The Three A’s for Happiness and Health

My parents are living examples on how to age successfully. I learned a lot at the university about aging but it can’t compare to what my parents have taught me. Early on they led by example. They taught me, and are still teaching me, to have a good attitude, to be adaptable and to stay […]

Gifts from the Heart – Get Started Now for the Holidays

Some of the best gifts you could ever give don’t have to cost a lot, but it does take some planning. My daughter gives wonderful gifts. Each year she makes a calendar for my parents and her father and me. Photos of her boys and the other grandkids make each month shine. She hit on […]

Unexpected Therapy and Unforgettable Memories

Sitting by the bedside of the one you love is perhaps the hardest thing you’ll ever do. You’re worried — they’re worried. There’s so much stress from not knowing what will happen. It’s hard to keep your own spirits up and even harder to know what to say to keep your mom or dad from […]

Gauging Aging: New Study Looks at Ageism in America

It doesn’t take a concerted study by a think tank to reveal that ageism is flourishing in America. Ask anyone who’s attained A Certain Age about the feelings of invisibility, uselessness, even fear and scorn imposed by those around them. Ageism is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age […]

The Friendship Line: A Lifeline for Lonely Seniors

A soft-voiced man with kind eyes and an impeccably trimmed white beard, Patrick Arbore is Director and Founder of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention & Grief Related Services, now housed within the Institute on Aging in San Francisco. Back in 1973, he also founded the Friendship Line, which now also operates out of the […]

The Need to be Useful

Last week my father retired — again! The first time he retired, he was in his 60s, but he just couldn’t stay away from his little Barber Shop on the edge of Stockton, California, so he went back to working just one day a week — on Tuesdays. He missed his customers and his fellow […]

Shots for Health – Surviving the Flu Season

Health issues get more complicated the older we get and it’s especially true when you’re talking about the flu season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) strongly encourages people 65 and older to get their flu shots each and every year. The CDC estimates up to 70 percent of all hospitalizations due to […]

Tunnel Vision and the Dilemma of Stranded Caregivers

We’re all a little self-centered until we become the caregiver to an older loved one. Suddenly we have so much to think about, to do and to plan for, that everything else goes straight to the back burner. Life changes dramatically. We no longer have time for friends, to attend events we’d usually never miss […]

Help With Letting Go of Life’s Regrets

As a longtime counselor with the Institute on Aging’s Friendship Line,  the country’s only accredited crisis intervention line and warmline focused on callers age 60 and older, I listen to and talk with dozens of callers each week—many of them anxious, distressed, in crisis, or depressed. It’s a volunteer gig, and understandably, not everyone’s bag […]

When Their Independence Threatens Their Life

Our elders are fiercely independent — that’s a fact. Poll after poll finds that nearly all older adults want to stay in their homes until the very end. So many factors threaten their ability to continue living independently. No one truly anticipates getting dementia, becoming immobile or fighting a life-threatening disease, but the older we […]