- Terry BallantyneHug PowerDecember 19, 2015What are you looking forward to in 2016? Let’s hope it is the state altering power of touch. While even our touch receptors start to betray us in our 20s, diminishing by about 1% a year, our centenarians still appreciate a good, ( but gentle please) hug. Many of your friends may have lost a spouse and that sense of touch is always missed, even if they don’t mention it. It they were warring spouses, then they were suffering from a deficit of touch even...
- Terry BallantyneGet Lucky for 2016December 14, 2015Well, you made it another New Year's. It's time to accept that you may be headed to the elite status of healthy, active, nonagenarian. So accept the role and define it for 2016! For fun, try starting a family tradition now! Many cultures have traditions to ring in the New Year and ensure anything from abundance and prosperity to romantic joy and harmony. These are fun traditions to start in your family or with friends and fun to carry on every year. There is a...
- Terry BallantyneDirty Little SecretsDecember 7, 2015Our culture tends to romanticize things or speak in euphemisms about the hard stuff. Nobody tells new mothers just how challenging the 24 hour presence of a newborn is. It would sound ungrateful. We soldiered on in relative silence, and unless you have the luxury and the joy of a family nearby that consists of supportive women: loving and wise aunts, grandparents and a trusted mother, it is a daunting stretch those first months and then really the first years. Spreading the responsibility helps both...
- Terry BallantyneCaregivers Are Not BabysittersNovember 9, 2015One of the most telling examples of our culture's regard for elders is the way caregivers often relate to them. Well intentioned caregivers often talk down to the person at home, as if they were children. I remember resisting baby talk when I was raising my daughter and the same is true with elders. They may be frail, have trouble seeing, or hearing, or walking, but they are not incapable of irony, or a witty response, a good giggle, or having some silly fun. They can...
- Terry BallantynePains and GainsNovember 9, 2015Aging is truly a bittersweet saga, full of enormous grace and beauty and crushingly painful limitations. Crushing because no matter how hard you try, the limitations cannot be vanquished. I have met some amazing women: artists and musicians in their mid-80s who are sharp and intellectual, who have beautiful perspectives on life and have many wonderful stories to share. These women are not what you think of as 80. One woman sported a sassy short haircut and wore a sparkly purple hat when we met....
- Terry BallantyneDon’t Boss The Boss!October 14, 2015Don’t Boss the Boss! My good friend Becky Peters at Lifespan, a high quality geriatric management firm here in Santa Cruz told me this: “Don’t boss the boss!” She could not have been more correct. One thing I have learned, and if you stop and look within a moment, no one perceives themselves as old! You may know your knees are less springy, or your back hurts in the morning, but rare is the person that sees themselves as old and irrelevant. A director at...
- Terry BallantyneFluburbsAugust 7, 2015We are starting to notice and internalize that we are going to live a lot longer than anyone thought. And the odds keep going up. In 1972 here in the states, the average years left, after turning 85, was 5.5 years. By 2010 that had jumped to 6.5, which is impressive! Partly due to a reduction in smoking, elder adults are just healthier and more aware than their parents. Medicine is better, food choices are improving. Yet we are not going to have the right...
- Terry BallantyneThe Dog FriendsJuly 26, 2015The Dog Friends One never knows what the group you call family will consist of. We are all so far flung from our natural extended family that in a crisis they could not do much for us. With a distance of 100 miles away or more , they can’t wrap there arms around you, make a pot of tea, call the doctor, or hold your hand. For those very important and immediate comforts ,you need trusted friends next door, around the block or a quick car...
- Terry BallantyneThe ButteryJune 8, 2015I took my Mom out for lunch today. I watched her marvel at the hub bub and pace at The Buttery and I can’t help but reflect on the world now and the world she grew up in. She once rode 2 miles to town on a cardboard box, like a skim board being pulled by two draft horses on a set of reins. She was a daredevil. And here she sat, almost terrified at the pace, but fascinated at the women with tats, the...
- Terry Ballantyne
- Terry Ballantyne