 had a childhood, you had an adolescence, you had an adulthood, now you have an elderhood. The concept of elderhood has become more popular among the psychosocial disciplines since the 1990s but just just how do you know when you've made it into your elderhood? I'm Larry Grimm and I'm a personal coach for extraordinary elderhoods giving you an opportunity to make the best that possibly can be. But the question is, how do you know when you've made it? Mostly, I have been a pastor for many years and as a pastor, I've worked with congregational members and I've worked also in chaplaincy, working with long-term care facilities and in hospice care. So I've heard people go through and listen to as people have gone through and supported people as they've gone through their their elderhood. And of course the thing that most often I hear about is the physical dimensions. I got a lot of pains in the joints, I can't do what I used to do, I'm hurting, I'm diseased, I'm having these problems. And oftentimes they're associated with aging but aging does not create those problems. The problems come at the aging time and the physical dimensions of those are things that we need to address. However, aging is not the only sign of your entry into elderhood. We also have the internal dimensions of life experience, which I'd like to address today. It's that emotional experience. This is the first of my new season of my program, which I'm calling, which I'm calling don't just age, engage. And because I want to enable people like yourself to find a way, find the way through the emotional dimensions and into those decision-making, those decisions that need to be made in order to make this time of your life really extraordinary. Today I'm going to do an orientation over the entire program life that we'll have together. My programs will be online here every two weeks, starting today and then two weeks from today. Then think Tecawaii, my wonderful partner in this ministry. Think Tecawaii will take a break over the holidays and it will reconvene then in January. So you'll look forward to that time when I'll have more people that will come on and they'll talk, will do dialogue with them about some of the resources that are available online in particular, some of the dimensions of this experience of aging and ways in which models in which people who have turned their aging into extraordinary elderhood. We're a vulnerable population and I include myself. We're a vulnerable population. We're vulnerable more than just the virus right now. We're vulnerable to a kind of perspective on aging and perspective on elderhood that wants to marginalize the elder, that takes the heart, the experience of the wisdom and the heart of the elder and wants to push it to the side and somewhat marginalize it. If we adopt that for ourselves and only see our aging process as a physical demise, then we miss out the opportunity of dealing with the opportunities which these feelings, these emotions give us. Once we work through them, we're into a new insight and new dimensions of our aging process or able to make our elderhood extraordinary. That's what my coaching is about. I do it with a community, a small community that you can be a part of, a trusted community of people with some of the same issues, some of the same concerns that you've had. I do it with one-on-one coaching desire. I do it with learning in an academy and that's going to be a remarkable opportunity for all of us to share insights, to gain wisdom and new knowledge of contemporary life, contemporary resources that are available. But today I want to focus on that internal dimension and this sort of sets the pattern for our future as this program don't just age, engage. I have noticed when I was a pastor in Presbyterian churches for many years and work with people at all stages of life and I noticed that as people go through different stages and they accomplish things in those stages, what I call spiritual tasks, then they are freed up to move into the next stage and to enjoy it to its fullest. So I'm very much aware of stage development as we move and grow. I also have noticed when I was in chaplaincy work as a chaplain in long-term care, chaplain in hospice care and one of the best things that I could do was listen to people tell their stories. I like to think of myself as a professional story listener and so I welcome those stories and look for those stories because it's not just the events that are important but the impact of the events in our lives. So I've worked with people in their whole broad range of life experience and now I bring that in this program to bear on people's needs and interests as they want to shape their elderhood into an extraordinary life. So let me focus now on the five interests, the five spiritual, what I call spiritual disciplines or spiritual tasks that will indicate for you that you have entered your elderhood. The five of them are grieving, sorting, forgiving, preparing, and letting go. The first one that I'd like to focus on is the one grieving. We get to a point in elderhood when we may be surprised that oh my gosh I feel so sad sometimes, I feel so prolonged, I feel so sorrowful and this may be a surprise because we haven't always experienced this or when we have experienced it we've done something about it and resolved whatever problem might have presented us with a degree of grief but when we hit our entering elderhood we find that we are engaging in much more loss than we've ever had before. Now that loss can be personal loss I may lose some of my memory which I've done and I'm sure comes up frequently. I may have lost friends and family members. I may have lost a job and a sense of identity. I may have lost an opportunity that I wanted to have that didn't come about. I may have lost what I thought was a future that I wanted to create that now is no longer possible in some way. So there are many kinds of losses that suddenly confront us, not the least of which is our physical problems that can come up and but the fact becomes a concern and it comes up to us as grief. I had a pastoral counselor teacher who said to me in terms of the whole group that was in his study that the first thing he asked of a new counsel or counseling a new client was what are you grieving? What grief is yet to be resolved? Grief is very powerful in our lives. It's very strong and if we are not resolving those griefs then we can also find that they can block us from moving forward and experiencing more