To be clear, many “disconnected” adult children don’t step back in. For them, there is no going back. The outside world may judge them harshly, but it matters not. I have a friend who walked away from his family at an early age, and refused the urgent call in his fifties to reconcile with his dying mother.

Cold hearted? Depends on whose reality you choose to inhabit. In an unusual moment of transparency, he shared with me his childhood trauma. It was raw and left me distressed. He broke away in his mid-teens and never went back. Understandably, he spent many non-linear years trying to outrun his demons and scars, but finally, with help, righted his thinking and his life into a stable success story. Then he got the call.

His mother was dying. She wanted to see him. He refused. “I barely survive her once,” he told me. “I can’t take a second round.” And he didn’t. Her deathbed request went unanswered. His family condemned him. He has no apparent regrets.

But others change their minds. Unlike my friend, they see an opening that allows them to return and lend a hand. Some find their ability to forgive is big enough for both parties. Some find an all too familiar disappointment they recognize from their childhood. I think all of them hope for some form of a better ending for their story about their earthly parents. And that, I think, is the key to those who return and those who won’t.

At some point in the parent-child disconnect, you decide its time to let it be. It’s over and probably for the better. That point may be death, but for many, it comes much earlier in the saga. These early adopters resign their affiliation and call it a day. It’s not a case of good or bad, but what is necessary given the players and the circumstances of the family drama. Those who leave but don’t disinherit their family keep the door open for some form of reconsideration. What is important for adult children is to recognize that both choices get the job done. Bad connections are one of life’s nasty dilemmas, leaving all parties unsure of what to say, do, or expect. In the end, we all wind up doing our best, as we understand it. Nothing more. Nothing less. Accepting that, proves to be another matter…

What would be helpful at this juncture is a simple way for boomers to assess personal stability, a tool that could provide them with:

1. An overview of the status of key personal resources
2. Feedback about strengths and deficiencies
3. Insights to set realistic expectations and goals

I have created a new self-inventory questionnaire that does this called “The Stability Survey?.”

The Stability Survey? is a yes-no questionnaire that provides a snapshot of boomer transition assets. There are no right or wrong answers or scoring, just a “holding its own” (stable) or “not doing so well” (unstable) assessment of six broad sectors that impact both quality of life and optimal aging.

Here are the six survey questions:

How is your health?
How is your family?
How are your friends?
How is your career?
How are your dreams?
How are your finances?

Here are some of the implications of the answers for each sector:

Health Status
Stable health usually means no medical issues or medical issues that are under control. Unstable health usually means emerging medical issues or existing medical issues that are either drifting or officially out of control.

Family Status
Stable family usually means normal or abnormal family issues that are under control. Unstable family usually means normal or abnormal family issues that are either drifting or officially out of control

Friends Status
Stable friends usually means close friends who provide comfort and support. Unstable friends usually means issues with close friends that are undermining comfort and support

Career Status
Stable career usually means implementation of a personal retirement plan including post-retirement work. Unstable career usually means unresolved work issues or unsatisfactory retirement planning.

Dream Status
Stable dreams usually means the emergence and pursuit of longstanding or new passions, interests, callings, or pursuits. Unstable dreams usually means the loss of deeply personal dreams or the belief they are attainable.

Financial Status
Stable finances usually means implementation of a pre or post personal financial plan Unstable finances usually means unresolved financial issues or unsatisfactory financial planning.

The Stability Survey? is both a look back at where boomers have been and a look forward to the mission that lay ahead. In developmental terms, it shows which transition assets are in alignment with the tasks of the final phase of life: control and legacy. Conversely, it quickly highlights which of the six resources could potentially undermine them. This “big picture” view at the gateway to the next twenty and possibly thirty years could prove invaluable to boomers who are searching for clarity and direction to help them preserve quality of life as well as promote optimal aging.

I have read and reread this tale of estrangement, bitterness, regret, and the search for “repair” because I heard endless versions of it from friends, colleagues, clients, and audience members. I also lived it.

Below is the “comment” I posted to article’s website when I first read it in 2008. In the three years since I wote this, my opinion of my father has “expanded.” Much to my surprise, I have found a window into his suffering. This has given me new empathy for the gap between his dreams and where life finally took him.

