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Summer Solstice is the day of the year when the light is longest in the day. The longest DAY. It is also a midpoint in the year and, in turn, a midpoint for the Graceing Agefully™ platform. So, I thought it was a good time to REFLECT and REMIND, myself and YOU what this is all about. I’m not sure yet where this is going; I have new thoughts on that every day.

I think it is the basis for a book, the title of which I conceived a while ago: “I Was Having A Near-LIFE Experience”. I had been fascinated with NDE’s or Near Death Experiences and thinking, back then I would have to have a horrible accident or be gravely ill to finally wake up. I kept asking the universe if that were so. The more I read, the more I realized that some of us don’t necessarily have to HIT BOTTOM to finally wake up and recover. I decided at that point, I would find my way from where I was, not wait to see if I were going to be hit in the head multiple times with the 2X4 they always refer to.

I am choosing to write my Summer Solstice blog post in the form of Q&A, the questions that I am asked the most about what this is all about. I hope this will give you a better understanding.

Question 1: “Why do you call the platform Graceing Agefully™?”

Answer: The name, Graceing Agefully™ came to me, believe it or not, back in 2009. I was already thinking of longevity, given the age and condition of my parents and other relatives. I was already very interested in health span and in alternative or integrated medicine. I was fascinated with psychotherapy and in particular, WHY I was the WAY I was. I was also learning more about spirituality vs religion (which I had never fully embraced). When my mother was put in memory care and eventually died after 9 good years with dementia, I wrote my first chapter to a compilation book on healing, Graceing Agefully™. It was about the healing that actually took place between us and how her dementia showed me a side of my mother, Grace, that I had never seen. She had shed all the anxieties and blocks that had shielded her soul from the world. I was inspired. She lived to be almost 100! She had outlived all her immediate relatives by a minimum of 20 years! I suspect those were her happiest adult years, believe it or not.

After her death, the word GRACE kept appearing. It would be on signs, book titles, everywhere I looked, it seemed I saw GRACE. I started to understand the true meaning of GRACE. The gift you cannot earn or deserve. I kept thinking about my mother and her name and how she would always say “but, I’m not GRACEFUL”. She didn’t understand her name. By the time she died, I did. I saw her dementia as GRACE. I saw someone emerge that was fun and happy and special and she generated a positive energy I had never experienced from her growing up.

Graceing is spelled with an ‘e’ as an homage to her name and the inspiration for the platform. Graceing Agefully™ means accepting the GIFT of your life every day, appreciating the GIFT of your life every day. Graceing Agefully™ means cultivating and curating the GIFT of your life every day. I like to think that every day I want to be READY to die. I don’t want to save living for later. I want to live every day to the fullest and die when I do without regrets.

Question 2: “What is the PLATFORM?”

Answer: In my case, I chose the word PLATFORM because it is the foundation of something that I believe can become multi-media and multi-dimensional. Graceing Agefully™ is a concept and the platform is the foundation from which I am building out the concept.

Right now, it is a website, https://graceingagefully.com  and I post a monthly blog (like this). You can connect to the website and sign up as a “member” with an email address. This gets you the email version of the blog post as soon as it’s published. It also gets you a free copy of my first published chapter in a compilation book, Graceing Agefully™, Feed the Good Wolf in the Second Half. (The book is the Ultimate Guide to Self Healing, Volume 5 by Laura Di Franco, Lead Author, you can buy the book here).

There is no cost for membership today. I have additional information on the site about my background, Real Estate, and living a WELL-INTEGRATED LIFE (one of tenets of Graceing Agefully™).

Question 3: “What is a WELL-INTEGRATED LIFE?”

Answer: A WELL-INTEGRATED LIFE is first and foremost, NOT about WORK/LIFE balance. A WELL-INTEGRATED LIFE is the work. It’s not a job or a career, it IS the WORK. A WELL-INTEGRATED LIFE is my goal. It’s a daily practice and a daily goal. Each category of my life gets attention every day and in everything I do.

The 5 categories are 1. Physical 2. Financial 3. Emotional/Mental 4. Relationships and 5. Spiritual (in no particular order as they all are equally important).

The goal is to maintain a high score on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the lowest. A high score is 8 or higher. There are days when I may drop below 8 in a category. Like any business, this initiates a reevaluation of how I’m spending my time. I can course correct when this happens and it’s amazing how other categories improve after correction. It sounds kind of clinical as I describe this, but it’s not. It’s just respecting my WHOLE life and not giving away my strength to one category at the cost of another. I am sharing the journey on a daily basis through my FB Private Group, Graceing Agefully™  (follow the link and I will admit you if you wish to join).

I have been writing 365 Days of I AM Letting Go since March. I’m up to 80+ days by the time this will reach you. It’s been a life changing experience and my ‘followers’ seems to appreciate the musings. This began as an experiment and I’m gaining the confidence to open up to a wider audience than a private FB group soon. Watch for it!

Question 4: “What is the MISSION of Graceing Agefully™?”

Answer: To CHANGE THE CULTURE OF AGING. As a Baby Boomer, I am fighting against the negative stereotypes of aging that have become CULTURAL PARADIGMS.

We have been conditioned to believe 1) Getting old is BAD, YOUTH is BETTER 2) Getting old is DECLINING 3) We should RESIST aging…ie, ANTI-aging 4) ALL of our physical and mental faculties diminish with age 5) We should STOP work, RETIRE and spend most of our time pursuing leisure activities 6) Old people are a BURDEN to their families and society. There are loads of other beliefs in the list, but the bottom line is many of my generation have bought into this and are now living it.

My hope is to show those people that longevity is a blessing that it’s NEVER TOO LATE to start reshaping the second half of life. I believe our generation, Baby Boomers, can push the average lifespan into triple digits for the first time. Rather than cultivating a crop of vegetables at 100+ years, I believe we can cultivate a crop of VIBRANT, PHYSICALLY ACTIVE, MENTALLY SHARP AND AND WISE CENTENARIAN CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS PLANET!! That will CHANGE THE CULTURE OF AGING!

Question 5: “By Spiritual, are you talking about Religion? Are you talking about NEW AGE Spirituality? Isn’t that just WOO WOO?”

Answer: This is a very complicated question to answer because the answer will be different for everyone who follows me. For some, their religion is the pillar of strength and faith upon which they rely. Usually, it’s called GOD. For others, like Buddhists, it is a more of a PRACTICE than a religion and they do not worship a DEITY. For me, it is the understanding that we are ALL CONNECTED, we are all ONE. I believe in a UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS . We have a SOURCE that is LOVING and wants only PEACE and JOY for us. To rate a high score on the SPIRITUAL scale, it requires SURRENDER, every day, all the time. It requires TRUST that my belief is the TRUTH.

That may sound WOO WOO to you. So be it!

This is Graceing Agefully™! Thank you for reading or listening.