Audacious Aging

317 Pages·2009·3.47 MB·English

Audacious Aging
edited by
S M
tephanie arohn

www.AudaciousAging.com
Elite Books
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
www.EliteBooksOnline.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  Audacious aging / edited by Stephanie Marohn. 
      p. cm.
  ISBN: 978-1-60070-061-3
  1. Aging. 2. Gerontology.  1. Marohn, Stephanie.
       612.6'7—dc22
2009006056
Copyright © 2008, 2009 Elite Books
Chapter 2 is from Goddesses in Older Women © 2001 by Jean Shinoda Bolen, and is reprinted 
by permission of HarperCollins, Inc.
Chapters 4, 14, 18, 19, 24 & 36 © 2007 by Gerald Gardner and Jim Bellows. Reprinted from 
the book 80 with permission of its publisher, Sourcebooks Publishers.
Chapter 5 is from Ageless Body, Timeless Mind © 1993 Deepak Chopra. Used by permission 
of Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Chapter 8 is first appeared in Newsweek, and was adapted from The Mature Mind © 2006 
Gene Cohen. Used by permission of Basic Books, Inc.
Chapter 11 is reprinted from Still Here © 2009 Ram Dass used by permission of the 
Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 
Chapter 15 is from The Power Years © 2005 Ken Dychtwald and Daniel J. Kadlec, and is 
reprinted by permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Chapter 34 is from Doing Sixty and Seventy © 2006 Gloria Steinem, and is reprinted by  
permission of Elders Academy Press.
Chapter 38 is reprinted from Healthy Aging © 2005 Andrew Weil, and is used by  
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval 
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the exception of short excerpts used with acknowledgement of publisher and author. No 
part of this book is intended to treat, advise on, or diagnose any individual or disease. This 
book may not be used to replace or substitute for medical treatment.
Cover design by Victoria Valentine 
Edited by Stephanie Marohn
Typeset by Karin A. Kinsey
Typeset in Mona Lisa and Palatino
Printed in USA by Bang Printing
First Edition
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
CONTENTS
a
FOREWORD: What if We Took More Risks?  
by Joe Laur and Isabelle St-Jean ..........................................................5
INTRODUCTION by Stephanie Marohn ................................................8
1  PATCH ADAMS: Another Aging Option ...................................11
2  JEAN SHINODA BOLEN: How to be a Green and 
  Juicy Crone ...............................................................................15
3  JOAN BORySENKO: Looking Beneath the 
  Surface of Life  .........................................................................21
4  HELEN GURLEy BROWN: Flower Smelling— 
  Not for Me ................................................................................29
5  ROBERT ByRD: Age is Just a Number .......................................35
6  DEEPAK CHOPRA: The Land Where No One Is Old ...................41
7  DAWSON CHURCH: your DNA Is Not your Destiny .................47
8  ASHA CLINTON: Creating the Freedom to 
  Age Audaciously .....................................................................57
9  GENE D. COHEN: The Myth of the Midlife Crisis ...................67
10  RAINES COHEN: Aging in Community ....................................75
11  ROSE COLE: Conscious Eating for Optimal Aging ..................85
12  RAM DASS: Embracing Aging .....................................................95
13  DOUG DICKSON: Becoming Audacious .................................101
14  LARRy DOSSEy: The Power of the Ordinary ..........................109
15  DOMINICK DUNNE: I Want to Drop Dead  
on the Tarmac ................................................................................117
16  KEN DyCHTWALD & DANIEL J. KADLEC: Welcome  
  to the Power years .................................................................123
17  HENDRIEKA FITZPATRICK: Move Over,  
  Barbie and Ken .......................................................................129
18  NIKKI GIOVANNI: Riding a Rainbow .....................................139
19  LORI GRACE: Living on the Edge ............................................145
20  LENA HORNE: Several Lifetimes in One Life .........................157
21  JEAN HOUSTON: The Journey of Transformation .................161
22  LISA SCHUETZ KUIMJIAN: Reading the Energy 
  of Thought ..............................................................................169
23  PATT LIND-KyLE: Building Community  
  from the Inside Out ...............................................................181
24  BRUCE H. LIPTON: Aging: Belief or Biology .............................191
25  CAROLyN MATZINGER: Increasing your Health Span .......201
26  GEORGE MCGOVERN: An Appetite for Life .........................209
27  LyNNE MCTAGGART: Consciousness Over Matter ..............215
28  DEBRA MUTH: Living Menopause Audaciously ...................221
29  CHRISTIANE NORTHRUP: The Wisdom Cycle .....................231
30  DEAN RADIN: Mind Over Time ...............................................239
31  GABRIELLE ROTH: The Audacious Self ..................................247
32  ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI: The Adventure 
  of Age-ing ...............................................................................257
33  NORMAN SHEALy: Every Thought Is a Prayer.....................267
34  PAMELA WARTIAN SMITH: The New  
  Medical Paradigm .................................................................275
35  GLORIA STEINEM: Doing Sixty and Seventy .........................283
36  NANCy SWAyZEE : Like a Little Child ...................................289
37  DICK VAN DyKE: Learn Everything you Can........................297
38  ALFORD N. VASSALL, JR.: Living in your Passion ...........301
39  ANDREW WEIL: Healthy Aging ...............................................309
40  HOWARD ZINN: Outside the Margins 
  of Responsibility ....................................................................313
FOREWORD:
What If We Took More Risks?
Joe Laur and Isabelle St-Jean
a
e want to lay out a bit of our individual journeys and the 
W
collaborative thinking that led to this book. So here we share 
with you how the volume in your hands and the concepts it 
contains came to be.
Joe ’s Path
On my fifty-fifth birthday, I took a little time for reflection. I had 
always had a lighthearted notion that I could live to the ripe age of 
110, the same age Joseph, my namesake in Genesis, achieved. After 
all, three of my four grandparents lived into their nineties, and the 
youngster of the four died at eighty-five. I figured with a little luck and 
healthy living, I could make 110 in reasonably good shape. In any case, 
at fifty-five, at least as much of my life span lay behind me as before 
me. That got me thinking: Regardless of longevity, how did I want to 
spend the rest of my days? What could I do in the years remaining to 
me? What would the second half of my life mean, and how did I want 
to live it? 
I began to frame in my mind and heart some of the key questions 
that would later be addressed by the contributors to this anthology. 
Instead of playing it safe, as is often the tendency as we age, what if we 
took more risks, spoke out on what was most important to us, moved 
boldly (at least in spirit, if not always physically), and lived each day 
more fully than the next?
Around this time I met Isabelle St-Jean at a conference on business 
and sustainability that I had conceived and facilitated. As we talked, 
we discovered our common interest in inspiring our peers to partici-
pate even more fully in the grand endeavor of passing on a more lov-
ing, just, and healthy planet to future generations. We had a wonder-
ful and deep conversation about the need and opportunity for those 
in the “second act” of life to take action boldly and to live ever more 