Thank you for giving a voice to the bitter outcome many adult children experience with their aging parents before they pass away. We wish it were different but history and personalities bring the drama to its only logical conclusion. But was you pointed out, the death of the parent hardly ends the trauma of such a “poor outcome.” My father and I parted on similar terms, incommunicado and mutually sorry about our biological connection. As Joyce reminds us in The Dead, the departed usually prove more formidable after their gone. My father was not exception. I have danced for years with the guilt, anger, and loneliness of the events surrounding his death. The fact that our relationship was never right from the beginning is no comfort. Even his blatant failings, alcoholism, violence, and a perverse perfectionism are not enough for me to bid him a final and much needed adieu. Instead, my post-death relationship with has all the qualities of emotional quicksand. I scheme, struggle, and sink deeper into complexity. Like you, I find myself circling the issue of forgiveness but never getting it to stick. I think having a life with next to zero nurturing from him, it’s proving next to impossible to find the emotional release I need. This is why your story struck such a deep chord. Lastly, I don’t think it is either smarmy (wonderful word) or too late in the game to want relief. But I also think that these bitter ending are essentially Greek in nature, tragedies of accommodation not assimilation. They are familial dramas that leaves us with the task of orchestrating a “survivor’s compromise” that allows them to be who they need to be and finally gone.

Thinking won’t help. The brain buzz of dilemmas is a closed loop swamp of internal dialogues, an emotional rabbit hole of endless backward (repair the past) and forward (control the future) conversations. Caregivers wind up thinking themselves into stress filled knots that make navigation worse.

Putting thinking in its proper place does help. Finding a respite from the brain buzz, a space between the riptides of competing conversations, offers caregivers reprieve, repair, and rejuvenation. Fortunately, the technique for creating this healing space is being used in healthcare to manage other dilemma-riddled life events including chronic illness, depression, substance abuse, and heart disease. This clinically proven approach is called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a secular form of meditation (see this link for a quick summary of the technique Mindfulness Meditation)

The approach is straightforward and accessible to anyone at any time. All it requires is that the caregiver learn how to pay attention “on purpose” to moment-to-moment events in the present. The practice (operative word “practice”) of staying focused on the present creates a space from never-ending brain buzz. This elegant form of compassionate detachment from thoughts and emotions offers caregivers a new perspective from which to observe their dilemmas as well as their habitual patterns of behavior of managing them. All of this is done within the context of kindness, compassion, non-judgment, patience, acceptance, and trust.

Like other healthy habits, regular use of MBSR can have a positive impact on the caregiver well being. It can reduce the stress, anxiety, and depression. For caregivers who want to learn more about MBSR, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book entitled Full Catastrophe Living is an excellent resource. He is the founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, is perhaps the best-known proponent of using meditation to help patients deal with illness. His book is a terrific introduction for anyone who has considered meditating but was afraid it would be too difficult or would include religious practices they found foreign. Kabat-Zinn focuses on “mindfulness,” a concept that involves living in the moment, paying attention, and simply “being” rather than “doing (see this link to find more about the book Full Catastrophe Living)

Stress is an isolator. As its intensity increases, it promotes distrust of others and that distrust leads to greater isolation from the essential social networks of family, friends, and colleagues. The inherent loneliness of this isolation also comes with a significant quality of life burden. House, Landis, and Umberson (1988) published a classic review of five prospective studies showing that social isolation is a risk factor for broad-based morbidity and mortality. This is especially troubling news for baby boomers. The polyphasic stress of middle age puts them at increased risk for social isolation and poor outcomes. Finding remedies to address the problem exceeds the scope and resources of clinical medicine. No amount of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication can overcome the fundamental need of middle age adults to learn how to band together in diverse social networks to reduce this threat to quality of life. Simply put, middle age should not be attempted alone.

Social networks serve a critical role in fulfilling the developmental tasks of middle age. They provide emotional scaffolding for the fifty-something growth phase by reducing instability and buffering volatility. Echoing Shakespeare’s adage that “a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved,” social networks have the enormous capacity to provide support, comfort, and relief. In addition, they are collaborative “dream teams” for baby boomers providing fresh input, new perspectives, and valuable feedback in the pursuit of second half goals. Once goals are clarified, social networks become a prime resource for human capital. Specialized “swat teams” of friends, peers, or other contacts can be mobilized to foster new business opportunities, address a health crisis, or pursue altruistic callings. Their success is the end product of collaboration, a strategy that can prove difficult for middle age men.

