I've been writing and providing pastor care for more than thirty years now. Since turning sixty, I have noticed that aging well is not a given. Many people seem to grow increasingly bitter, resentful, and hard. If we want to become more empathetic, grateful, and loving, we have to keep growing and do our spiritual and relational work. We also need trustworthy guides to help us find our way. I hope to be a wise, compassionate guide for my readers.
In this wise and welcome field guide, Michelle Van Loon
casts a vision for what our lives might look like if we refuse to settle and
instead lean into the many challenges, losses, and disappointments of midlife
as traction to keep growing. Becoming Sage not only empowers us to
flourish today—it infuses us with hope for our future. (Plus, because Michelle
is incredibly funny, there’s humor throughout.)
Why Do We Act Like There Is An Age Restriction on Spiritual Growth?
For the last several decades, Western churches have focused the bulk of their resources on the early stages of discipleship—children’s Sunday school, youth group, college ministry. While these are all important, we have neglected the spiritual growth of those in the second half of life. In fact, an outside observer might think that after the growth of the college years, the goal is simply to coast through the rest of your Christian life.
Michelle Van Loon has a different idea. In Becoming Sage, she challenges those in…
I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan, and my new novel, Beautiful Shining People, is a direct result of two profound experiences I had there. The first was when I was hiking through the hills of Kyoto late one night and turned around to see a glowing creature–some have said they think I saw a kami. The second experience happened when I was in Hiroshima at the Peace Park. I immediately started crying, seeing all the schoolchildren learning about the horrible atrocity committed against their ancestors. I have no idea why it affected me so much, but it was one of the most moving experiences of my life.
Where do I start? Breasts and Eggs is a fantastic example of contemporary Japanese literature.
The main character comes from a broken family that saw her mother die early. She feels that she is getting older and that if she is to ever have children she must act soon. But that’s only one small facet of this richly-drawn protagonist.
The novel also takes some great shots at the publishing industry, which, as a novelist, I found quite enjoyable. But most interesting is the history of this book. Kawakami originally wrote the first part as a novella, which was published in 2008.
Breasts and Eggs, published in 2019, saw her rewriting that novella and adding a second part to continue the story. If I have a favorite contemporary Japanese writer, it’s Mieko Kawakami.
A BEST BOOK OF 2020 TIME Magazine・The Atlantic・Book Riot・Electric Literature・The New York Times (Notable Book of the Year)
The story of three women by a writer hailed by Haruki Murakami as Japan’s most important contemporary novelist, WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE.
On a sweltering summer day, Makiko travels from Osaka to Tokyo, where her sister Natsu lives. She is in the company of her daughter, Midoriko, who has lately grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with adolescence. The story of these three women reunited in a working-class neighborhood of Tokyo is told through…
When I decided to work on my sex life, I devoured both Christian and secular books looking for answers. I not only wanted to understand God’s design for sex, but I also needed help learning to create the amazing sex life that God wanted for me. Since that time, I have taught Awaken Love classes to thousands of Christian women and heard their stories. I continue to look for resources that are empowering for wives, within God’s boundaries, in line with women’s experiences, practical and thought-provoking.
Just the other day I got an email from a wife worried about her aging husband losing confidence, and I immediately recommended All Night Long. Sex doesn’t have to end when our husbands slow down. In fact, sex can get better than it has ever been before because change is an opportunity for growth. This book is filled with activities that will help boost your confidence and make your sex life sizzle.
This book is not about Viagra -- it is about making love. Getting older really does mean getting better. As millions of baby boomers are passing the fifty-year mark, concern for their sex lives is reaching epidemic proportions. This book makes it clear -- sex at fifty, and beyond, can be the best sex yet! By taking the mystery out of the ageing process, this book educates, reassures, and reinvigorates. The key is to remember that we live in a fast-paced society, where not getting there quickly enough sometimes means losing out -- but this is not the case with…
Everything you need to know to plan for your own safe, financially secure, healthy, and happy old age.
