We’re a community of people who are changing the paradigm of aging by challenging the stereotypes of aging by sharing TRUE stories about aging dynamically, to explore what’s possible, inspire one another and empower by example.
It’s a beautiful morning in early September here in New Mexico. I’m on my road bike with members of my cycling group. Well, not with them, more like following them as they speed ahead of me. I try to keep their bright jerseys in sight. Our route is mostly flat, giving...
I was already in my sixties when I first began to write my memoir The Coconut Latitudes. The last of my closest family members had died and I was just beginning to consider (and worry about) my own mind failing me as I aged, and whether our family story would die with...
After losing my beloved husband of 65 years in 2016, I remained in our beautiful home overlooking Rose City Golf Course in Northeast Portland. Our six children, their spouses and children – and even their children – had loved this home for 31 years, too. Why leave,...
I retired in 2020. It had been six months since the death of my first husband, the father of my children, and eight months since I lost my husband. I had to admit a lot of changes had taken place and retirement was one more big adjustment. I told myself I didn’t need...
I joined Ranger Kielak for a 9-mile walk yesterday in the final week of his Walk Across America to raise money for charity. Ranger’s journey started in March 2024 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with a goal of walking 3,000 miles through 10 states to raise $100K for...
People ask what inspires the senryus that I write. Not with humility, but with the truth, my senryus are to some extent inspired by a basic ineptitude that I have. My high school English teacher graded my essays and creative writing with two grades: one for content...
Fourteen years into retirement and I just figured out I’m allergic to a firm, structured, committed schedule. I’m in awe of my retired friends my age who volunteer on the same day at the same place for 10-plus years or take the same fitness class on the same day each...
This May I turned 86 and my list of things I want to BE, DO and HAVE continues to grow. I guess I thought someday the list would dwindle or disappear. But it hasn’t. My curiosity keeps pushing the envelope to discover what is possible – physically, mentally,...
When I graduated from high school in 1970, the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” hit the shelves and caused an instant sensation. Young women like myself, who up until then had only brief and whispered discussions about sex, could read in bold print and see explicit photos...
Chatting with a favorite nephew a few weeks ago, I lamented that I didn’t have more money to donate to Doctors Without Borders. It’s Médecins Sans Frontières in its French moniker. I’ve been making semi-regular donations to this amazing organization for several years.
But my nephew reminded me I have my own superpower. I could use my newspaper column and also write articles for other publications to highlight the amazing medical help these doctors provide and encourage more support.
Superpower.
I like the word, though you can drop it a few notches and simply say expertise.
I believe we all have a superpower. Maybe make that plural.
As we dynamically age, even despite some mobility issues, I’ll bet everyone reading this can name their superpower/talent or expertise. The question is: what do you want do with it/them?
The answer might be right in front of you.
At a recent press club gathering of dynamically aging journalists – also described as veteran journalists – a young newspaper reporter joined the informal conversation. She was relatively new to writing about local city government. But for a couple of hours she sat at a table of five knowledgeable veteran journalists who had done exactly the reporting to which she was a newbie. She grilled us for every detail about the community. We offered tricks of the writing trade, some time-tested interview techniques and other news-reporting nuggets.
We collectively realized our superpower that day was the ability to offer guidance, not just to her, but also future aspiring young news reporters, filling in their college classroom education gaps with real world experience.
One of the successes of this magazine is how many Dynamic Agers are choosing to share their well-earned perspectives, to plant a seed, to give hope, to explain. And most of the essays were written by people just like you – not professional writers but people with a lifetime of perspective who are willing to share it.
We challenge you to think about your superpower, your expertise. And then write about it. We want to hear from you, too.
Michael J. Fitzgerald
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...
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...
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,...
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...
If someone had suggested, even two years ago, that I would be choosing to live in the independent living portion of a senior community, I would have thought, “Well, they obviously don’t know me!” New Year’s Eve 2022 I moved into a lovely apartment on the third floor...
One of the best Christmases I ever had was when I was eleven years old. I opened the sliding doors and saw two bicycles, one for me and one for my brother. Now I could "ride bikes" with friends and get a job as a paperboy. And I have never stopped riding since....
