Dealing with Grief and Fears

The island of Okinawa in Japan is one of the longevity hot-spots of the world. That means it’s been identified as one of the five Blue Zones – areas where people live the longest and are the healthiest. Several beautiful concepts…

It’s Halloween season! I know because a walk down the streets of our quiet neighbourhood means bumping into a few skeletons if not disembodied heads. While this is the time for us to think about the light side of death, our western attitude…

My husband died in my arms right before Valentine’s Day 16 years ago. I soon found a quote by Alan Watts that became my mantra for many months afterward as I moved through the initial phases of widowhood: “The only way to make sense out of change…

Mental health issues are not uncommon as we age, and anxiety can be among the most common challenges to well-being we face as women over 60. Anxiety may occur in isolation or in conjunction with depression and cognitive decline…

With nearly a year under my belt of being a divorced 65-year-old, mother of four grown children, I have had time for reflection. The divorce was my choice. I sought and embraced it after years of apathy, contempt and hostility. I couldn’t change…

I was devastated. A few days before I turned 60, I was suddenly a widow. But really, I was typical. Surprisingly, the average age at which a wife becomes a widow is 59.4. About 1 million women a year in the U.S. experience what may be the most stressful event…

It was a plaintive voice. From someone who knows they are dying, but whose family can’t accept the fact. Perhaps that’s your situation – when you are 60+, because we have lived more years than we are probably going to live, it does happen that people…

I recently agreed to be a guest on a podcast. Although repeatedly encouraged to do podcasts by my marketing manager, up to this point I have resisted. Why? It’s very simple: Fear! There have been times in my past when I felt that I did not respond…

Stress and anxiety need no invitation to hassle us and invade our day-to-day lives. Very few of us are immune. If we are fortunate enough that the underlying causes are less serious, it would usually be a great help if we could do something…

Perhaps because my late husband was a pastor, some people thought they were helpful after Tom’s death to tell me, “God needed another angel in heaven.” (Wrong! I needed that angel beside me, not gone away.) Or they said, “I know exactly how you feel…