For those who have no support system in place, the thought of aging without help can be a frightening, isolating prospect. Whether you have friends and family ready and able to help you or not, growing old does not have to be an inevitable decline into helplessness. It is possible to maintain a good quality of life in your later years, but having a plan is essential. Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old? Equips readers with everything they need to prepare on their own:
Advice on the tough medical, financial, and housing decisions to come
Real solutions to create a support network
Questions about aging solo readers don't know to ask
Customizable worksheets and checklists that help keep plans on course
Guidance on new products, services, technology, and resources
Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old?: Plan Now to Safeguard Your Health and Happiness in Old Age
For those who have no support system in place, the thought of aging without help can be a frightening, isolating prospect. Whether you have friends and family ready and able to help you or not, growing old does not have to be an inevitable decline into helplessness. It is possible to maintain a good quality of life in your later years, but having a plan is essential. WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF ME WHEN I'M OLD? equips readers with everything they need to prepare on their own:
* Advice on the tough medical, financial, and housing decisions to come *…
Meg Jay, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist, and an Associate Professor of Human Development at the University of Virginia, who specializes in adult development and in twentysomethings in particular. She earned a doctorate in clinical psychology, and in gender studies, from the University of California, Berkeley. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and on NPR and BBC. Her TED talk “Why 30 Is Not the New 20” is among the most watched of all time.
This book is for every twentysomething out there with a learning difference. After years of struggling in school, maybe by now you’re feeling a bit beat up and worn down. This book will help you shake it off with a good laugh and a good cry and remind you that adult life and work don't have to be like the classroom. I laughed out loud with every page, except for the ones that broke my heart.
Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote, expertise, and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learn - individually, uniquely, and with advantages and upshots to every type of brain and body. As a neuro-diverse kid diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD who didn't learn to read until he was twelve, the realisation that that he wasn't the problem - the system and the concept of normal were - saved Mooney's life and fundamentally changed his outlook. Here he explores the toll that being not normal takes on kids and adults when they're trapped in environments that label…
As a student, one day, I noticed that something was wrong with our world. Older people are separated from younger ones and sometimes almost invisible. I decided to focus on researching whether and how older people organize themselves into groups and influence important areas of social, economic, and political life. The study of the social capital of older adults led me to research on age discrimination, intergenerational relationships, age-friendly communities and cities, social innovation, co-design, citizen science, and public policy on ageing. I am convinced that only multi-sectoral and multi-level cooperation can lead to the implementation of constructive responses to today’s global challenges.
This quite heavy volume covers a wide range of 37 chapters that focus on the most important topics related to global ageing.
Contributions delivered by experts from areas such as sociology, economics, demography, social policy, public health, and public administration are divided into two categories: challenges and practitioner perspectives.
On the one hand, the authors provide introductions to studies and policy contexts on demographic change, pensions, health, and welfare.
On the other hand, the collection contains a selection of international case studies, policy innovations, and examples of the involvement of civil society in responding to challenges related to ageing population.
Both sides are good starting points for anyone who wants to go more in-depth in the field of ageing policy.
With the collective knowledge of expert contributors in the field, The International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy explores the challenges arising from the ageing of populations across the globe.
With an expansive look at the topic, this comprehensive Handbook examines various national state approaches to welfare provisions for older people and highlights alternatives based around the voluntary and third-party sector, families and private initiatives. Each of these issues are broken down further and split into six comprehensive sections:
- Context - Pensions - Health - Welfare - Case Studies - Policy Innovation and Civil Society
I’ve been a columnist in a national magazine, book reviewer on a daily newspaper, journalist on a small rural paper, commercial blogger for hire, copy-editor, and critiquer, usually alongside more conventional roles in the not entirely thrilling world of corporate finance. In my fifties, I took a belated gap year courtesy of a good redundancy package and started writing full-time under a couple of different names, mainly EJ Lamprey but here as Clarissa. The gap year never really ended . . . At the heart of all my books is the exuberant celebration of finding in autumn the best season of our lives.
We’ve outgrown vaulting over five-barred gates, running up mountains, drinking all night, and springing bright-eyed from our beds, and so what? For anyone in denial, or clinging stubbornly to youth, Dave is the Baby Boomer to point out the stark realities. He’s funny but he’s ruthless. Fifty’s not the new thirty. It’s fifty. The reason I recommend it is that it can be hard to let go and you’ll waste precious autumn if you don’t accept the inevitable, and move on with a spring in your step into what I have found to be the best period of all. Laughing helps. Laughing always helps.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist comes a celebration of the aging process. Not just Dave's, but that of the whole Baby Boom Generation--those millions of us who set a standard for whining self-absorption that will never be equaled, and who gave birth to such stunning accomplishments as Saturday Night Live!, the New Age movement, and call waiting. Here Dave pinpoints the glaring signs that you've passed the half-century mark:
- You are suddenly unable to read anything written in letters smaller than Marlon Brando. - You have accepted the fact that you can't possibly be hip. You don't even know…
As a veteran of the Marine Corps, I tend to shy away from
military science fiction. But so many people had recommended this book that I
couldn’t ignore them forever.
