Radical Endurance: Growing Old in an Age of Longevity

A personal guide to the transformations, hard truths, profound pleasures, and infinite possibilities of aging

One May morning shortly before her seventy-fifth birthday, Andrea Gilats awoke to a startling, sudden spike in consciousness that she was about to leap from older to old. Radical Endurance is the story of the reckoning that followed, a candid, clear-eyed journey of discovery through the pitfalls and possibilities of aging. Facing the realities of her age, Gilats explores her fears of failing health and loss of independence while navigating the terrain of an ageist culture. But among such troubling uncertainties, she also encounters the singular pleasures of growing up again, of finding fresh and unexpected ways of understanding herself and making meaning during this new era of her life.

Reflecting on moments in midlife, from the painful adjustments of widowhood to life-altering medical diagnoses, Gilats arrives at a valuable insight: the journey toward old age begins sooner and lasts longer than we might imagine. Yet from any moment in this process, old age is the future, brimming with potential. In her account, Gilats combines personal and professional experience, offering firsthand knowledge of a stage of life that we each meet in our own time, in our own way. She also contributes the learning and wisdom of her heroes and mentors, including feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich, poet May Sarton, singer and activist Joan Baez, psychiatrist Gene Cohen, archaeologist Arthur C. Parker, physician Jane Hodgson, and Nobel literature laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Enlightening and deeply moving, alive to the sadness and joy of time passing, Radical Endurance is a guide and a companion through the experience of growing old as well as an unconventional coming-of-age story, celebrating a new stage of life when we need it most.

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