The Joys Of Getting Older

"An inspirational look at the beauty found within the Circle of Life." —The Times "A straightforward, clear-cut how-to book for putting a spark (or two!) back into your life. It truly describes the magical beauty to be found in the twilight years." &mdashYule Biyung, author and inspirational speaker Thomas and Cindy Senior are the best-selling husband-and-wife team who authored Retiring Gracefully and Senior Sex: How to Rekindle the Sizzle in Your Bedroom. In The Joys of Getting Older the tradition of their previous books, they have collected all their best advice and share their insights into how you can lead a happy and energetic life after reaching "that certain age." The Seniors are living out their dream retirement in sunny Florida, where hurricanes and theme parks provide routine stimulation in their lives.

The acclaimed author of What's Worth Knowing reveals the truth about aging: Old age often offers a richer, better, and more self-assured life than youth. From our earliest lives, we are told that our youth will be the best time of our lives-that the energy and vitality of youth are the most important qualities a person can possess, and that everything that comes after will be a sad decline. But in reality, says Wendy Lustbader, youth is not the golden era it is often made out to be. For many, it is a time riddled with anxiety, angst, confusion, and the torture of uncertainty. Conversely, the media often feeds us a vision of growing older as a journey of defeat and diminishment. They are dead wrong. As Lustbader counters, "Life gets better as we get older, on all levels except the physical." Life Gets Better is not a precious or whimsical tome on the quirky wisdom of the elderly. Lustbader-who has worked for several decades as a social worker specializing in aging issues-conducted firsthand research with aging and elderly people in all walks of life, and she found that they overwhelmingly spoke of the mental and emotional richness they have drawn from aging. Lustbader discovered that rather than experiencing a decline from youth, aging people were happier, more courageous, and more interested in being true to their inner selves than were young people. Life Gets Better examines through first-person stories, as well as Lustbader's own observations, how a lifetime of lessons learned can yield one of the most personally and emotionally fruitful periods of anyone's life. As an eighty-six-year-old who contributed her story to the book noted, "For me, being old is the reward for outlasting all the big and little problems that happen to all of us along life's pathway." The collected stories in Life Gets Better provide a hopeful corrective to the fear of aging aggressively instilled in us by the media. Don't dread the future: The best years of our lives just may be ahead.

"A straightforward, clear-cut how-to book for putting a spark (or two!) back into your life. It truly describes the magical beauty to be found in the twilight years." --Yule Biyung, author and inspirational speaker "An inspirational look at the beauty found within the Circle of Life." --The Times Thomas and Cindy Senior are the best-selling husband-and-wife team who authored Retiring Gracefully and Senior Sex: How to Rekindle the Sizzle in Your Bedroom. In The Joys of Getting Older the tradition of their previous books, they have collected all their best advice and share their insights into how you can lead a happy and energetic life after reaching "that certain age." The Seniors are living out their dream retirement in sunny Florida, where hurricanes and theme parks provide routine stimulation in their lives. And not surprisingly, in the pages of this telling tome, readers will find 120 blank pages. Because in reality, getting older sucks!

For fans of David Sedaris and Nora Ephron, here is a humorous, irreverent, and poignant look at the gifts, stereotypes, and inevitable challenges of aging, based on the wildly popular New York Times essay from award-winning journalist Steven Petrow. Soon after his 50th birthday, Steven Petrow began assembling a list of “things I won’t do when I get old”—mostly a catalog of all the things he thought his then 70-something year old parents were doing wrong. That list, which included “You won’t have to shout at me that I’m deaf,” and “I won’t blame the family dog for my incontinence,” became the basis of this rousing collection of do’s and don’ts, wills and won’ts that is equal parts hilarious, honest, and practical. The fact is, we don’t want to age the way previous generations did. “Old people” hoard. They bore relatives—and strangers—with tales of their aches and pains. They insist on driving long after they’ve become a danger to others (and themselves). They eat dinner at 4pm. They swear they don’t need a cane or walker (and guess what happens next). They never, ever apologize. But there is another way . . . In Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old, Petrow candidly addresses the fears, frustrations, and stereotypes that accompany aging. He offers a blueprint for the new old age, and an understanding that aging and illness are not the same. As he writes, “I meant the list to serve as a pointed reminder—to me—to make different choices when I eventually cross the threshold to ‘old.’” Getting older is a privilege. This essential guide reveals how to do it with grace, wisdom, humor, and hope. And without hoarding.

A grey tsunami is sweeping the land, wreaking social and financial havoc in its wake. Sound familiar? This myth about aging, along with twenty-eight others, is the focus of Getting Wise about Getting Old, which paints a far more accurate and nuanced portrait of old age. In it, experts debunk myths and persistent stereotypes about aging on a broad array of social issues – from retirement (seniors are low-performance workers) to housing (most older adults live in long-term care accommodation), and violence (senior women are not victims of sexual assault) to political participation (seniors are conservative and resistant to change) – deconstructing and countering them with the latest findings. The work of two leading research groups in Quebec, the short and accessible chapters of this vitally important book contribute to a better understanding of the social challenges, as well as the advantages, of an aging society.

“A fascinating look at how scientists are working to help doctors treat the aging process itself, helping us all to lead longer, healthier lives.” —Sanjay Gupta, MD Aging—not cancer, not heart disease—is the underlying cause of most human death and suffering. The same cascade of biological changes that renders us wrinkled and gray also opens the door to dementia and disease. We work furiously to conquer each individual disease, but we never think to ask: Is aging itself necessary? Nature tells us it is not: there are tortoises and salamanders who are spry into old age and whose risk of dying is the same no matter how old they are, a phenomenon known as “biological immortality.” In Ageless, Andrew Steelecharts the astounding progress science has made in recent years to secure the same for humans: to help us become old without getting frail, to live longer without ill health or disease.

*** 'Are you aging fabulously? Here's how.' Anna Murphy, The Times 'A lovely book celebrating female beauty over 40.' Top Sante 'You become what you see. What you see determines what you believe - and the most powerful way of inspiring people is with images. My goal with AndBloom is to motivate women to embrace life without fear. To provide examples of women between the age of 40 and, currently, 100, so that any woman can open this book and see themselves recognized.' Denise Boomkens launched the AndBloom project on Instagram in 2018, to create a 'happy place for women over 40' - a community where women can be themselves and where aging is celebrated instead of feared. In this, her first book, she shares her own experiences of aging and brings together portraits and interviews with more than 100 extraordinary 'ordinary' women to create both a gloriously illustrated celebration of female beauty over 40 and an empowering handbook to aging happily.

Is getting older to be feared or embraced? Is it merely a matter of deterioration and death or is it a platform for a new lifestyle with new opportunities and new joys? This is a story about getting older. The main character, Don, a 73-year-old retired widower is initially confused and depressed about getting older. The book takes him through the fears, the challenges and the merits of being a senior citizen. It does so on three levels of narrative. First, there is the primary story of Don’s sharing in one-on-one counseling to help him resolve his issues with aging. The Epilogue is a surprise conclusion to this counseling journey. Second, there is the presentation of Don’s own internal dialogue regarding getting older with his inner reflections combined with his counseling journal entries. Third, there are five short stories spread out over the journal entries which emphasize the truths that Don is trying to get at with his journal entries. There have been several notable books written about aging, its causes and its challenges. Yet, there has never been a book like this one. Through the art of fiction it gets to the core of the questions haunting the prospects of getting older in a way that readers can personally identify with and use to resolve their own issues with aging. If readers follow the intertwining stories, perhaps they will discover answers for themselves, at least that is the intention of this book.