Apparently, Haldeman was a Vietnam veteran and
wrote this book as a scathing satire of the military. I don’t remember who said
it, but “military intelligence is an oxymoron.” The book perfectly captures the
bureaucracy, the nonsense, and the hurry-up-and-wait aspect of military life. Not to
mention the difficulty of getting out of the military and trying to reacclimate
to civilian life.
On the positive side, he does an excellent job of capturing
the bond you build with the people you share a fighting position with. And the
strange sensation when they get transferred, and you may never see them again.
The monumental Hugo and Nebula award winning SF classic-- Featuring a new introduction by John Scalzi
The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand--despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time…
I personally have struggled with weight, blood sugar, and blood pressure challenges while I was in my teens and twenties. It was through functional medicine and many of the strategies I share in my book that I was able to create a positive shift in my own health and support the health of my clients. In my education and subsequent research, the Vagus nerve always stuck out to me as a unique and underrepresented component of the health journey. My curiosity regarding human anatomy and physiology led me to this important and missing answer: enabling our bodies to enter a healing state and initiate the recovery of our health.
From this book, I learned how important muscle tissue is to overall health. It was quite eye-opening to learn about the effects of poor muscle quality on our longevity and healthspan.
I really appreciated the practical aspects of this book, which helped me come up with a strategic plan for myself and my clients to improve their muscle health for their overall health!
Learn how to reboot your metabolism, build strength, and extend your life with this accessible new book that demonstrates the importance of muscle for health and longevity from the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine (R).
After years of watching patients cycle through her practice, Dr Gabrielle Lyon noticed a pattern. While her patients struggled with a wide range of conditions, they all suffered from the same core problem: they had too little muscle rather than too much fat.
When we think about muscle, we tend to think about strength or aesthetics, but…
Evolution is the most general theory of biology that we have. I seek to employ evolutionary principles to provide a predictive framework for both current ecological interactions and interactions that occurred earlier in the history of life. A generation ago, the study of cooperation was revolutionized by the deceptively simple notion of “follow the genes.” Embracing another simple notion—follow the electrons—can have an equally large effect in illuminating cooperation. Connecting evolutionary biology to biochemistry, however, remains a challenge—many evolutionary biologists dislike biochemistry and are much more comfortable with the informational aspects of life (e.g., genes). The below “best books on bioenergetics” can help to bridge this gap.
A comprehensive and very readable biography of oxygen, its scientific study, and its role in the history of life on Earth.
The “big picture” view is grounded in numerous anecdotes of individual scientists’ work. The relevant scientific history blends nicely with the history of life. Throughout, we see oxygen generated by oxygenic photosynthesis, consumed by oxidative phosphorylation, with leftovers drifting up into the atmosphere to eventually produce the planet that supports human civilization and much else besides.
Oxygen has had extraordinary effects on life. Three hundred million years ago, in Carboniferous times, dragonflies grew as big as seagulls, with wingspans of nearly a metre. Researchers claim they could have flown only if the air had contained more oxygen than today - probably as much as 35 per cent. Giant spiders, tree-ferns, marine rock formations and fossil charcoals all tell the same story. High oxygen levels may also explain the global firestorm that contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs after the asteroid impact. The strange and profound effects that oxygen has had on the evolution of life…
When I turned 80, I was in a bit of a funk until I began interviewing people in their eighties for my book. I was astonished to find how happy the vast majority of them were and what active and exciting their lives were leading. I realized that life after 70 and 80 was not the same today as in the past. As a psychotherapist, a social psychologist, a writer, a mother of four, and a grandmother of 10, I realized I was the perfect person to write about this good news. And for the last 8 years my mission has been to spread the word about aging today.
Louise Aronson was a practicing physician who worked primarily with older patients before becoming a social critic. Now she focuses on ageism in our medical institutions and well as society in general. Her book, Elderhood, is a penetrating analysis of what it means to be older in the US and a critique of the anti-aging culture we live in. Her book is filled with her own observations and stories that show the reader what needs to change in our culture and institutions. Her model of the three stages of life—childhood, adulthood, and elderhood intrigued me.
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award
The New York Times bestseller from physician and award-winning writer Louise Aronson--an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life, as revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal.
For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more.…
