The experience of aging can be, all at once, fresh and exhilarating but also unsettling as our roles and abilities change and our perceptions of ourselves have to adapt to this transition. The best way to support this natural evolution for all of us is to keep having open and illuminating conversations together. That’s why […]
Continue ReadingIrene only had one regret. She’d always wanted to learn to speak Italian but never had the money to take classes when she was young. She came close, once. After saving almost enough for an Italian class at her local university she found out she was pregnant with her first child. All of a sudden, […]
Continue ReadingChester loved living on the West Coast. The mild weather suited him, he had a supportive network of close friends, and he adored his apartment with its view of the San Francisco Bay. The only thing lacking was his beloved grandchildren, Lydia and Harris. Chester used to see his grandchildren almost every day until six […]
Continue ReadingI wish there was a natural, sure-fire way to immunize my garden against weeds, especially as I’m getting older and my back and my joints don’t hold up as well to the stooping and pulling. I can mulch the area; that helps. And I can keep up the health of my purposeful plants, so their […]
Continue ReadingAlways the hostess, Carissa has been very involved in her San Francisco neighborhood for more than four decades. Her door has always been open to friends and neighbors and over the years her home has been the site of countless parties, community meetings, and social gatherings. So when she started to experience limitations throughout the […]
Continue Reading“I don’t actually care about money,” April said, blowing gently on her cup of tea so that she could take a sip before finishing her thought, “I just care about not having money.” She shared this seemingly-contradictory but all-too-understandable emotion during a group discussion about taking care of her elderly mother. April’s father had died […]
Continue ReadingMy grandma loved to have my cousins and me over for weekends or for whole weeks during the summer. We never called it Grandma Camp, but she used to refer to her family gathering space as Mother Goose’s Kitchen. There were times when we got to be unconditionally creative, sing and dance with abandon, and […]
Continue ReadingAfter my father had his stroke, I lived in rolling fear, peaking every cold and rainy spell, that he would catch pneumonia. It became almost an obsession of mine, heightened in my imagination by the cruelty of it: this strong man who took on everything in the world, being felled because his weakened immune system […]
Continue ReadingBeing a caregiver for an aging or disabled loved one takes an incredible amount of strength. It takes strength to physically support them, to offer encouragement and positive perspective, to always be thinking ahead to their needs and strategizing better ways to live and thrive. But where does all that strength come from? Some of […]
Continue ReadingTo watch movies, or TV, or even just glance at commercials, or really interact in any way at all with pop culture, you’d think Valentine’s Day was just a celebration of new, young love. Cupid shoots an arrow, and—bam! True love, as fresh as the melting spring. And while we here at IOA are certainly […]
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