“Make yourself useful,” my dad used to say to me when I was seven, standing around, twisting my arms into skinny pretzels while he washed our family station wagon. The suds splashed around the blue plastic bucket, his strong forearms scrubbing the baby… Continue reading
“Look at your stomach and your big ass,” my mother said with disgust, pointing at my belly. That hit me right on. Here comes another. “Who would ever want to marry you?” Is she done? I wanted to flee. Oh no, she’s got help. “Look, it’s Shamu. Shamu, th… Continue reading
Remember when NBC billed its Thursday nights shows as Must See TV? This fall, NBC and CBS have three new Thursday night half-hour comedies that might be called Second Act TV, featuring popular stars launching new careers, romantic lives or both. Carol’… Continue reading
Christmas Day 2018 was one of the worst days of my life. Just over a month before, my husband of 32 years, Dale, died two days before Thanksgiving of a sudden massive heart attack. He was only 57 and we had been together since we were teenagers. To say… Continue reading
The food was great, the wine was flowing and your friends gave you great gifts for your birthday. You were expecting a wonderful evening. But at the end of the night, you felt let down. And the sad part is — this isn’t the first time it’s happened. You… Continue reading
As a teenager, I saw the Barbra Streisand/Robert Redford movie The Way We Were and cried. As the theater lights went up, my mother looked at my tear-streaked face and commented dryly, “You really don’t know true sadness yet, do you?” In that moment, I … Continue reading
In 1994, Mary Pipher wrote Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, a groundbreaking, bestselling book examining the complicated lives of teenage girls. It was the result of her work as a clinical psychologist with this age group. And i… Continue reading
Ronald Long, the St. Louis-based director of Wells Fargo’s Elder Clients Initiatives team since 2014, created what’s become a key brokerage industry tool to protect older investors from elder financial elder abuse. Long and his team originated the “In … Continue reading
Larry Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation who, with members of the National Tribal Chairmen’s Association, founded the National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA) in 1976. NICOA is a nonprofit that advocates for health, social services and economic we… Continue reading
We take the process of selecting our annual Influencers in Aging very seriously because we know our list is an important one. Our goal is to name a dozen groundbreakers who, in the past year, have helped transform attitudes about aging, presented innov… Continue reading