I looked around at the group of cyclists shivering in a parking lot at 8 a.m. on a chilly fall Saturday in Orinda, CA. “What the hell was I doing here?” I asked myself. I wasn’t a cyclist, but I had agreed to join my friend Val to train for a week-long bike ride to...
I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease at 62. By that point in life I’d become convinced of the close brain-body connection, and what may possibly bypass it. Thirty-eight years before this diagnosis, I had a significant experience one evening while meditating: I was...
After a lifetime of dreaming, a couple years of scheming and two weeks of intense searching, my wife Christina and I bought our Winnebago Travato this spring. It’s a beaut. A shiny gray 2022 Class B recreation vehicle with low miles in very good condition. After a few...
It had been a crazy, relentless last few weeks in California. I was ramping up my coaching business, teaching virtual fitness classes, hiking daily, taking multiple dog walks, all wedged in with lunches, dinners and visits with family and friends. On Friday night we...
I have always lived the paradox of desiring both home and adventure. This is how I walk my days. I go big into the world, sometimes weeks, months, even years. And then I come home. So it is that when I am living in Africa and awash in the wonder and joy of my life, I...
On November 4, 2023, I’ll complete my fiftieth trip around the sun. I cannot wait to celebrate this milestone, and I know that I have so much to look forward to. I’m lucky. I was born with a gift: I can see my future. I arrived in this world in 1973, the youngest of...
Elderly is not a number. Elderly is a physical and mental and emotional state of being. I was elderly when I was 35 but I’m not elderly now, at age 73. At 35, I became elderly overnight. I woke up one morning and I could not put my foot on the floor when I tried to...
When I hit 55, I did a mathematical calculation about how many months, weeks and days I had in my life until I turned 75. That’s roughly 240 months, 1,042 weeks or 7,300 days, in case you wondered. Seventy-five years old! From the perspective of a 55-year-old, that...
What do Grandma Moses and I have in common? We both chose to create something new in our lives and in the world that didn’t exist before. We did this when people might have considered us “old.” We were both 78. That is the age when Grandma Moses began her life as a...
Every ten years or so, I find myself watching Mick Jagger fling himself across the stage like a possessed puppet. With wild-eyed ferocity, he postures and prances in the spastic style he alone owns --- a style still so vital it’s a mind boggle that he’s been doing...
At 63 years old, I retired and relocated from California to Oregon with my husband, who was soon to retire. This would be the city we both live in for the rest of our lives and we would be closer to our daughter. And then the COVID pandemic began in earnest. Our move...
I feel like I beat the odds when I hiked the Mist Trail up Vernal and Nevada Falls in Yosemite National Park May 20, 2022. The odds? I figured the odds were against me because of my age - 86. I had had a total right hip replacement in October 2020. And I had not done...
I was raised in a privileged life. A happy childhood in a sylvan Denver suburb, a University of Colorado education, moving to LA where I followed my artistic curiosity and ending up working for Industrial Light and Magic – the Star Wars people. I met my future...
In January of 2023, I will make 74 years young and my 10th year involved in the dragon boat community. But I wasn’t athletic until the age of 63. I was the oldest of eight kids growing up and I had a lot of responsibilities put on me, so playing sports was out of the...
Shortly before Thanksgiving, my dear 92-year-old husband died under hospice care in our home. Now I am looking in the rear view mirror at a relationship that started when I was 23 years old and Jim was 42 -– 19 years my senior –– he was already widely recognized as a...
In 1980, a devastating diagnosis changed my life –– for the better. I had a physically taxing job in the photocopy industry held by few women at the time, while struggling on the home front in an emotionally exhausting relationship. When I found myself dropping...
“When I grow up, I want to be like you,” I said to my daughter, Cami. I was 80 years old. With those words, an amazing journey was set in motion that included travel, exploration, inspiration, transformation, and the creation of my first-ever business. My daughter...
For a long time, I didn’t know who I was, what I wanted to do, or where I belonged. Married for 33 years and divorced at age 70, I’m clearer now than I’ve ever been. And who am I? An author, a spiritual seeker, and a solo world traveler. No one was more surprised than...