Finding Happiness

I’ve talked about changing attitudes and expectations around aging and wellness, and about creating a vitality plan and making regular vitality deposits. But I think there is something else working under the surface to derail positive change…

I think many of us harbor a secret dream about singing onstage with a rock band. I had this dream fulfilled when my choir director, Leah Hokanson, gave us the opportunity to sing with her backup band…

As women over 60, many of us are experiencing our first opportunity to truly reflect on both our present and our past, including happy times as well as more problematic memories. If we are fortunate, the outcomes of our self-reflection include heightened wisdom…

Although I am always grateful to have been born in the 50s, we were the first generation of women to have children, run a home and go to work full time. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the cut and thrust of it all. Looking back, I wonder how I had enough hours in the day to do…

When I feel frustrated with life, I want to be able to call my best girlfriends and meet them for something to eat or drink – whenever I need, and whenever I feel like it. (Think Friends or Sex and the City!) I want to go and have a few laughs, witty conversation, and have all my…

What I remember best about my friend is her playfulness. She was one of the few adults in my circle who really knew how to play. She enjoyed a long, fulfilling life despite many hardships along the way. I’ll always remember her joy and laughter…

As a woman over 70 who attended the 1977 National Women’s Conference, challenged her first employer for equal pay, dutifully wore sneakers with her suits while storming the halls of capitalism in the 1980s and later published as a feminist scholar…

I have a deep, unshakable affection for the movie Serendipity. Yes, the one with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale in cashmere and cosmic confusion. Go watch it now. I’ll wait. Okay… isn’t it predictable and sappy, but irresistible? Bonus points if you tell me you watched…

My life mission statement includes living on purpose, so to just mindlessly respond to someone with a “fine” doesn’t seem intentional. I settled for “no complaints” as a purposeful response to the frequent question…

This phrase carries quiet power; like a stone placed just so on a sunlit windowsill or a single brushstroke on bare canvas. Georgia O’Keeffe lived by this principle, though she first learned it from Arthur Wesley Dow, her teacher who saw art not as imitation but as harmony…