joy. Now sometimes we think of grief as a loss that peaks and then it goes down like that or over a year. No it does not. As you know grief may peak at the time of loss and then it will decline and then peak again and then decline and peak again at Mother's Day and peak again at Father's Day, peak again at celebrations that come along the birthdays, the grand family days. Grief can dominate your feelings and your emotions because it's so strong and it's always sort of an indication of oh my gosh my own life is coming towards its end and that becomes a realization too for us. I like to think of grief though not as just one feeling. I think grief is more like when I go to the laundromat and I'm finished with my washing my clothes and I pull out the clothes out of the washing machine and I throw them in that big dryer and I stand in front of that dryer at the laundromat, put the coins in and it starts turning and turning and it turns over and over and I watch my clothes as they tumble through the wash through the dry cycle and and I think that's what grief is like. It's denial, it's anger, it's hopefulness, it's sadness, it's sorrow, it's it's frustration, it's all these emotions that are tumbling tumbling around together and they peak throughout a year in particular and we'll peak again at the year anniversary. With whom can you share that grief? Family members are not always the best to do that but sometimes they will, sometimes they can manage it but oftentimes family members cannot manage it, sometimes even our spouse cannot manage that so intense grief. So having a community where you can share that or a person, a counselor, a coach with whom you can share that as a way of processing through that tumble action of the many feelings that are going along with grief. So first thing more than we agree before in our lives. The second spiritual task that we have in our elderhood is sorting and I say it's sorting out our stories. Now all of us get to a point where we start sorting out our stuff. We sort out our stuff. We decide which one stuff goes to whom, who do we want to inherit this, how do we want to pass this along to maybe the Salvation Army or pass this along to Goodwill. We sort out our stuff and how oftentimes have you heard oh my gosh or said yourself oh my gosh I never knew how much stuff I had. What we do sort out our stuff but what do you do when you sort out your stuff? When you make those decisions I maintain that most of the stuff has a story behind it and when we sort out our stuff we're really sorting out those stories and the significance of the events that they represent. Now I like I said I consider myself a professional story listener and oftentimes patients and people with whom I've worked have had one or two or three stories that they really like to tell about themselves about their past and it'll be the same story and they will tell it again and again and I am I have done that myself with certain stories. I have a story about about the birth of my second daughter when I was present to help give birth to my my second daughter and I can tell that story and when I tell the story as it is for everyone the experience of that past event the emotions of that past event come into the very present of my telling the story and so as I tell that story I relive that experience and reincorporate it into my heart and mind. In Greek it's called anemesis in remembrance we say and that remembrance time is a way of recalling but the power of that event into the present. This is who we are this is who I am this is who you are when you tell that story and the and it is from the past but it is very much a part of who you are in the present. So we're very careful about letting go of some of those stories because they are about events that shape us into the person that we continue to be in our elderhood. Hold height to those stories and sometimes it's a need to process something that's unresolved sometimes again it's just a way of saying this is who I am and what I cherish in my life. The third spiritual task that we have that peaks up and arises within our consciousness from those five tasks is forgiving. We have a need to forget now this is not in response to some religious imparity but some commandment of forgiveness but that actually comes up as a desire a genuine desire that may surprise us again a desire to forgive or a desire to be forgiven and this road ahead we're going from reading sorting stories to forgiving and the act of forgiving is different from the act of reconciliation. Reconciliation occurs when two or more people want to rebuild a relationship that's what re-counsel means to rebuild a friendship to come back together to reunite and if it's not a moment motivation of all the parties involved there certainly will be not be any reconciliation. Now forgiveness will be part of that reconciling act. I think in Hawaiian O'Pono Pono is the term and when we forgive one another we when we want to reconcile we do need to forgive self and forgive one another in order for that goodness to be restored in the relationship but it is different from forgiveness because we can enact forgiveness on our own unilaterally. Ricky was a young man in hospice care he had AIDS and he lost the bottom half of his right leg to AIDS was a fairly large man like almost my size and then he would became fairly just was emaciated from the disease that he had and he was in his late 40s so he wasn't he was not his body was still could have been was still strong in some ways but the AIDS of course decimated him and we had a good trusting relationship so I was in his room one day and Ricky just suddenly said pastor I need to repent and I said okay we can do that is this is this a general repentance or is this about some specific event in your life and Ricky said it's specific and I said okay and does it involve a woman and he said yes so Ricky I wanted I said to Ricky now imagine that she is standing at the foot of your bed and looking at you right now you see her there yeah okay now tell her and you can speak it if you want or you can just in your mind did this tell her what you want her to hear from you at this time and there was a silence just a casual I mean a comfortable silence and I could see he was thinking and then finally he said please forgive me and I said is that all you want to say and he said yeah and I said okay now go to the foot of your bed and your imagination you'd be her stand there stand there where she was and look back at yourself