08/07/2025
Looking forward to checking this one out. The anguish my clients unnecessarily experience for not being the ideal specimen is disheartening. I look forward to bringing more resources to ENJOY LIVING through all the natural phases and stages. Avoiding dying is a waste of precious energy and minimizes our natural capacity to restore and regenerate through much of what ails us.
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We read Louise Aronson's "Elderhood" while sitting beside my grandmother's hospital bed, watching her try to explain to yet another young doctor that she wasn't confused, just tired of being treated like her eight decades of living had taught her nothing. Aronson's words felt like having an advocate in the room, someone who understood that aging isn't a disease to be cured but a profound human experience we've somehow decided to deny and dread.
As a geriatrician and writer, Aronson doesn't just observe elderhood from the outside; she inhabits it with both clinical expertise and startling vulnerability. Her book became a mirror we didn't know we needed, showing us how our culture's obsession with youth has blinded us to the wisdom, complexity, and yes, beauty of growing older:
1. We're All Practicing for Elderhood
Aronson's most unsettling insight is how our youth-obsessed culture teaches us to fear our future selves. Every anti-aging cream, every joke about senior moments, every assumption that older means lesser, we're essentially training ourselves to hate who we're becoming. She shows how this self-directed ageism doesn't just hurt older people; it wounds us all by making us afraid of our own inevitable journey through time.
2. Medicine Has Abandoned Its Elders
The clinical stories Aronson shares broke my heart and opened my eyes. She reveals how medical training focuses almost exclusively on fixing and curing, leaving doctors unprepared for the nuanced care that elderhood requires. When she describes watching colleagues dismiss elderly patients' concerns or over-medicate normal aging processes, you feel the profound loneliness of being misunderstood by the very people meant to help you heal.
3. Elderhood Has Its Own Seasons
Perhaps the most beautiful revelation is how Aronson maps the landscape of later life, showing it's not one long decline but a series of seasons, each with its own gifts and challenges. She writes about the wisdom that comes from having lived through multiple cycles of joy and loss, the freedom that can emerge when you stop caring what others think, the deep relationships possible when pretense falls away. Her elderhood isn't about diminishment; it's about distillation.
4. The Stories We Tell Matter
Aronson challenges every narrative we've absorbed about aging. She shows how our language around elderhood is soaked in decline and deficit, how we describe older people as "still" doing things, as if their continued existence is surprising. Her reframing is revolutionary: what if we saw aging not as falling apart but as becoming more fully ourselves? What if we honored the courage it takes to keep growing when your body is slowing down?
5. Community Becomes Everything
The most touching parts of the book explore how relationships deepen and shift in elderhood. Aronson shows how older adults often become masters of what truly matters, shedding superficial connections to focus on love that sustains. She writes about friendships forged in waiting rooms, families redefined by caregiving, and the profound intimacy possible when people stop performing and start simply being present with each other.
Most importantly, this book reminded me that we're all aging from the moment we're born, and every day we get to choose whether we'll approach that process with fear or with grace. Aronson chose grace, and in reading her words, I found the courage to do the same.
GET BOOK: https://amzn.to/4l13LBH
You can also get the Audio book for FREE using the same link. Use the link to register for the Audio book on Audible and start enjoying it.
