For adults ages 65 and up, you are not old. The best years of your life are not behind you.
It would be fair to say you are “getting older,” but aren’t we all?
Just because the number of candles on your birthday cake is a little high, that doesn’t mean your life is all downhill from here.
Still, dealing with the changes that come with aging can be challenging at times, which is why Jane Giddan and Ellen Cole wrote 70Candles! Women Thriving in Their Eighth Decade.
We learned about the book, and the women’s adventures in this New York Times blog post by Jane E. Brody.
Through blog posts and gatherings across the country, the two women encourage other women in or near their 70s to share their unique stories and generate research questions for scientists to pursue further.
From these conversations, Giddan and Cole learned some of the most important issues facing women today, including: work and retirement, ageism, coping with functional changes, care-taking, living arrangements, social connections, being a grandparent, and adjusting to loss and death. By the time many women reach age 70, they will have outlived their parents, and even siblings or close friends.
One of the most important pieces of advice the women have shared is to stay positive through all of these changes. According to Brody’s blog post, research out of Yale shows that often people who think about aging positively outlive those with a negative perception.
There is no better time than the present for women age 65 and beyond. You are only as old as you act, so if you’ve always wanted to go hiking or cycling or skiing with girlfriends, do it.
Many of the women interviewed are worried they will run out of time to do all of the things on their list, so start now and keep checking items off as you go.