Boomers and Beyond

Impact of the Recent Celebrity Deaths on the Boomers

Over the past few months, with all of the celebrity deaths I found myself reflecting on life and death. When I saw this post on www.encore.org    I decided I wanted to share it with all of. Marc Freedman, author of the books  Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life  and Prime Time: How Baby Boomers will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, and founder of Civic Ventures, was interviewed by Sarah Kershaw of The New York Times. She had called to ask him what impact all of the celebrity deaths of the past few months had on the psyche of baby boomers. The deaths "from Michael Jackson (50) and Farah Fawcett (62), through Patrick Swayze (56) and Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul, and Mary, 72), to icons of our boomer childhoods like Walter Cronkite (92) and Edward M. Kennedy (77), the last of the Kennedy brothers – where have all the flowers gone?"

His statement was, "To me, at 51, these premature deaths and long lives represent both the compression and expansion of time, the realization that life is finite along with the likelihood that we will live much, much longer. Most of us who are crossing into our 50s today can expect to live well past 80. Time matters more, in a way that we didn’t realize in our 20s, and we have enough time to do something significant, something that matters. We get a second bite at the apple, with a new perspective.

I also feel that the sense of time is a helpful impetus to be conscious and intentional about how we want to live during our second half of life. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts and feelings about it.

Dori Mintzer

Positive, Creative and Successful Aging

I know there are many bogs for the boomer and beyond population. Why another one, you may be asking. I've wanted to have a blog for a while---to create a place to share ideas, discuss books, and
raise questions. I'm a boomer myself and a professional who works with boomers. I created a special interest group (SIG)  for professionals (coaches, therapists, financial planners and other professionals) who are boomers themselves and/or work with boomers and beyond. The SIG meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month since May, 2007. I want this blog to be a parallel with that group---but open to everyone, not just professionals. I love to explore the challenges and issues of positive, creative and successful aging with kindred spirits. I find myself interested in the challenges of this stage of life: issues such as life transitions, parenting, life balance, positive psychology, couples and retirement issues, spirituality, health and wellness, money issues---just to name a few.

I am one of the "leading edge" boomers--having turned 60 in 2006. Although I am now in what is called "The Third Age of Life", I also have "second age" parenting responsibilities since I have a 12 year old son. It's a challenge, to say the least. We boomers are not a "one size fits all" group--some of us are married, some single, some with children at home, some with children in college or off working, some grandparents,some caring for elder parents, some having buried our parents, some working for pay, some volunteering, some "retired" or thinking about this next stage of life. I'd love to hear from all of you and start a dialogue about this challenging time in our lives. Welcome to my blog! Dori