Eightysomethings: A Practical Guide to Letting Go, Aging Well, and Finding Unexpected Happiness

by Katharine Esty PhD

Overview

**Winner of the American Book Fest Best Book Award in "Health: Aging/50+"**

This invaluable guide will help the historical number of eightysomethings live fulfilled, happy lives long into their twilight years. Personal stories illustrate how real people in their eighties are living and how they make sense of their lives.

Old age is not what it used to be. For the first time ever, most people in the United States are living into their eighties. The first guide of its kind, Eightysomethings changes our understanding of old age with an upbeat and emotionally savvy view of the uncharted territory of the last stage of life. With insight and humor, Dr. Katharine Esty describes the series of dramatic and difficult transitions that eightysomethings usually experience and how, despite their losses, they so often find themselves unexpectedly happy.

Living into one’s eighties doesn’t have to mean declining health and loneliness: Dr. Esty shows readers how to embrace—and thrive during—the later stages of life. Based on her more than 120 interviews around the country, Esty explores the lives of ordinary eightysomethings—their attitudes, activities, secrets, worries, purposes, and joys. Esty adds her wisdom and perspective to this multi-dimensional look at being old as a social psychologist, a practicing psychotherapist, and as an eighty-four-year-old widow living in a retirement community.

Eightysomethings is a must-read for people in their eighties, and also for their families. Adult children—often bewildered by their aging parents—need a wise guide like Eightysomethings to help them navigate their parents’ last stage of life with real-world guidelines and conversation starters. Readers, young and old alike, will find this first-of-its-kind book eye-opening, comforting, and filled with practical tips.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510743199
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	956,780
File size:	962 KB

About the Author

Katharine Esty is a social psychologist, a practicing psychotherapist, a writer, and a change agent. She is the author of Workplace Diversity: A Manager’s Guide to Solving Problems and Turning Diversity into a Competitive Advantage, The Gypsies: Wanderers in Time, and Twenty-Seven Dollars and a Dream: How Muhammad Yunus Changed the World and What It Cost Him. The mother of four sons, she is focused on creating a new understanding of possibilities for living into old age. Esty, eighty-four, lives in a retirement community outside of Boston.
Katharine Esty is a social psychologist, a practicing psychotherapist, a writer, and a change agent. She is the author of Workplace Diversity: A Manager’s Guide to Solving Problems and Turning Diversity into a Competitive Advantage, The Gypsies: Wanderers in Time, and Twenty-Seven Dollars and a Dream: How Muhammad Yunus Changed the World and What It Cost Him. The mother of four sons, she is focused on creating a new understanding of possibilities for living into old age. Esty, eighty-four, lives in a retirement community outside of Boston.

Table of Contents

Introduction v

1 I Am Not Old! 1

2 Health Matters: Five Coping Styles 11

3 Upside Down Parenting 21

4 Holding On and Letting Go 29

5 Friends 39

6 Love and Sex 47

7 Grandparenting 59

8 Caregivers 69

9 A Shrinking World 77

10 Past, Future, and Present 85

11 Dementia 95

12 Transitions 105

13 Survivor Skills 115

14 How Their Kids See Them 125

15 Spirituality 135

16 Approaching Death 145

17 Unexpectedly Happy 155

18 Aging Wisely 163

19 The Lucky Generation 173

20 A New Vision of Old Age 183

Author's Notes 194

Acknowledgments 195

Appendix I 197

Appendix II 199

Endnotes 206

Suggestions for Further Reading 214

References 216

About the Author 230

Author's Note to the Paperback Edition 231

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2019

Both of these books posit that people can thrive during late life. In Eightysomethings, social psychologist Esty interviews 120 seniors leading fulfilling lives, classifying them as deniers, complainers, worriers, stoics, and realists—demarcations that, she explains, are helpful for families wishing to build relationships with their elders. The author further provides engaging conversation starters for families at the end of each chapter.

Getting Good at Getting Older, from Siegel (The Jewish Catalog) and rabbi Geller, offers a "how to" on aging, using the "best practices" from Eightysomethings to generalize aspects of aging common to all. In addition to discussing the more positive benefits of gaining gratitude, the authors address giving up one's driver's license and having the last word in funeral planning, while supplying a wealth of tools and resources for everything from coping with illness to leaving a legacy. VERDICT Both titles are recommended for filling a gap in the aging literature, with Eightysomethings catering to a definite niche audience, and Getting Good for anyone over 60.

Library Journal

[Katharine Esty has] written an extraordinary book. I have not seen anything like it, and, indeed, nothing like it could have been written in the past, when many fewer of us were living into our eighties and beyond. [This] book is highly personal, while at the same time authoritative and well researched. The personal interviews with eightysomethings sing with authenticity and emotional power. There is no doubt that we are getting the real thing here, an honest glimpse of what life is like in our eighties and how to prepare for it (for those of us not there yet). Especially welcome is the advice to eightysomethings and their families at the end of each chapter.”
—ALAN LIGHTMAN, author of the international bestseller Einstein’s Dreams and professor at MIT
 
“This well-written and thoughtful book is a useful guide for aging adults and their children. Esty’s discussion questions offer readers the opportunity to have fresh, honest, and kind conversations.”
—MARY PIPHER, author of the bestselling Women Rowing North and Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders
 
“Katharine Esty has written an important book about aging, one of interest to anyone on a journey of self-discovery or anyone trying to better understand an elder loved one. Her experience-based revelations are deeply perceptive and illustrative of the final stages of human development—old age. Anyone who plans to become an ‘eightysomething,’ as she calls it, or who has affection for or attachment to one should definitely read this book and benefit from Katharine’s deep experience-based wisdom. She explores in detail, through copious interviews and examples, the roadmap for navigating the advanced years, the eighties, providing insights that become more and more valuable as we all share the luxury of living longer.”
—SELDEN EDWARDS, author of the New York Times bestseller The Little Book and The Lost Prince

From the Publisher