taking a trip, throwing a big party, or checking off something on their bucket list. I entered my sixth decade with a growing sense that our family needed one more child to feel complete. My husband and I already had six children, the youngest of whom was 10, and I had a pretty…
“It’s never too late to do something that your heart really desires,” says perpetual student Jennie Richards, who is studying for her MBA in Sustainable Enterprise. “I didn’t get married until I was forty-five. Now I’m back in school at age fifty-two. My life is proof that you don’t have to follow a set template or do what everyone else…
By Douglas LaBier, Ph.D. In a previous post I described new research showing that a sense of purpose in life is linked with greater longevity. That’s just one of an increasing number of studies that add to the recognition that we are biological-psychological-spiritual-social beings. All dimensions—internal and external—interact with each other and shape our total experience of life: our overall health, level…
Writing about visiting her mother who has Alzheimer’s disease, Priscilla Warner observes, “I try not to go with expectations, but that’s hard, since… I want my visits to go well. But it’s hard to define ‘well’ when my mother doesn’t know who I am.” Watching her mother deteriorate over time, Warner sometimes forgets herself and asks (then immediately regrets), “What…
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, current life expectancy in the United States is about 79 years. Of course, many factors determine life span, and the aging process is accelerated by stress, disease, and trauma, both physical and emotional. But can we reverse the aging process? Findings reported in Genome Journal by Steve Horvath, Ph.D., Sc.D., professor of…
I have never been one to sit at my desk for long periods of time. I’ve always deliberately let my tea get cold so I’d need to walk down the hall for a refill (while leaving my glass of water empty to necessitate a separate refill trip). I take the stairs every chance I get and often stand up when…
I have many a fond memory of spending summer afternoons and evenings with my dad and neighbors playing Ping-Pong on a regulation table set up in my driveway. Whether competitive tournaments that attracted everyone under the age of 12 on my block or relaxing volleys with my parents, it was always fun. But I never imagined that what seemed like…
When Bob Dylan turns another year older on May 24, the usual gaggle of journalists and Dylanophiles will report the news with the same sense of head-scratching, how-can-it-be wonderment they’ve expressed on Dylan’s birthday ever since America’s rock ’n’ roll poet laureate hit middle age. It’s as if, as a nation of nostalgia hounds, we simply can’t get our minds…
