Daphne Selfe is still in demand as a model and shows how older women can still be sexy and powerful without plastic surgery!

I don’t blame the 81 year old former supermodel  Carmen Dell’Orefice for her statement, “Well, if you had the ceiling falling down in your living room, would you not go and have a repair?” in the recent HBO documentary About Face    After all, she has spent years in an industry focused on her appearance.

She is flawed in her thinking, because she not talking about getting a cast on a broken arm, she is talking about “fixing” things that are not broken, gray hair and wrinkles on her skin.

Contrast that with the attitude of Daphne Selfe who is two years older that Dell”Ofefice at 83, ‘I’ve never had anything done to my face,’ Daphne  says, pulling it this way and that. ‘Not that poison, not a facelift. I think  it’s a waste of money

Read more about Daphne in the Daily Mail article

From our friends at Geritol

One of the keys to healthful living well into your retirement days is prevention. By eating a well rounded diet and supplementing with a multi or woman’s vitamin, you’ll help ensure your body gets all the nutrients it needs to function properly.  http://www.geritol.com

1) “Anti-aging” is impossible! So when you visit a cosmetic counter and are tempted by the hundreds of products claiming to make you look younger, save your money!

2) Spend the money you saved by NOT buying “anti-aging” products on something that helps you achieve more purpose in your life (see last week’s post).

3) Having purpose makes us smile and provides us with a sparkle in our eyes that makes us look great! (notice I didn’t say look YOUNGER!)

Take a look at these examples:

Look at the before photo of Joan Rivers with a great smile. The after photo she might have nice smooth wrinkle free skin, but without a smile she doesn’t look so hot!

Now look at this woman with gray hair and a smile – do you really think she looks better with artificially dyed hair in the after photo?

Some of this might have to do with the fact that when we look in the mirror at ourselves and find a new gray hair or wrinkle we tend to frown or be dissappointed.  Trying smiling and laughing the next time you see one of these and recognize that they are signs of wisdom and life experience that you can share with others or make the world a better place.

Based on conversations with our readers and my personal involvement in the Village/Aging in Place/Aging in Community movement I have become convinced that successful “aging” can be described as a three legged stool (yes, I know it’s an overused analogy!)

I feel that the legs of the stool support us having “purpose” in life.  The definition of “purpose” should be different for every one of us and it shouldn’t be defined by age or ability. “Purpose” is what gets us up in the morning, puts a smile on our face and gives our life meaning.  It could be hitting the tennis ball, helping a child learn a new skill, working in the garden, etc.

1. Neighborhood Connections – This relates to how connected you are to your neighborhood and community.  I feel this is the most important leg of the stool because it can provide access to services and support you don’t necessarily need to pay cash for.  Our neighborhood offers us proximity that can reduce our dependence on our personal automobile.  Instead of volunteering across town, imagine how much more convenient and meaningful it would be to help others right down the street!
2. Getting Around (Transportation) – For most of us, not having our own personal automobile would make it very difficult to connect to our “purpose” as well as our daily necessities like going to the grocery story.  Again, proximity and good neighborhood connections can really support this by sharing rides and carpooling.
3. Accessible Environments – Many of us don’t think about “accessible design” until we have a personal health issue that makes it difficult to get around our home, which is not the time that you want to begin a home improvement project! Since it’s so emotionally hard to plan for this, I have found that encouraging our readers to look at making the home “visitable” to someone else with a disability is often a better approach to begin the process.

Is your home environment supporting a purposeful life regardless of your age and ability? What leg of the stool needs to be strengthened?  

This sign for a retirement community has a duel message - you can definately learn more in communities like these!

Last month I traveled to Brightview Westminster Ridge to interview one of the residents, Velma Keck for an article we recently published on the benefits of pets in senior living communities.  Click here to read the article and watch a video

As I approached the community I was impressed by the location, which is right near several schools offering a more inter generational setting for the residents.

With academics on my mind I turned into the community and something on the sign jumped out at me, “Learn More Today”.   While I know that this is a marketing statement referring to learning more about the community, at that moment it struck me differently!

