by Matt Nadler | Jan 15, 2024 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
My father died at 69 of a heart attack. Rumor has it his father also died at 69 of a heart attack. When I turned 69, I worried each time I had the slightest chest pain. When I turned 70 and didn’t die, I celebrated by getting a tattoo and have gotten another...
by Karing Niall | Jan 1, 2024 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
I went to bed on St Patrick’s Day 2023 in a rosy glow after spending the evening with good friends. When I woke up the next morning, I thought I was drunk. I couldn’t walk straight, my hearing was off, and as I discovered when I drove my car, my thinking...
by Ruth Jackson | Dec 11, 2023 | Magazine
When I retired in 2020 at 70, I began a campaign to reach back in time to try to reconnect with people who had been important to me earlier in my life. I sent out 10 letters to people who had touched my heart but with whom I had lost contact along the way. Since we...
by Patricia Rose Duignan | Nov 27, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
Retirement is one of the hardest jobs I’ve had. I’ve had a lifetime of being extremely productive and busy. My career path, starting in the 70s, was an explosive rise to the top. I made a ‘how-to’ film in college: “How to Have an Orgasm,” which was distributed to...
by Alison Crouch | Nov 13, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
I still feel about 42, even though it’s been around a decade and a half since I was that age. I’ve loved every year so far, but in my 40’s I felt like I’d grown into my skin, my brain and my sense of self. I’ve always remembered an essay by Carol Shields in her...
by Magda Peck | Oct 30, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
The first time I noticed it was hard to hear was in 10th grade. Voices started sounding fuzzy, and sometimes I couldn’t understand teachers when they faced the blackboard. A screening test showed mild hearing loss, and given I had measles as a young child, the...
by Patty Van Dyke | Oct 16, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
Like many of us, I experienced several losses at the beginning of Covid which made the isolation especially hard to deal with. Professionally, I was a Marriage and Family Therapist and Clinical Art Therapist in private practice for over 20 years. It wasn’t an easy...
by Irving Morgan | Oct 2, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
I don’t know what the odds are of a couple to actually have a marriage that really works. My wife, Pat, and I were married for 68 years before she died earlier this year from COVID-related issues. The last three or four years were more difficult because she was...
by Nancy King | Sep 18, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
In April 2023, two months shy of my 87th birthday, I called a friend to tell her where I was hiking and then drove to the trailhead. On a lovely spring morning, I started up a familiar trail that was covered in snow. Still, I made my way up the steep climb to the top,...
by Christine Barnes, Ed.D. | Sep 4, 2023 | Dynamic Aging, Magazine
At age 63, when most of my friends were retired or actively planning to do so, I enrolled in a three-year doctoral program. It was a 25 hour-a-week gig on top of my full-time job, only worse. It was an unpaid gig and it would drain my bank account at a time when I...
