The Gift Of Aging − by Dr. Elizabeth Eckstrom & Marcy Houle

This is, as you may gather from the title, a book about getting the most out of growing older, and doing it well.

Not all of it is positive though; some of it really is about avoiding, mitigating, or coping with the negatives that tend to come with aging.

The book is full of many (38) small self-contained chapters, so it’s well-suited to reading bit-by-bit, if so inclined. Essentially, it’s a collection of essays by the two authors, arranged into categories:

1. Caring for your mind
2. Caring for your body
3. Caring for yourself and your family
4. Caring for your soul

The first two sections are mostly self-explanatory; the third is largely about estate-planning of various kinds. The fourth is highly subjective, and/but not particularly religious, by the way. It’s largely an add-on to the “caring for your mind” mental health section, but now more specifically dealing with heavy topics such as the emotional side of mortality (as opposed to the previous section’s practical considerations of same), loss, and grief.

The style is the very low end of pop-science; facts (probably true ones; nothing seemed very contentious objectively) are stated with no sources, and there is no medical jargon that’s anything more complicated than you might find on a leaflet in a doctor’s waiting room.

Bottom line: this is a very opinion-filled book, so it’s worth reading with that in mind (i.e. their opinions may differ wildly from yours in some cases), but it’s largely informed opinions, so worth at least considering even in those cases. If nothing else, this book is certainly thought-provoking.

Click here to check out The Gift Of Aging, and enjoy the gift of aging!