Creative Ageing Blogs
Creation Spirituality: what, why, how
Align your own creative power within the divine The essence of creation spirituality is this idea: that the creation of our world was not a one-off event billions of years ago: it is a process continuing in every moment, and each of us can contribute. As Neil...
Enjoying your elderhood
The term elder is used with various meanings: I’m using it to invite you to connect with the mature wisdom in yourself, and in our ancestors. Traditional tribal cultures, such as the Native Americans, Celts, and Bedouin, had great wisdom, including the role of the...
Not Fade Away Staying happy when you’re over 64! By Alan Heeks
THE BABY BOOMER GUIDE TO CREATIVE AGEING The late sixties and beyond are a landmark: a good time to choose what you want from the years ahead, and take stock of the story so far. This short, practical book offers you valuable guidance, new skills, and resources to...
Even the old are prejudiced about ageing!
Most of us have prejudices, and most of us have them around old age, whatever age we are! It’s been shocking for me, as an expert on creative ageing, to admit this is true of me.
Not Fade Away: The Story Behind The Book
Alan Heeks shares the roots of his fresh approach to creative ageing... I believe that shipwreck and re-invention are the healthy essence of the mid-life crisis, and I did mine pretty thoroughly. Two weeks before my 50th birthday, I moved out of my 27-year old...
Born to be wild: fresh adventures
Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re likely to be more happy and resilient if you open up to fresh...
Mysteries of elderhood: effects of ageing
Alan Heeks shares his development through the life stages When I turned sixty in 2008, I set a clear intent of moving into elderhood, growing beyond my prevailing warrior-hero approach to life. Ten years on, I can report good progress on my development through the...
Pilgrim without map or boots
Fresh adventures in later years As we get older, we need fresh adventures to keep us growing. Two new experiences I’ve been enjoying are short pilgrimages and retreats. The difference between a pilgrimage and a walk is subtle: I’d say a pilgrim is walking with a...
Dating Tips for Senior Singles
Learn new skills, have adventures…find true love! Picture the scene: I am a newly mature single sitting alone at a table for two, wearing smart casual gear which I hope looks suitable, I am waiting for my blind date, Jackie, to appear. To look my best, I am not...
The Little Book of Hygge
Cosy friendship in all its forms: including tea, cake, candles! Many surveys show the Danes to be the happiest people in Europe and the world, and the quality of hygge seems to be one reason. Hygge, pronounced hoo-guh, is hard to define or translate: friendly cosiness...
Fresh adventures for creative ageing
Discover yourself and have some fun as you grow older. Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re...
Life Threatening Crises for Friends
Alan writes about his experiences of friends suffering from life threatening illness. In the past few months, the wives of two close friends have had late diagnoses of advanced cancer which could be fatal. The husband of another friend has had a stroke. At the...
Age is just a number: Charles Eugster
Charles Eugster is a pioneer in health regimes for people over 65, and well beyond. He has won medals for rowing and sprinting in his eighties and nineties! However, his book offers a lot of help for oldies less fanatically fit then he is.
Vita Sackville-West on Triumphant Elderhood: All Passion Spent
If Vita Sackville-West is known at all these days, it is as a landscape gardener, Bloomsbury bohemian, or as the role model for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. In fact, she is a superb novelist too: perceptive, witty and elegant.
A Realistic and Positive Book on Ageing: Also helpful for the ‘young-old’
This is the best book on ageing I have read: well-informed, realistic, as well as warm-hearted and inspiring. Marie is one of the leading French experts on ageing: she has been studying this field for years, and draws on some excellent role models and teachers.
A view from age 56: Jane Sanders
My Armenian great grandfather Aram Assadour Altounyan swore by yogurt eating and daily cold showers – and lived into his late 90’s, still working as a surgeon in Syria. A family story is that at 93 he operated on his wife – hands still skilful and steady.
A view from age 71: Gay
Turning 70 was fine. I couldn’t believe it in a way – I kept having to redo the maths to convince myself this huge number related to me. I really like being an ‘elder’! The tricky one for me was turning 50 – neither one thing or the other.
A view from age 74: Giles
It’s the people and the truth and love you bring to dealing to them ALL that count, not your or their appearance, behaviours, plans, status, achievements &c.
How NOT to have a midlife crisis
The ‘hero’ of this book is Tubby Passmore, 58: balding, bulging, and thoroughly lost. Although he’s outwardly successful – well-off, modestly well-known as scriptwriter for a top sitcom, with a steady if dull marriage, Tubby is depressed and confused.
Elderwoman: book by Marian van Eyk McCain
From Elderwoman, I conclude that one of the big gender differences in elderhood is that women face it more collectively. Men often face the challenges of ageing alone, and need new skills to find the collective support and wisdom they also need.
Life lessons from the movies: Hope Springs
One of the interesting things about this film, like Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is that its main target audience is clearly the over fifties.
Exploring elderhood at Findhorn Foundation
In February 2013, I brought a vision to fruition: co-leading a week-long programme at Findhorn Foundation on elderhood.
Amour: French film about love in old age
Stunning is a word much over-used, especially by estate agents, but stunned is the best way to sum up my feelings at the end of this film.
Alan Heeks
Alan was born in 1948, went to a grammar school in Reading, and studied English Language and Literature at Oxford University 1966-69. He comments “Those three years were an intense awakening after a pretty lousy adolescence. The music and politics of the time are still for me deeply entwined with the beauty of the city and with my love for poetry and literature, from the Anglo-Saxons through Shakespeare to George Elliot.”