LIFE GETS BETTER

The collected stories in LIFE GETS BETTER provide a bracing and hopeful corrective to the fear of aging the media aggressively instills in us. Don't dread the future: the best years of our lives just may be ahead.

From our earliest lives, we are told that our youth will be the best time of our lives. We are told that the energy and vitality of youth are the most important qualities a person can possess, and that everything that comes after will be a sad decline. But in reality, says Wendy Lustbader in LIFE GETS BETTER, her tribute to the virtues of aging, youth is not the golden era it is often made out to be. lt is, for many, a time riddled with anxiety, angst, confusion, and the torture of uncertainty. The media often feeds us avision of growing older as a journey of defeat and diminishment. They are dead wrong.

As Lustbader counters, life gets better as we get older, on all levels except die physical. LIFE GETS BETTER is not a precious or whimsical tome on the quirky wisdom of the elderly. Lustbader conducted first-hand research with aging and elderly people in all walks of life, and she found that they overwhelmingly spoke of the mental and emotional richness they have drawn from aging. Rather than experiencing a decline from youth, Lustbader found that aging people were happier, more courageous, and more interested in being true to their inner selves than young people.

Wendy Lustbader, M.S.W., is an author and social worker who specializes in working with older people, their families and caregivers. In addition to working as a medical social worker for almost twenty years at the Pike Market Medical Cilnic in Seattle, she has also practiced in a home health care agency, hospital geriatric unit and nursing home. She is currently Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work and lectures nationally on subjects related to aging. Wendy is the author of three books, TAKING CARE OF AGING FAMILY MEMBERS (1994), co-authored with Nancy Hooyman; COUNTING ON KINDNESS (1991), and WHAT'S WORTH KNOWING (2001). She lives in Seattle. For more information visit http://lustbader.com/.