Back in April when my daughter and her family visited us from Boston for a whole month, we spent the first week of that month living at a pretty vacation house called Ripple which is on an island in the middle of the River Thames. And then we spent the last few days in an old 

 Marian

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Passing the Baton

 by Marian Van EykMcCain

When I wrote the final sentence of my first book on aging, I was 53 and just through menopause. Now, as I think about my 80th birthday being a mere two and a half years away, 53 suddenly seems extraordinarily young! 

When I was born, in 1936, there were already fears of another war in Europe and by the time I was two years old my father had left his job and joined the army, anticipating that conscription, which had ended in 1920, would probably start up again soon anyway. Which of course it did, in September 1939. It was a time of unrest and uncertainty and my parents figured that it was not a really good time to be bringing more babies into a troubled world. 

So by the time my first sibling was born, it was 1946 and I was already ten. My longed-for baby brother was followed by an adorable baby sister in 1948. They and all their generation soon became known as the Baby Boomers, the lively, kicking, flesh-and-blood results of all those happy post-war reunions. The name stuck.

My  Boomer sister is now 65, my sister-in-law a little older. When that first book of mine was finally published I was 55 and they were not long past forty. But I had a strong feeling that in another decade or two they would be searching for guidance on how to navigate the rapids of menopause and understand the psychological and spiritual significance of that passage. It was because I hoped the book I was now launching might give them some useful guidance that I dedicated it to them and to all the women of their generation.

 Eleven years later, when I published Elderwoman, it was with a similar feeling. That second book was my attempt to create a trail guide for my younger sisters, a guidebook for territory which, at that time, had barely begun to be mapped.

 My sister's generation got sidetracked for a while. Just as they were reaching menopause, Big Pharma reinvented HRT and plugged it to them big time. Lots of them listened to the 'anti-aging' siren call. But eventually, when research proved that HRT had its own hidden dangers, most got back on track. And that was when I felt other hands beginning to reach out to grasp the batons that a few of us had been carrying for a decade. The Boomers are a powerful group, still lively and still kicking. A bunch of them are strong, articulate, feisty media-savvy women who know how to broadcast the message about how to age well in much louder voices than mine could ever be. These women refuse to be invisible. They refuse to be devalued by a youth-obsessed mainstream culture. They are challenging ageism and because of them, attitudes are slowly changing. The tide is coming in.

 So when it comes to how do we live our third age to the full, there are lots of trail guides appearing now and lots of voices chiming in. I could almost say that my work is done. And yet...

Click on her picture, below, to watch her in action.

Although she has only recently started on the speaker circuit, Ashton Applewhite has been doing anti-ageism work for a while, and since 2007 has run a clever feature on her website called "YO is this Ageist?" http://thischairrocks.com

Britain's Oldest Disc Jockey 
(As reported by the BBC)

"Being 91 has not stopped Margaret Leigh-Jones from trying new things. She has recently begun presenting at Hampshire nostalgia radio station Angel FM, which could make her Britain's oldest DJ. The Havant-based great-grandmother began by answering the phones at the not-for-profit station, but was soon persuaded to take up a role co-hosting a two hour show. The 91-year old says it has changed her life..."

The Beauty of Aging

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Does it Get Better, Like a Fine Wine?

That's the question that long-time subscriber Val McCrae poses in her article on aging that was recently published in an Australian magazine for the over-sixties. Here's a link to the article. It is wonderful to see this in print. Good on you, Val!!