Tag: life

Getting Older and Bolder

Christina BruniLeave a comment

Nothing lasts forever. Challenges and setbacks are to be expected in our lives. Far better to accept the changes and move forward with what I call the 3 G’s of Getting Older: living with Grace, Grit, and Gratitude.

Getting older is the time to act bolder. To accept the twists and turns on the highway of life.

I turned 61. I’ve been thinking about the vagaries of getting older. I’m going to write a carnival of blog entries about what I’ve learned that is the wisdom I’ve gained.

I call your sixties the “This is It!” decade. Often at this time we’re caring for an elderly mother or father. And it’s likely that we have full-time jobs at the same time.

What I accept is that there will be no remodeling myself to have washboard abs or spending all day at a washing machine. At 61 years old I think social connections matter more than having a hot body.

Though now is not the time to give up exercising totally. Far better to lift weights only once a week. Then go to that ailing mother or father’s house on the weekend to be with them at the end of their days.

I use the term “social health” to talk about maintaining healthy relationships later in life. As loneliness is on the rise. With a person becoming frail and losing their independence like our mother or father could they might be embarrassed to have friends over their house. We as their children should go there instead.

Is the term social health already in use? It must be in use unless I’ve invented the term which I doubt. In the coming blog entry I will talk about the 3 Lifestyle Questions I thought up to ask myself. I think that followers to the blog will benefit by asking yourself these questions too.

In fact nothing lasts forever. Post-60 I would say we cannot risk resisting the changes coming on in our bodies and in our lives. The fact is that right now our life is telling us what we should do if only we will stop to listen.

We cannot afford to remain stuck in the past or to dwell on whatever glory days might have gone by. The other fact is that in our older years new glory days of a different kind await us.

Having the courage to accept the impermanence of everything in our lives will go a long way to helping us maintain our health as the clock ticks.

Coming up blog entries devoted to living life and loving life at whatever age you and I are. If age is just a number, we can live full of vitality and verve at any age even with whatever kind of limitations we might have.

My Sincere Hope

Christina BruniLeave a comment

My sincere hope is that followers of this blog have not taken up smoking. I say quit now as hard as it will be before it’s too late if you’re already lighting up.

In the May 2026 issue of Better Homes and Gardens Thrive column titled In the Know the editors relay “news and notes to boost your well-being.”

Per BHG: About 12 percent of US adults smoke regularly. The kicker is according to a new study in PLOS Medicine: “People who smoke as few as two cigarettes a day can increase the risk of heart failure by 57 percent and early death by 60 percent compared to those who don’t smoke at all.”

So even just paying a dollar for a “loosie” or two instead of a pack isn’t the way to go. I really care about this issue.

If a person did just one thing to be healthy and did nothing else I would say it would have to be not taking up smoking or quitting smoking.

A person who doesn’t quit smoking early will need to use an oxygen tank morning noon and night. Quitting at 35 years old is better than quitting at 65 years old.

Though quitting at 65 years old is better than not quitting at all. Even with the likelihood of getting lung cancer if you quit too late.

My sincere hope is that followers understand I speak from the experience of having loved ones who were chimney smokers their whole lives before the quit. Five of those persons wound up in comas at the end of their lives. They died hooked up to a respirator.

Giving people knowledge like I’m doing is one thing. Motivating them to actually do what you’re asking is another thing.

The hurdle can be cleared though. Monica, one of the persons whose success was chronicled in Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions quit smoking using the 90-day action plan.

As ever I recommend reading Changeology for replacing a negative habit with a positive one.

If hard cold facts won’t convince I will make the case that a healthy person won’t want to date you if you’re huffing and puffing just to walk down five blocks let along wander in a Botanical Garden with them this spring viewing the roses.

Sorry. The truth is what it is.

And I lived having to see a loved one crippled from smoking and getting a smoker’s cough. Addicted to cigarettes they were too fixated on lighting up to recognize the agony they were putting others in while we saw the smoker get ill.

Maybe. Just thinking of how our habits effect the ones we love will be enough to get us to change. I hope so.

In life we often must do things we’d rather not do in order to take care of ourselves. You and I could learn this lesson the hard way.

In the end having compassion is called for. In life all of us will take the hardest walk to get to where we want to be.