What to Expect When You Are Seventy Having been in my seventies for all of six months, I am only marginally qualified to write about this decade. But never having been reticent about sharing an opinion, whether informed or not, here is what I know so far. If you’re a Crone in Training in your forties through sixties, please consider this essay a missive from the future. First of all, the stereotype of the Frail
Embracing Sensuality in Midlife: A Journey of Liberation and Self-Expression If you would have asked me in my twenties and thirties to show up on social media and modeling campaigns in my bra and knickers, I would have run a mile! I wasn’t comfortable looking at myself in the mirror, never mind letting a total stranger see me. So how did I end up becoming a lingerie model in my forties? As for so many
Three Crones to Watch Out For The subject of “super-agers” came up in a recent Old School Office Hours (which, in case you aren’t familiar with it, is a weekly Zoom gathering of folks interested in anti-ageism, convened by the esteemed Ashton Applewhite). You know who we mean by “super-ager:” The eighty-year-old who climbs a mountain. The ninety-year-old who runs their first marathon. Nothing against these olders; it’s great that they are living their best
The Vista of Years In this decade of my life, I find writing about my childhood in the 1960s to be comforting. I don’t write exclusively about that era; many of my personal essays chronicle more recent years with my husband and daughter and our rural life in Western North Carolina. But I often find myself recollecting my early years in my hometown, Marion, North Carolina, where I was born and still live. My childhood
Drugs after 60 – And Not The Fun Kind I react badly to most medications – sometimes badly enough to warrant a MedWatch report to FDA. A bit ironic, given that I spent my career in biotech writing submissions to FDA for product approvals. But knowing what I do about medical regulation, it did not surprise me to learn that the American Geriatric Society has developed the Beer’s List of approved medications they do not
Schroedinger’s Breast: Welcome to Mammogram-O-Rama When the mammogram center called the week after my scan, I knew it was not good news. Those folks don’t ring you up to say hi. “Your scan shows calcifications,” the woman said. “We need you to come in to see if we can resolve your case. We’d like you to wait after this mammogram and talk with the radiologist.” I scheduled the scan for the next week and spent the