I can certainly attest that people living in these communities do “learn more”!  In hundreds of interviews with residents they are consistently bringing up how much they learn from their new neighbors.  In addition, many communities have relationships with local colleges and universities offering a more formal way to “learn”.

In addition, the hundreds of kids in neighboring schools can certainly “learn more” by engaging with the residents of this community!

I think most people will agree that embracing a philosophy that residents can “learn more today” in your retirement community will be a better way to market the community than the intended goal of the statement!

I have a few concerns here:

1. Are there really employers out there that would not hire someone with a few wrinkles?
2. Are there people who feel that spending money to remove wrinkles will enable them to get a job?
3. If you really felt it necessary to surgically remove wrinkles wouldn’t the words “photo not actual client” be a concern? More important, how could this man recover from a surgery like this and somehow strike the same exact pose, right down to the hairline and the position of his tie?

Unfortunately, we are in a culture of “anti-aging”.  Many people say that the baby boomers will change the way we are aging, unfortunately this ad and countless others with the same tone are the direction I see many baby boomers headed.

Lets now compare this to my favorite ad from Dove.

I ask you the questions:

1. Would you hire this women?
2. What makes her beautiful?

Obviously, we would need to see her resume to determine if she was a match for a job.  I am very concerned that we have a culture that might discriminate against her gray hair and hire the guy with the plastic surgery!

I think its her eyes and her smile that make her beautiful. They reveal passion and purpose.  I feel that a focus on purpose will make people realize how all the anti-aging tricks seem foolish.  I realize there is a tremendous problem of ageism in the workplace, but the problem of not celebrating aging is going to be much worse.

My family and I enjoyed a week in an RV recently and the concept of integrating elder care into an RV park never crossed my mind!

Ironically, I just returned from a week of traveling throughout New England in an RV with my family to find this article in the New York Times.

Many of the people that we met in the RV parks we stayed at were retirees.  Most sold their homes and were either living in the park or traveling the country in their RV “full time”.   This is definitely not what most of us would define as “aging in place”!

The Rainbow’s End Escapees Care Center that is profiled in the New York Times article clearly shows that we can come together as a community to support each other even in an non-traditional setting like an RV park.  At $824 a month per person, or $1,236 for a couple this is also probably one of the best values in assisted living in the country!

I experienced first hand what probably makes “aging” in an RV park so ideal. We witnessed the deep sense of community and the close proximity to your neighbors in the parks we visited.  While the Escapees Care Center provides access to a nurse 40 hours a week, I am willing to bet that the bulk of the care and support is being provided by the other residents and visitors at Rainbow’s End.   In many ways and RV park has many of the same values that cohousing communities possess.

Watch a video of the Escapees Care Center

In my 21 years of publishing SourceBook and talking to hundreds of people about the transition, I dont think I have ever heard someone explain to the transition as well as Grant does in the video below.

The spirit of the Interdependence Day movement is one that should be studied by the eldercare sector (click image to learn more)

Last week our nation celebrated our independence from the British superpower.  However, we achieved that independence by one of the most heroic displays of INTERdependence the world has ever seen.  We could have just as easily called July 4th INTERdependence Day!

It’s my feeling that “independence” might be an overused or misused term in the business of eldercare.

Several years ago a reader of Guide to Retirement Living SourceBook called me and shared that she though the term “independent living retirement community“ was completely inaccurate.  She had been researching these options and had many examples of how and why they should be referred to as something other than independent living.  Her thought was that the correct term would be dependent living, because these settings offered you a choice to be dependent by using a variety of provided services.  She wasn’t referring to healthcare; she was referring to things like housekeeping and preparing her meals!

As our country begins to ride the “age wave” there is sure to be a lot of talk about older adults maintaining their “independence”.  However, we need to remember we are not fighting a generational war.  I feel that this presents an opportunity for us all to recognize the value of INTERdependence and hopefully label it appropriately.  I personally don’t want our elders to stand independently, I want them to share their resources and I want to help them maintain their purpose!