n
Foreword
audaciously as the years pass. We also both felt a strong desire to do 
something to counter our culture’s fear of aging. 
In true collaborative fashion, we decided to help launch an anthol-
ogy of writings by people both well known and little known who were 
living and aging audaciously. The stories told by these people would 
model audacious aging and inspire the rest of us to take our own au-
dacious acts at every stage in life. As Muriel Rukeyser stated, “The 
universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
It is our hope that this book will contribute to the radical redefini-
tion of aging under way in our society. Many baby boomers thought 
the revolution would take place in the Sixties. Now they are awaken-
ing to the reality that it may take place in their sixties!
Isabelle ’s Story
When I attended the Society for Organizational Learning’s con-
ference on sustainability in 2006, I heard Joe Laur deliver a powerful 
call to action to those of us at the gateway of our life’s second half. At 
that time I was in the midst of writing my own book, Living Forward,
Giving Back: A Practical Guide to Fulfillment in Midlife and Beyond. Joe 
and I quickly got fired up in an exchange of ideas and talked from 
our respective coasts for several months after that, intent on helping to 
ignite a collective spirit among elders and baby boomers regarding the 
future—our own and that of the planet.
I told Joe about one of my models for audacious aging: my friend 
Jan Furst, who is ninety-five as of this writing. Jan has kept up his 
practice of fencing, just published his third book, and recently started a 
nonprofit organization to sponsor education in Ghana. Being with Jan 
stimulates in me questions about how I will keep making a significant 
contribution as the decades stack up and bring me closer to my last 
year, my last month, or my last week.
Perhaps you too are reflecting on these kinds of questions. We 
hope this trailblazing anthology, filled with provocative and empow-
ering ideas, will inspire you to live more boldly and audaciously. We 
urge this, not for the mere sake of boldness or audacity, but with the 
knowledge that time is of the essence for the human race.
No matter our age, each of us has the opportunity to be continu-
ously reborn. We are reborn when we take a stand on behalf of the 
future and bring it forth with both our deep yearning and the power of 
our actions and words. We are reborn when we unleash our creativity 
and our fire to re-enchant the world with a love for nature and for ev-
erything alive. And we are reborn when we shed the remnants of our 

what iF we took More riSkS Joe Laur & Isabelle St-Jean
guarded, timid ways to reveal our true, divinely imperfect beauty, core 
identity, and authentic strength. These are the rebirths needed to carry 
the human race and the planet into the future.
We invite you to ride with us on the wings of courage, from the 
heightened perspective afforded by years of journeying. This book 
provides tools, information, and inspiration for the ride. May we all 
rise to the challenge of transforming our society from a youth/appear-
ance-worshiping culture into one that fosters the values of the heart, 
supports the evolution of consciousness, and leaves to future genera-
tions a legacy of which we can be wildly proud. 
Joe Laur
Isabelle St-Jean
October 2008

