By Elizabeth Russell | Bio
It is difficult not to notice that many people focus on their health—the latest visit to the doctor or the most recent medication. I realize that, at least in part, this is due to a shift in attention—away from a concern with family, community or the world and toward this body in which we dwell and which, at this time of life, would command all of our attention if we let it. It is also difficult to live in this environment and not be reminded, almost daily, of our
By Elizabeth Russell | Bio
As soon as I got over thinking of myself as an oddity in the environment and began looking around, I discovered some very interesting people.
One of the early people I met had been a detective (a Private I!) for over 35 years and had some hair-raising stories to tell, including her gathering evidence against an East Bay union boss who was using sexual coercion against women seeking work. Another resident had been an FBI man and there is a woman who worked with the Joint
By Jim Selman | Bio
I have been talking about ‘completion’ a lot lately. It is basically that state of being where we can let the past be in the past and not try to control everything to make the future turn out the way we want it. Completion is a necessary state if we want live in the present. One of the things that keeps us from being complete is guilt. Guilt is a waste of time. It is blaming ourselves for whatever we think we’ve done wrong. As far as I can tell, it is also a cover-up for not being responsible for whatever we did that we’re feeling guilty about.If we’re responsible for our actions and we do something wrong, then we can learn from our mistake and not do it again—end of story. However, when we are guilty, we always have an explanation about why we did it and why we didn’t really want to do it, accompanied by all sorts of sorry intentions not to do it again. Have you EVER felt guilty (probably over and over) about something that you didn’t repeat?
Guilt makes us feel better about all the bad stuff since remorse
By Jim Selman | Bio
Nathan Oates, a Christian minister who writes a very thoughtful blog called “Theologically Speaking”, did a nice piece on loneliness. His point: how we seem to fragment our society into all kinds of niches and end up not relating to or connecting with most of the people around us. Even in the churches that one would imagine to be the most community-oriented institutions, the norm
By Elizabeth Russell | Bio
I had enormous resistance in moving into what I thought of as “an old folks’ home.” For years I had said to my children, “I’ll never live in one of those places!” When circumstances conspired to make such a move wise, I spent much of the first few months in my new home looking at San Francisco apartment ads, traveling to the city to look at those apartments. As I did, I began to notice the difference it would mean to me living in one of those apartments as
By Jim Selman | Bio
If we think about retirement or growing older in general, it seems to me that most of us are trying to figure out what we want for our future. Our orientation is to explore options given whatever opening we have, rather than to consider that aging is an opening and the challenge is to create new possibilities—not simply cope with our circumstances.
I used to think about life-after-retirement as a kind of blank canvas on which we could paint whatever future we choose.
By Marilyn Kentz | Bio | Website
Unlike
in our mothers’ and grandmothers’ day, you and I are bombarded with
young, beautifully and magically enhanced women 24 hours every day.
Frequent ads remind us that we should be defying our age. Half the
time, I don’t even know I should be worried about something until a
commercial tells me so.
The other day, while putting on my
make-up with the television murmuring in the background, a mesmerizing
spokesperson for a moisturizing
By Shae Hadden | Bio
In the busyness of mid-life career pursuits, we can easily find ourselves letting relationships slide. In no time at all, it seems years have gone by, we’ve lost touch with dear friends from near and far, and forgotten the lure of long-promised adventures we were going to share. A recent NY Times article about Elizabeth Goodyear, a centenarian confined to her one-bedroom
By Jim Selman | Bio
The 1970s in the USA may not have been the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, but it was certainly the ‘Age of the Pursuit of Enlightenment’. The Esalen Institute was in its hey day, the est training was blowing everyone’s mind, and authentic Indian yogis were in demand. We thought the Age of Aquarius was really here and that peace and love were just a few years away.
Maybe we were naïve, but it was a good time when young people were trying hard to be better people and
By Marilyn Kentz | Bio | Website
It was my last day of my week-long vacation and I was back in Berkeley visiting my 22-year-old daughter and her boyfriend. I was meeting my husband there, as we had gone in two different directions for the last part. It was the boyfriend’s 24th birthday and she had made plans for the two of them to go out to a romantic dinner. Since we had extended our stay by one day, I insisted they keep their original plans. No need to politely drag Mommy along. I told her I would start cooking the pasta salad she wanted to bring on their picnic the next day.By
7:30 it must have been 99 degrees in her cute little upstairs
apartment. The Bay Area population expects—no, counts on—the morning
fog and the evening sea breeze to keep their fresh air perfect in the
summer. With our diminishing ozone, I fear this sweltering day was only
a taste of things to come. And since they only rely on natural air
conditioning, there was not so much as a fan in sight. My head was
dripping.