Category: retirement
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Ageing: Is 10 More GOOD YEARS Too Much To Ask?
The thing about the ageing process is that one minute you’re cruising along feeling relatively young for your years and the next you are using hand cream. And yet, despite my lifelong battle with health anxiety, death scares me somewhat less than the journey there and the “not knowing” exactly how and when my finale…
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Travelling Solo In Middle Age: Why It’s A No-Brainer
But travel doesn’t rate highly on my husband’s agenda. A Cancerian with an abject terror of finding himself more than five kilometres from our suburb – which he likes to refer to as “the safety zone” – I realised that the only way to give him a gentle nudge back into the outside world was…
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There’s Nothing Wrong With Contentment
Recently, a friend of mine was dealing with a family crisis. She admitted to our group that she wasn’t coping and was struggling to do it all – support the child who was struggling, balance her carer responsibilities with her home life, and job hunt in a market that eschews the over-fifties. And when another…
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C-Words like COVID-19 are never good, but most clouds have a silver lining
Historically, c-words have had a bad rap. For example, the c-word “c*nt” is described as a vulgarism for female genitalia on Wikipedia, and the euphemism for “cancer” used to be the archetypal c-word. That is until recently, when a far more sinister c-word entered our vocabulary. I suppose it is fortunate, therefore, that the negative…
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Educate your parents about COVID-19 – They may be stubborn old fools, but they’re stubbo
It’s been pretty appalling to hear the way some people dismiss the value of our elderly at the moment. This is what happens to equal rights in the face of a crisis. And while I understand the theory behind “survival of the fittest”, I’ll be the first to admit that it never crossed my mind…
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The Secret To Growth Is Curiosity
I heard the word “curiosity” mentioned in two different contexts last week. The first time was at Clementine Ford’s book launch in Sydney, for her new book “Boys Will Be Boys;” and the second was in an article in The Guardian by Celia Dodd here, about retirement. Inevitably, “retirement” is somewhat of a buzzword in my…
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Menopausal Mood Swings And Not Turning Into “That” Couple
There are weeks when we reach for the bikini briefs from our underwear drawer each morning, and others when we choose the big girl panties. There are weeks when we stop at the second cookie, and others when we devour the packet. Life can be like that; a rollercoaster of emotions and ups and downs,…
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Gardening in Australia, AKA Dancing With Death
With forty-eight hours and thirty minutes to go, no, I’m not the teeniest bit nervous about the arrival of the rellies for Christmas. While one half of me can’t wait to wrap myself up in dad’s arms again and beg him to take me home to let me be a child again, the other half…
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And The Race Is On For That Medical Marijuana Script
Health concerns continue to dominate the conversation with friends, now evolving at a faster pace than our hatred for world leaders and terrorists. Where ten years ago all we had to grumble about were minor twinges, joint soreness and forgetting the odd name, nowadays we talk about cancer, blood pressure and how often we forget…
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Conquering Fears and Discovering Bush In Australia
I conquered a few long-held fears during my holiday last week with the old man – the fear of whether we can actually spend time alone together without me wanting to kill him, because I’m aware that I won’t be able to use the PMT card as a defence in our retirement, as well as…
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Retirement: Sea Change Or No Change
It feels like we’ve been planning our retirement our whole lives, yet now as we inch closer to our target, the old man and I have realised that the dreams we shared in our early years together may have changed. I thought that my aspirations would centre around little more than long lunches at the…
Louisa Simmonds 