JABA CEO Marta Keane and The Center at Belvedere executive director Peter Thompson joined WINA Radio show host Michael Guthrie to talk about how the Charlottesville Area Alliance is advocating for healthy aging in our area. The Charlottesville Area Alliance is made up of many organizations including the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Listen!
JABA - Toward Inclusive Excellence in the Community
This article originally appeared in Amplify, a publication by the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Virginia.
Actresses Embrace "Age My Way" Older American Month Theme
The theme for Older Americans Month this year, which happens every May, is "age my way."
What does that mean?
Well, according to the Administration for Community Living (ACL), which leads the effort to celebrate Older Americans Month, which was established in 1963 by then President John F. Kennedy, is about how older adults are re-defining themselves and declaring their independence.
Indeed, a few striking examples are provided by the actresses Jamie Lee Curtis, 63, and Michelle Yeoh, 60, who star in the recently released film "Everything Everywhere All At Once," which not only challenges our assumptions about time and space (and will permanently change the meaning of "everything bagel" for you), what a super-hero movie should be, and what roles older women in Hollywood can play, but also what it means to age.
At the Radically Reframing Aging Summit last month, Curtis blasted the way we talk about aging.
“This word 'anti-aging' has to be struck,” she said. “I am pro-aging. I want to age with intelligence, and grace, and dignity, and verve, and energy...I don't want to hide from it."
Indeed, for her role in "Everything," in which she plays both a sinister IRS auditor and Yeoh's hot-dog fingers lover, Curtis insisted that there would be "no concealing of anything." Indeed, that meant no make-up and not sucking in her belly or clenching her jaw.
"I've been sucking in my stomach since I was 11...I very specifically decided to relinquish and release every muscle I had that I used to clench to hide the reality," she wrote in an Instagram post. "That was my goal. I have never felt more free creatively and physically."
Which addresses one of the most difficult aspects of aging for a lot of people: accepting how your body changes.
“I’m not denying what I look like, of course I’ve seen what I look like," Curtis told the audience at the summit. "I am trying to live in acceptance. If I look in the mirror, it’s harder for me to be in acceptance. I’m more critical. Whereas, if I just don’t look, I’m not so worried about it.”
Yeoh, a Malaysian actress best known for her role in Ang Lee's Academy Award-winning martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and who performs martial art sequences in "Everything," pointed out it was usual for Hollywood to champion such roles for older women.
“Just because you are now an older actress, they think, Oh, no, no, no, no, we should let the guys do all these kinds of things,” Yeoh told Refinery29. “And thank God the Daniels (writers and directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) didn't think like that. They thought outside of the box — or the universe.”
Like Curtis, Yeoh isn't content to impose limits on herself because she's getting older, and provided some wonderful advice in a recent NPR interview.
"I think you have to be present. This life is yours. But if you're not present, it's wasted," she said."Time waits for no one. When we're born, we age and then we die, and God forbid, we die before we have lived our lives. So we have to be present in whatever universe, in whatever life, because if you give up on being present, then you give up on your life."
This article originally appeared in C-Ville Weekly’s GenNow section.
Social Engagement Innovations and Best Practices: At Home with JABA
The Problem with the “Anti-Aging” Trend
Everyone is aging. From the moment we are born we begin growing and changing. So why then, at a certain point along that continuum, do we rebel and freak out against that process? A Google search on aging reveals what I'm talking about. You'll inevitably find articles and advertisements about "anti-aging cures" and reports on medical research and developments that promise to "fight" aging or eliminate it. Indeed, multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos has invested in a bio-tech company called Altos Labs, which promises to halt the aging process through "cellular reprogramming" and other new technologies.
“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at, " wrote Bezos in a letter to Amazon shareholders when he stepped down as CEO last year. " … If living things don’t actively work to prevent it, they would eventually merge with their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”
And this sort of thing is not only the obsession of multi-billionaires. According to P&S Intelligence, the global anti-aging market is expected to grow from $191.5 billion currently to $421.4 billion by 2030.