in the bed you see yourself Ricky yeah now ask her respond to what you just told her and again some silence and then he said Ricky I forgive you and then I said come back into the bed Ricky so imagination he came back into the bed and I said uh how are you feeling now and he took his arms like this he's like a like a load's been lifted off of my back lifted off of my shoulder we did one more of those I think and then three days later if he died that's a an extreme example but it nonetheless is that uh expression that there is a desire to forgive to clean one's conscience to uh to extend forgiveness to others to receive forgiveness from others and to receive forgiveness from ourselves it truly is a liberating experience and we can exercise forgiveness when we recognize that that's something that's pressing on us and that's where the help of others come in to help us recognize that and then we can exercise that forgiveness Ricky it was an inter psyche in his own psyche that he was wrestling with and he resolved it and it gave him a peace in his passing so back to our five our five spiritual tasks in elderhood we notice that we grieve we notice that we um are doing more sorting of our stories we notice that we have a desire to cleanse the conscience to enact forgiveness we find ourselves preparing preparing uh one of my dear friends said to me when I had to cross 70 I began to ask the question when where and how he was referring of course to his own dying when where and how and these are our critical questions in in terms of preparing externally you know we we there's so many resources available for us to to wrestle with and address the externals of our elderhood for instance for instance uh social workers are great resources for us when we become a case part of their case work to provide with us with an idea of how to fund a place to live that's the most expensive thing about elderhood especially as we moved closer and closer to end of life however that may come when where and how we can uh think of though also in terms of last will and testament that we prepared that have we prepared for uh advanced directives especially important in our day and age when there's so much that surprises us at this stage of life and can take over our dying process that this can be sudden of course corp covid virus is much on our mind of everybody's mind now to contract that for for so many has been a way of just suddenly going into into decline and suddenly into dying so thinking about that ahead of time when you're well when you're strong when you are able to marshal the resources to do conversation with family members and say here's what i want and i would like for you to go along with that for me all of that is very very important to do when we have that consciousness and strength to do it so that's the external preparations there are also some internal preparations um imagining what life beyond life is like um when i work with people in alzheimer's we have often spent much time i often spend a lot of time with music i sing sing to them and i encourage them to sing and one of my groups that i had alzheimer's group pick up but they spent a lot of time singing the old songs from the good old songs from their faith from their childhood and many of those songs i noticed had these beautiful images of life after life and we would it was a way of them preparing for the life beyond life that was to be there that's how they imagined it that's how they prepared for it they got themselves mentally ready to receive what they thought would be a gift in the new life so preparing is very important and again to be done with with friends to be done with family to be done with coach finally letting go is the fifth the fifth indicator that you have you have entered your eldephan and the most extreme case letting go occurs of course at our last breath at our last dying in hospice care i was walking in my hospice facility and a young woman came out of the room and said gosh chaplain you know we're in there with mom and mom's are so strong she just she won't let go and my thought was yeah i don't blame her letting go is probably the hardest thing that we ever do elizabeth kubler ross in the 70s who gave us the five stages of dying indicated that i'm brought to mind for me a good memory which is when i'm having a member of family member dying or somebody that i love dying i'm losing that person that person is losing everything everything everyone everything that has ever brought meaning into their life they were losing and they know they're losing and so they don't want to let go who wants to let go at that point it seems like you're stepping off into oblivion and when what said you have to prepare in order to fall asleep and never to wake up again perhaps that's what dying is different religions and different orientations have different visions of life beyond life and also and how they how we envision that may affect the way in which we were able to let go i have uh coach dying people in letting go and surrendering to that process because the body knows what it has to do the body does it on its own and we really kind of come alongside the body psychologically and cooperate with our body a new life in my opinion is being born and that's part of the mystery and wonder of the dying process but letting go is something that we do very much throughout life and when you surrender something when you let go part of a grieving experience is to let go and having a community with which you can share that letting go process and learn from it will really enhance and make extraordinary your elderhood well these are the five spiritual tasks of elderhood we're going to look at these more specifically in the future if you like to go to my website my website is is personal coaching for life and faith dot com and when you arrive there this is what you will see and on the left hand side you can pick and choose some some places to look and explore there's three main areas there's elder guilds small group there's one-on-one coaching and there is an elder academy available and then at the bottom you'll see you can also push it purchase my new book which i've recently published don't just any age engage personal coaching for your extraordinary elderhood i look forward to seeing you in two weeks come bring some comments questions and we'll pursue this how do you know you're in your elderhood you've got five spiritual tasks pay attention to they will demand your attention thanks so much aloha