INTRODUCTION
Stephanie Marohn
a
hat does it mean to age audaciously? Patch Adams says  
W
the term is redundant, that aging by its very nature is 
audacious. Asha Clinton says that audacious aging comes 
from audacious living. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi says the key is  
in  turning  age-ing  into  sage-ing.  Christiane  Northrup  says  that 
audacious aging is the new order of aging. Deepak Chopra says 
that aging in the new way means stepping out of “the hypnosis of 
social conditioning.” Nikki Giovanni says, “Audaciousness comes in  
refusing to be silenced.” 
These  and  the  other  contributors  to  this  thought-provoking 
anthology share their personal stories of aging and audaciousness, 
their views of aging, and how their work contributes to the ability to 
be audacious in life. you will likely be surprised by what they have  
to say. 
The view of aging is undergoing a radical transformation in the 
Western world. With rising consciousness and extended life spans, 
after sixty is no longer the “go gently into the night” stage of life. With 
decades of quality life left to live, continued engagement is the order of 
the day. When the tsunami of the aging baby boomer population hits, 
the redefinition of aging that is already under way in our society will 
be carried forward by that giant wave. 
The contributors to Audacious Aging give us a glimpse of the 
new view of aging that will emerge. They give us the new science of 
aging, dispel the myths that have until now ruled how we age, and 
offer us the new paradigm of body, mind, and spirit health throughout 
life. Alternately personal and global, practical and transportive, the 
chapters in this anthology are on the forward edge of this amazing 
revolution: the transformation of elderhood. 
As with all revolutions, the aging revolution involves changing 
the language. The very way we speak of aging is in the process of 
shifting. Here are some of the new terms that reflect the change in 
how we view aging: creative aging, sage-ing, spiritual eldering, aging 
as a path to spiritual awakening, lifelong learning, elder adventure, 

Stephanie Marohn
conscious aging, the third age, the second journey, mitigated aging, 
new elderhood, and positive elderhood.
As editor of this anthology, I want to share with you that the 
book changed my view of aging before it even went to press. Simply 
editing the work of the visionary contributors shifted my thinking and 
perspective. And it brought to light the subtle age-ism I was carrying 
within me. Opposed to all isms as I am and have long been, I was, 
however, unaware that I was harboring this one. Through working on 
the book, I discovered that I was carrying a highly negative view of 
aging, even though I have great respect for elders and elder wisdom. 
Two years ago, when I turned fifty, I began to get mail from AARP. 
With a feeling of aversion, I would toss the unopened membership 
invitations into the recycling as quickly as they arrived. There are so 
many things wrong with that simple ritual of denial and the beliefs 
it reflects (Audacious Aging explores such issues), but suffice it to say 
here that it was not an act of self-love and it undermined who I am, all 
that I know and have accomplished, and my very future. It revealed a 
belief in a future of limitation rather than expansion. I saw aging as a 
shrinking of options and a gradual loss of everything. What a dismal 
view! I was not alone in this view. It is the societal view of aging under 
which we currently operate. 
How wonderful to discover that it is a delusional view! The 
contributors to Audacious Aging produced a sea change in me, as I’m 
sure they will for many who read this book. The blinders created by our 
youth culture have been removed, and I am excited about the future—
for me and for all of us. I am excited to be part of the revolution that is 
bringing elders back to the vital, rightful place of elders in our society, 
and I look forward to seeing what this transformation will bring about 
in our world.

The above photo shows Patch Adams and Susan Parenti on a peace mission
to Serbia and Croatia in 2001. Patch Adams, MD, is a political activist for ending
capitalism and creatinga value system based on compassion and generosity.
Two areas of focus in this are medicine and clowning. In 1971, he created the
Gesundheit Institute, a hospital model posing solutions to problems in health
care delivery, which includes free services and no malpractice insurance.
In 1984, Patch began leading clown trips all over the globe as intensive
seminars in compassion and to bring love, fun, and aid to the horrors in
the world. Patch Adams was born on May 28, 1945, in Washington, DC.