WHEN THEY WERE OUR AGE

“...we’re suffering from an image of aging that comes from a different time. An image that was never anything but propaganda.” Barbara Sher, It’s Only Too Late if You Don’t Start Now

My grandmother and my mother were my models of aging women. It was inconceivable to me that I would ever be as old as they seemed to be. We aren’t aging in the same way our mothers and grandmothers did. Once again we boomers are defining the times. We can be fit, fabulous and over fifty. Although some of the physical changes of mid-life and beyond will occur around the same time as our mothers experienced them, our perception (and experience) of age has changed. Just about nothing in our lives is what it would have been in the lives of women our age even twenty years ago. For the most part, women are healthier, they expect to live longer and they are taking time to re-evaluate their priorities.

We live in a wondrous age. Studies show that most people who reach age 100 do so in surprisingly robust health. Genes may be responsible for about 30% of the physiological changes that occur in advanced age, but according to Harvard Medical School, the majority of changes are the result of environment, diet, exercise, utilization of available medical care and mental outlook. With science providing miracle cures for once-fatal conditions, aging experts even believe that the human lifespan will someday be increased to 150 years or more.

I love what Susan Sarandon once said in a More Magazine article---”It’s thrilling to know that around the world, women everywhere are working, thinking, daring, creating, making change. I don’t know if our mothers ever felt this way about their counterparts---but I have the feeling our daughters will”.