As noted previously, men’s individualistic approach to pursuing goals becomes a deficit in the second half of life. In the United States, suicide rates are highest among men aged 65 years and older, and within this group, the highest for men who are divorced or widowed. Winding up alone either physically or emotionally can be catastrophic to quality of life. Confronting a broad-spectrum upheaval with insufficient social networks can simply be too much leading to irreversible damage to men and their family systems. Offering men reframing strategies to reconsider the benefits of utilizing social networks is vital for preserving quality of life for themselves and those who are counting on them.

Social networks serve another crucial function by providing the architecture for a goal unique to middle age: generativity. Eric Erikson, a pioneer in developmental psychology field, defines generativity as an adult’s ability to look outside him or herself and care for others, an individual’s concern for the generations to come. In the middle-adult years, Erikson wrote, a person may come to realize that “I am what survives me.” Social networks allow individuals to begin to discover what they want to survive them. Many times the simple experience of interacting in network communities reveals for the first time the magnitude of reaching beyond self-interest. The well being of society depends on middle age adults’ contributions to those who will follow them.

Boomers need to remember that the search for generativity is impacting their entire generation, a psychological call to arms to make the second half to matter. Social networks provide a critical forum to help accomplish this and other goals. The developmental disruption of middle age may not be pleasant but it does shed new light on the role and potential of social networks. For baby boomers it is deja vu to what occurred to their generation in the 1960s, finding themselves once again between an old system that is no longer working and the new system that is still in development. The challenge is how to assess the current inventory of social networks and then use the analysis to improve their quality and quantity. One resource is The Network Cultivator™.

The Network Cultivator™ assesses the quality and diversity of social networks from a historical, integral, and functional perspective. It is an effective tool for middle age adults to better understand the dynamics of their social networks and how they change in quality and purpose over time. The Network Cultivator™ is in part a historical tally of which communities have proven beneficial over time and why. It also identifies which ones have either failed or seemed trapped in chronic dysfunction. The Network Cultivator™ assesses, organizes, and prioritizes the entire social network system. The results are captured in a global summary that is used to rebalance the social network sector of The Quality of Life Portfolio™. Rebalancing includes addressing the human ecology issues that are undermining the developmental mission.

A primary benefit of The Network Cultivator™ is its capacity to reframe dysfunctional networks. This is a critical step for family systems, which are complex, slow to change, and impact the quality of life for middle age adults. There is also an understandable tendency to see dysfunctional family sectors as predestined, a perspective that assumes individual members are simply “stuck” with the way things are. The Network Cultivator™ can alter this bias by providing a protocol to test assumptions that individuals have about their family system. It effectively identifies strategies that make them incapable of moving beyond chronic conflict and pessimism. It then provides a way to recast these strategies into a more effective format. The reframing of dysfunctional sectors alone can reduce the volatility of this essential sector by helping middle age adults modify their perspective and expectations. This creates a more realistic view of the family system and what individual members can or cannot control. It also highlights the inherent pitfalls and limitations of family systems reinforcing the fundamental need to seek outside communities to insure a more balanced inventory of network resources.

The Network Cultivator™ is an ideal tool to define the theme and structure of new social networks. The global summary maps out quality sectors that are at high risk for instability due to poor relationship ecology. It also uses historical success to emphasize the community structure that has been beneficial in the past. With this information, middle age adults can begin to seek out or create highly individualized affinity groups. Whether to shore up exhaustion from working with aging parents or creating an ad hoc support group for coping with a devastating diagnosis, The Network Cultivator™ provides baby boomers tools for distributive decision making that intensely involves social networks in filtering choices, vetting decisions, and monitoring progress.

New network communities are a source of great hope for middle age adults. They represent a new beginning, a chance to join forces with kindred spirits who have similar needs, issues, or interests. As important, their form and content are not bound by what has occurred in the first half of life. The second half world operates with a unique intensity and content that only the experience of being middle age can comprehend. The scope and depth of the upheaval argues for a more open-minded approach to reinvention, to risk moving into uncharted waters to find or create new networks that could to be the deciding factor in preserving quality of life.

