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ATTENTION MARILYN MURRAY WILLISON EDITORS: THE FOLLOWING COLUMN WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2016. THANK YOU. -- CREATORS

Stroke 101: Part 1

I never run out of ideas for my column because the topic of positive aging covers so many aspects of life. But every now and then, I can't help but feel that the universe is nudging me to address a ...Read more

When I'm not writing columns or working on my books, I devote a lot of time to helping seniors commit their life stories to paper. Currently, over a half a dozen of my local first-time authors have completed and published their memoirs.

When I turned 65, I experienced a tangled mass of conflicting emotions, most of which centered around the ...Read more

It's no secret that many older men face serious challenges when it comes to healthy social connections. Traditionally, women often maintain a family's social connections. If a man loses his wife through death or divorce, then staying connected can become a serious challenge. In the U.S. and the U.K., nearly 1 in 3 people who are older than 65 ...Read more

For years, researchers have known that everyone benefits from socialization --regardless of age or gender. We've all seen the tragic videos of neglected orphans who failed to grow and develop because they were kept in isolation and deprived of interaction with others. According to functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, or fMRI studies, ...Read more

Do you remember the days when everyone seemed to retire on or before that ominous 65th birthday? Well, that was then, and this is now. Research says in recent years, there have been more seniors employed than ever before, and they are often being given jobs that are categorized as age-appropriate.

According to Matthew Rutledge, an economist at ...Read more

Do you remember the 1993 hit movie "Grumpy Old Men"? It starred Jack Lemmon, who was 68 at the time, and Walter Matthau, who was 73. The gist of the comedy is that older people are almost inevitably in a bad mood, and because of their advanced age they have essentially forgotten how to laugh or smile. A more recent example of this ageist ...Read more

About 100 years ago, Anatole France, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921, weighed in on the reason why change can be so challenging. He wrote, "All changes ... have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

As we age, for many of us anything that ...Read more

I have a dear friend who has been a widow for three years. She recently told me that special days, like her birthday, Valentine's Day or her anniversary always make her feel depressed. She knows that no one would ever love or pamper her the way her husband did. And that sobering fact always makes her really sad.

I let my friend verbally cry on ...Read more

There are plenty of cynical and clueless amateur social theorists who believe that after a certain age seniors no longer pay attention to or are invested in their appearance. According to these out-of-touch observers (maybe they're millennials), the middle-aged and elderly actively avoid gazing in mirrors. Instead, they prefer to focus their ...Read more

Unless you are blessed with superior, Zen-like mind control, you have probably noticed an unwelcome uptick in your anxiety levels as you've grown older. It's not uncommon for seniors to be burdened with a variety of age-related concerns -- on top of the ordinary worries everyone else copes with. But it doesn't help us to obsess and worry over ...Read more

I've always liked this quote from Abraham Lincoln, who was known to suffer from major bouts of depression: "Folks are usually as happy as they make their minds up to be."

In the last decade, dozens of best-selling books have been published that dissect the various attitudes and techniques needed to get and keep a positive frame of mind. From ...Read more

Unless you are part of a microscopic minority, something has probably happened within the last 10 years to serve as a reminder that you are not as physically young as you used to be. Perhaps you're a little stiffer in the morning. Maybe your tennis game is a bit slower. Or maybe you've developed an illness that has seriously affected the way you...Read more

Have you noticed that something strange seems to happen after you reach the age of 60? The people in our lives, especially those closest to us, often make a quiet (but frequently misguided) gear shift into protection mode. Our children urge restraint when it comes to physical activities, our colleagues begin shifting stress-laden and travel-...Read more