Building a New Old Age: Elderhood

New mindset new results motivational phrase sign

The Transforming Aging Summit, a three-day virtual event held recently, made the heady promise of delivering teachings and practices to inspire listeners to “age with grace and positivity and create a meaningful legacy for generations to come.” Organizers of the event at The Shift Network did not cop a Pollyannish pose when mulling the realities […]

Paying for a Funeral—and Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Funeral flowers

If you’ve ever been involved in creating final arrangements for another person—making decisions about transporting and burying or disposing of the body, choosing a container or casket, planning a service or ceremony—you know there can be a lot of calls and judgments to make at a difficult time. You might also have had the cringe-making […]

The Happiest Time of Life

Heart Shaped Tree

Who are the happiest people you know? If you think about it very long, you might conclude that an older person in your life is perhaps the happiest. Research has shown that the happiest people are generally older people and those in their 70s are the happiest of all. So What Makes Older People Happy? […]

The Future of Senior Living

Intersection of Old and Young

We’re getting older every day, and so is the rest of the world. By 2050, the percentage of the world’s people who are 60 or older will exceed the percentage who are younger than 15. That means we need to start thinking about how we are going to support an aging population as younger people […]

Often Forgotten: The Working Daughters

Young hand holding older person's hand

Society devotes substantial resources to helping working mothers find a work-life balance as they transition between their family obligations and the workforce. But what about the staggering 37 million unpaid eldercare providers in the United States, a majority of whom are women? When they transition into family caregiving — often whilst balancing work, children and […]

Moments that Last a Lifetime

Sunflower

We all have those special moments in our lives that we think back on. Some of these memories are of ordinary days and some are of a day that changed our lives forever. These are the thoughts that bring us through tough times. Even in our darkest moments, if we think about a certain experience […]

The Grace that Shines Through

Photo Credit: Children at the Weill public school in San Francisco pledge allegiance to the American flag in April 1942, prior to the internment of Japanese Americans. Photo attributed to Dorothea Lange(w). Public Domain.

February 19, 2017 was the 75th anniversary of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s executive order that put 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. Most of them were citizens of our country. As the children of aging parents who have seen so much political unrest during their lifetime, we often don’t agree with their politics or their […]

If Tomorrow Never Comes

Sky, Tomorrow

None of us like to think about losing a loved one, especially a parent. Only those who have gone through it before can fathom what it’s like. I do know what it’s like to almost lose both my parents and that forced me to think about them being gone. For some reason when I was […]