Reinvention for middle age adults involves the past as much as it does the future. It is not surprising that desires and dreams from youth resurface amid the crisis of middle age. Passions that have been put on the shelf for years suddenly surface and insist on reconsideration. This renaissance of unfulfilled dreams carries enormous emotional sway for reframing middle age goals. In the same manner it provides a focal point for discovering or creating new social networks. It is a transformational insight that turns a perceived setback of being older into an opportunity to finally pursue what you really wanted in the first place. Learning Greek while studying ancient history on location in Athens with a group of like-mind peers is no longer out of the question. So is a scratch start to learn golf, piano, salsa dancing, or a foreign language. It also includes forays into new business venture, going back to college, joining humanitarian missions, remodeling a house, or upgrading a marriage. Once freed up to leverage middle age as a cause for reinvention, baby boomers can mobilize a vast array of skills, choices, and technologies to self-organize in dramatic new and exciting ways.

While aging is inevitable, arriving at a healthy perspective about its meaning and potential is not. In our youth-oriented culture, middle age more often than not is portrayed as embarrassing stage of life that is in desperate need of enhancements to stave off the signs of being older. But Botox® and hair transplants can not hold the line forever and at some point thoughts and feelings about aging have to be sorted out at a deeper level, a realty check on what it really means to be older. The outcome of this “aging moment of truth” will have a profound influence on the quality of life for middle age adults. It will either reframe the journey as a continuation of growth and learning filled with unique potential, or see a darker landscape riddled with loss, regret, and limitations. This vantage point from which baby boomers will judge the aging process is called perspective.

Perspective provides a “filter” through which life experiences are assessed, organized, and ultimately judged. Youth has its own filter typified by an optimism found in the first half of life that keeps the metaphoric glass half full. It is a perspective that always sees another opportunity, another deal, or a fresh start that is not limited by health, family, or time. The first half perspective quickly converts setbacks into opportunities based on an unshakeable faith in the magnitude of possibilities that lie ahead. Middle age changes the filter.

Ushering in an era of external and internal upheavals, middle age introduces a different reality that undermines the sustainability of earlier optimism. What appeared unlimited now has restrictions and complications. The unspoken and yet pervasive cultural shame that sees aging as pathology leaves middle age adults holding a glass that is suddenly half empty. In this new environment, the first half perspective can undergo a rapid deterioration leading baby boomers to buy into a more cynical future. Without reframing, this is the anticipatory reality they are stuck with to manage being older. Ironically, this cultural anxiety about aging has no basis in biology or psychology. Growth and learning do not wane in middle age, and creative capacity is at an all time high. But the media’s slight of hand trick that obsesses over youth as the ultimate consumer class delivers a convincing message about the downhill trajectory of the second half of life. This dysfunctional perspective is a trap for middle age adults pointing them developmentally backwards to a phase that is over while distracting and devaluing the rich and immediate next phase on which so much is riding. Avoiding this unhealthy entrapment requires a different type of inquiry into being older. We call this inquiry The Perspective Inventory™.

As a reframing tool, The Perspective Inventory™ allows middle age adults to “test” the critical questions that ask themselves and others about the aging process. As Dr. Marilee Adams succinctly argues in her book Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, questions are the raw material of how individuals size up themselves and their world. They are the building blocks of perspective, the framing tools that either discover hope and opportunity or perpetuate endless cycles of conflict and despair. From a developmental perspective, questions are an ideal vehicle to examine and change concepts. They have the right linguistic packaging to emotionally override long-standing beliefs. They are receptive to the right brain, which has proven to be the informational gatekeeper for middle age and beyond. They are also emotionally generative and as such quickly alter cognition and change behavior. But the benefit of The Perspective Inventory™ is not simply to arrive at a better set of questions about being older, as valuable as they may be. The Perspective Inventory™ offers baby boomers a way to build a new filtering ritual so they can habitually reframe the experiences of aging to facilitate their developmental journey.

