Learning from a Centenarian Learning How To Be Old
-
- Salute e benessere
Introducing a wise woman who approached her own extreme old age as an ongoing project. Eventually, she saw herself as a sturdy centenarian, even though she was frail. She developed a systematic method for dealing with the ever-increasing age-related changes in her body, mind and life. She was learning how to be old, and she blogged about it every week for 5 years. To her surprise, she found that facing old age honestly and openly was satisfying, even exciting. So today on this podcast I will read from the book-of-the-blog, and riff about it. I will do this again, because I am over-enthusiastic about Doris Carnevali's work.
2m 30s Introducing the sturdy centenarian
7m Birth of a blog
10m 10s Turning 95
13m Learning from these chapters
15m Highly engaged listeners
16m 20s Comments from readers
Contact and links
Comment on my website: scroll down to the Comments section.
Email me: rachel at writing dot co dot nz
Facebook: Rachel McAlpine, Learning How To Be Old
Happy 100th birthday, Doris!
Transcript for Learning from a Centenarian
[Music] Hello, I'm Rachel McAlpine, I'm 84 and I'm learning how to be old. And for some years, one of my most important teachers has been Mrs Doris Carnevali. I've never met her, although we have exchanged quite a lot of emails. Now Doris was an Associate Professor Emeritus at Washington University School of Nursing in Seattle and from the age of 95, she blogged pretty much every week about her personal experience of aging. I learned so much from Mrs Carnevali that I wrote a book based on her blog. She carried on blogging till she was a 100-year-old blogger! is a rarity by which time she perceived herself as frail in some ways and sturdy in other ways. So I called my book The Sturdy Centenarian.
Sometimes I won't have a guest on this podcast and instead I'm going to just read you something from this book, The Sturdy Centenarian. I'm sure I'll interrupt myself sometimes to make my own comments on the book to be realistic. I won't be able to stop myself because, well, Doris always gets me thinking and I know you're out there. So I want to share my thoughts with you. (If only you could share your thoughts back. You could do that on my Facebook page, Rachel McAlpine Learning How to Be Old.)
Anyway, I boiled the blog down to about half and I included about exactly 116 entries. Let's call them chapters. Hey, they might be good bedtime stories. Maybe I should try and read in a low, soporific voice that will send you to sleep. Maybe not. We'll see. OK, off we go.
The Sturdy Centenarian, Aging and Thriving with Doris Carnevali, edited by Rachel McAlpine. This is the introduction.
Meet the Sturdy Centenarian.
When I discovered Doris Carnevali’s blog, I was 78 and she was 96. There I found answers to some massive questions about extreme old age that I had never even thought about. How do you bake cookies when you're a walker? How do you maintain your self-esteem? Is old age really a state of stagnation? How do you build new relationships? How do you establish your credibility? How do you tackle the mounting impact of old age on your daily life? Why is it better to use neutral language when you talk about aging? Or how can a failing brain mitigate the impact of a failing brain? Can you thrive even when you are frail? What are the pleasures of extreme old age, if any?
Doris Carnevali used to be a professor at the Washington University School of Nursing and co-author of a textbook on nursing geriatric patients. Then she herself became an explorer, a resident and a reporter in that mysterious country, old age. Central to her story is a system she has developed for coping with the relentless advance of normal age-related changes. She calls this engaging with aging or EWA. Her system attracted attention from academics and carers but her blog is primarily for those who worry about their own old age and those concerned about elderly relatives.
When I stumbled across the
Introducing a wise woman who approached her own extreme old age as an ongoing project. Eventually, she saw herself as a sturdy centenarian, even though she was frail. She developed a systematic method for dealing with the ever-increasing age-related changes in her body, mind and life. She was learning how to be old, and she blogged about it every week for 5 years. To her surprise, she found that facing old age honestly and openly was satisfying, even exciting. So today on this podcast I will read from the book-of-the-blog, and riff about it. I will do this again, because I am over-enthusiastic about Doris Carnevali's work.
2m 30s Introducing the sturdy centenarian
7m Birth of a blog
10m 10s Turning 95
13m Learning from these chapters
15m Highly engaged listeners
16m 20s Comments from readers
Contact and links
Comment on my website: scroll down to the Comments section.
Email me: rachel at writing dot co dot nz
Facebook: Rachel McAlpine, Learning How To Be Old
Happy 100th birthday, Doris!
Transcript for Learning from a Centenarian
[Music] Hello, I'm Rachel McAlpine, I'm 84 and I'm learning how to be old. And for some years, one of my most important teachers has been Mrs Doris Carnevali. I've never met her, although we have exchanged quite a lot of emails. Now Doris was an Associate Professor Emeritus at Washington University School of Nursing in Seattle and from the age of 95, she blogged pretty much every week about her personal experience of aging. I learned so much from Mrs Carnevali that I wrote a book based on her blog. She carried on blogging till she was a 100-year-old blogger! is a rarity by which time she perceived herself as frail in some ways and sturdy in other ways. So I called my book The Sturdy Centenarian.
Sometimes I won't have a guest on this podcast and instead I'm going to just read you something from this book, The Sturdy Centenarian. I'm sure I'll interrupt myself sometimes to make my own comments on the book to be realistic. I won't be able to stop myself because, well, Doris always gets me thinking and I know you're out there. So I want to share my thoughts with you. (If only you could share your thoughts back. You could do that on my Facebook page, Rachel McAlpine Learning How to Be Old.)
Anyway, I boiled the blog down to about half and I included about exactly 116 entries. Let's call them chapters. Hey, they might be good bedtime stories. Maybe I should try and read in a low, soporific voice that will send you to sleep. Maybe not. We'll see. OK, off we go.
The Sturdy Centenarian, Aging and Thriving with Doris Carnevali, edited by Rachel McAlpine. This is the introduction.
Meet the Sturdy Centenarian.
When I discovered Doris Carnevali’s blog, I was 78 and she was 96. There I found answers to some massive questions about extreme old age that I had never even thought about. How do you bake cookies when you're a walker? How do you maintain your self-esteem? Is old age really a state of stagnation? How do you build new relationships? How do you establish your credibility? How do you tackle the mounting impact of old age on your daily life? Why is it better to use neutral language when you talk about aging? Or how can a failing brain mitigate the impact of a failing brain? Can you thrive even when you are frail? What are the pleasures of extreme old age, if any?
Doris Carnevali used to be a professor at the Washington University School of Nursing and co-author of a textbook on nursing geriatric patients. Then she herself became an explorer, a resident and a reporter in that mysterious country, old age. Central to her story is a system she has developed for coping with the relentless advance of normal age-related changes. She calls this engaging with aging or EWA. Her system attracted attention from academics and carers but her blog is primarily for those who worry about their own old age and those concerned about elderly relatives.
When I stumbled across the