What are we to make of all this?
Again, we can turn to science. A recent study published in Nature Communications addressed the question of whether or not we can slow the rate of aging. Researchers pointed out that primates (humans) actually enjoy relatively long lifespans when compared to other species, and found that there's a direct connection between “life expectancy at birth and lifespan equality in a diverse set of human populations." In other words, attention given to the health of infants, and declining infant mortality rates, has been one of the main reasons why more people are living longer, healthier lives. What's more, the study found that human lifespans remain generally fixed due to biological constraints, and that "lifespan equality" is the real issue.
For instance, while Thomas Jefferson, who died at 83, made it to the higher end of a typical human lifespan, life expectancy at birth during that time was 40 years old. Since then, due to advances in medicine and a variety of economic, environmental and societal factors life expectancy at birth in the U.S. has increased dramatically, to 80 years old in 2020, but the typical biological human lifespan has remained largely unchanged.
Today, in developed nations, deaths are typically concentrated near the end of human lifespans, whereas in less developed nations those deaths may be spread across different ages. The same could be said about people in various socio-economic situations within a population. In other words, our quality of life as we age, not anti-aging cures, are what will likely allow us to "stave off death" and live longer, healthier lives.
So, then, what is the current obsession with "anti-aging" and "curing and fighting" aging all about? Well, you could say that fantasies about finding the "Fountain of Youth" have always been a part of our mythologies, and that now we like to think that technology can provide that. Indeed, one of the scientists involved with Altos Labs has called cellular reprogramming technology the "elixir of life." Of course, while much of this isn't so much about wanting to cheat death, and more about not wanting to look prematurely old, it amounts to a refusal to accept aging and a prejudice against aging.
According to the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, who believed the denial of aging and death was a cultural cruelty, that's a recipe for disaster.
"The minute you pit yourself against nature, the minute you pit yourself with your mind against change," Dass wrote, "you are asking for suffering."
Remember, the aging process began the moment you were born, and it’s happening as you read this. Relax.
This article originally appeared in C-Ville Weekly.
How Respite Care Can Help Caregivers
Charlottesville Tomorrow - Respite is a short rest from doing something difficult, and across Virginia over a million caregivers providing millions of hours of unpaid care for loved ones at home are doing something very difficult.
“Caregiving is very stressful,” says Donna Baker, JABA’s Director of Operations, “…its stressful emotionally, and its stressful physically. Caregivers need a break. And there are some things in the community that can help them.”
Indeed, according to an AARP study in 2019, 69% of unpaid caregivers in Virginia reported they were stressed emotionally and 70% reported they were stressed physically. Many unpaid caregivers are trying to work, take care of their own families, and care for an older loved one who needs extra care or supervision. Trying to balance all that can be very difficult.
Fortunately, there are several ways these caregivers can seek help. Homecare agencies are thriving, and they can provide both medical and companion care, depending on what a loved one’s needs are. Many long-term care facilities also provide overnight care so that caregivers can get away for the weekend or go on vacation. Here in Virginia, the Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) also has a relatively new Respite Voucher Program, which provides eligible Virginia caregivers with a $595 reimbursement voucher to cover the costs of temporary, short-term respite care provided to individuals of any age, with a documented disability or medical condition.
Home-delivered meals programs, like Meals on Wheels or the one we provide at JABA, are also a good way to reduce the burden of preparing meals while knowing loved ones are getting regular, healthy meals.
Finally, JABA has two Adult Care Centers in Charlottesville and Louisa, which provide supports five days a week for older adults and those 18 and over with disabilities who need supervision. JABA Adult Care Centers provide a fun-filled day of activities, along with professional nursing care and a healthy lunch. Caregivers have found that knowing their loved ones are being well taken care of during the day at our Centers provides much-needed peace of mind, socialization for their loved ones to prevent isolation, and ultimately makes it easier for their loved ones to remain in their homes
“At JABA, we look at our jobs as not just taking care of a caregiver’s loved one, but also taking care of them,” says Baker.