First and foremost The Perspective Inventory™ is an inquiry tool. It is allows middle age adults to organize and evaluate the quality of the questions they ask about the aging. It is based Dr. Adams’ premise that most people simply adopt a “questions style” without giving much thought to the impact it has on quality of their lives. Once internalized, these core questions become the ingrained filter for looking at people and experiences. With middle age, the impact question style intensifies in either a positive or negative way. Negative questions such as “Who’s to blame?” and “How can I prove I am right?” extract a heavy price on individuals and family systems. They negate prior success, shut down communication, and close off avenues of collaboration and growth. Even more concerning, they have the lethal potential to undermine confidence at a time in life where confidence is already in jeopardy. In contrast, aging friendly questions such as “What’s useful about this?” and “What’s possible?” lighten the emotional load on everyone. Not only do they facilitate communication but open up new channels of creativity, possibility, and growth. They help restore confidence and optimism to individuals and family systems.

The Perspective Inventory™ is also valuable resource for baby boomers as they engage the predictable dilemmas of their aging parents, experiences and situations that can leave both parties feeling frustrated, guilty, and anxious. Reframing questions surrounding the monumental family tasks of determining the right health care, sorting out living options, coping with the death of a spouse, untangling financial decisions, and coming to grips with the final goodbye can create a more effective and nurturing perspective. Developmentally tuned questions such as “what are the control issues here?” and “what other ways to look at this situation?” can help middle age adults keep their bearings in the midst of an emotional family landscape.

Finally, The Perspective Inventory™ reminds middle age adults that they can make positive alterations in the second half of life; they can opt for a radically different approach from the one they used in the first half. Moving into the upheaval of middle age asks two primary developmental questions:

1. How am I going to manage all this?
2. What is it I really want?

Successfully addressing these questions requires a perspective that is both personal and collective, is about self-fulfillment that is wrapped in a nurturing community of meaningful relationships. This is the heart of the need for authenticity. It is about finding personal clarity and not simply searching for another twenty years of approval or more of the same. For baby boomers that understand this potential, it comes as a welcome relief and an extraordinary opportunity to leverage their experience and education into an unlimited universe of choices and possibilities.

Seniority appears to be the rule of thumb. While adult child in their late sixties are beginning the battle for control and the search for legacy, these developmental needs are usually “put on hold” for the sake of the aging parent. Practicality dictates that both parties cannot be insisting on control as well as the airtime for life review, but the seniority accommodation is not as simple as it sounds.

Developmental needs are first and foremost embedded marching orders, which are involuntary, unconscious, and consumptive. They are background software for life-long human developmental and exert a pressing influence on perception, cognition, and behavior. When two generations share the same developmental zone, a new type of power struggle emerges over whose needs deserve priority. As with all generational conflicts, a middle ground is hard to find and hold.

The best course for adult children caught in this developmental simulcast is to make a selective course correction while their aging parents are still alive. This involves mapping out “control sustaining” strategies for their personal life (i.e. where to live, how to pay for it, how to manage health, how to foster community, etc.) while supporting their aging parent’s need to control their own destiny. It can awkward, confusing, and unsatisfying, but it defuses the unwinnable argument of entitlement. While everyone is entitled to address their developmental needs, in the context of families, this may require delay, compromise, and compassion for those who are going ahead.

The stories of what can and does go wrong with these transitions are legendary, maddening, and in most cases preventable. The sad truth is that older adults many times wind up back home with defective marching orders regarding their medications, recovery plan, and follow up care. Given the frequency and severity of the problems surrounding transitional events, what can make this better?

The good news is that Dr. Eric Coleman from the University of Colorado Health Science Center has a compelling answer: The Care Transition Program. His program is based on what he calls the Four Pillars?, an integrated transition management system that prevents medication problems, insures information continuity between handoffs, clear, follow up orders, and a protocol that identifies red flags that could crash the process.

It is a practical, brilliant solution that is gaining a growing population of followers across the country.

One key element critical to the program’s success is a Transition Coach?. This is usually a geriatric nurse practitioner that provides in-hospital coaching to both patients and their caregivers to help both parties prepare for the transition. As important, the Transition Coach? does follow up visits to skilled nursing facilities or the patient’s home to insure continuity across the transition.

To learn more about Dr. Coleman’s remarkable program and download a copy of his “Transition Survival Skills,” click here: http://www.caretransitions.org/transitionskills.asp

But this is no ordinary article about a bad outcome involving aging parents. This is a seminal article about a new and quite sobering level of vigilance that attends our role with our aging parents. The rapidity of events and the ever present pressure of “medical necessity” in the last phase of life can push families into decisions they not only regret but, as Ms. Butler so eloquently and heroically portrays, resist our best efforts to unwind them. If there was ever an article on this subject to read in a quiet, non-distracted moment, this is surly the one…

Primary Current Number Two: Internal Forces

While the external currents of the middle age challenge the capacity of boomers to handle complex and unpredictable life events, internal currents usher in an existential house cleaning that questions the purpose and meaning of the second half of life. Ironically, this involuntary reconsideration of the future comes at a time when so much has already been accomplished. But while boomer successes are a testimony to the faithful completion of the first-half life mission, they inadvertently lead to a developmental dilemma about what is to follow.

The mission of the first half of life is the steady pursuit of accomplishments, a long and noble list of all consuming life goals that are intense, quick paced, and well defined. Entering the first half of life stadium, young adults hear the cultural cheer of the rest of society encouraging them to on to greater accomplishments that include:

Growing up and taking their role in adult society
Getting an education as a prelude to a meaningful career
Finding a life partner to create a new family unit
Finding the right career to become successful
Starting a family to usher in the next generation of children and grandchildren
Becoming successful as a means to a secure future

As young adults immerse themselves in the first half of life journey, these goals are repeated at every turn in the questions they hear from family members, colleagues, and society as a whole. Did you get that apartment? Are you going to graduate school? Are things getting serious between you and her? Did you get that promotion? Are you two thinking about starting a family? Are you going to buy that house? The litany of goal-crafted questions offers definition, structure and much needed encouragement. The purpose and direction of the mission is never in question. But surprisingly and with little fanfare, the mission begins to change just at the point when so much has been done.

The second half of life journey does not share the same sociological advantage or clarity as the first half. Entering the second half of life stadium, boomers are surprised at how small the crowd has become and that it is surprisingly silent. Even more concerning is that the laundry list of first half goals has not been replaced by an equally compelling list of second half goals. In fact, goals have been replaced by social encouragements such as “you look good,” “stay healthy,” and “find something you enjoy.”

This surprising and disturbing loss of sociological scaffolding provokes an existential moment where boomers realize they have permanently moved into the “self-service” zone in terms of discovering their second half mission. While it is obvious that one set of goals is not enough for a lifetime, the question becomes what is the second set? Forced into an involuntary, midlife reinvention, boomers are unprepared to easily define the purpose and direction of the rest of their lives. Despite the unprecedented frenzy of modern life, part of them that feels adrift, eerily disconnected from the social agenda that has kept them on course for most of their adult life. Trying to resolve this dilemma is made more difficult by the tangible and unavoidable shadow of a sobering future. The futures of the past for middle age adults have always been multilayered, ten or twenty year segments that cascaded forward and offered ample “staring over” opportunities. The future of today’s boomers is smaller and time constrained, in most cases being played out before them by their aging parents. It is also less forgiving, with little room for error and or starting over. This time compressed future coincides with boomer’s new appreciation of their mortality.

Life and death is nothing new for boomers. Their generation ushered in a revolutionary social commentary on life and death issues that was markedly different from the generations that preceded them. But all the talk of life and death during the boomer’s youth was at an arms length from the humbling reality of middle age, a difference between discussing an illness and actually being diagnosed with it. Boomers are now living their mortality where the loss of parents, siblings, partners, and peers has created a new and sobering awareness of their own vulnerability. It is an experience that replaces the occasional tragedy of past where people were “gone too soon” with the more common occurrence of friends and family members simply passing away. This changes the urgency of the search for a new set of goals. Second half goals turn out not only to be a necessity for crafting a productive and meaningful life; they represent that last opportunity for most boomers to fulfill life long dreams and ambitions. It is a nagging reality that whispers to boomers, “if not now, when?’

The unsettling disorientation of the internal currents defines the second primary developmental task of middle age, which is to “discover purpose and direction for the second half of life.” This was the second hidden current that Linda did not see coming. Not only did her world become unstable, but also her role in this volatile landscape became unclear. It wasn’t a question of shrinking from her responsibilities; it was trying to determine what really mattered at this turning point in her life for the journey ahead.

These two tasks make up the mission of middle age: preserve stability and orchestrate reinvention. To do this boomers have to discover effective strategies to manage the onslaught of external currents while at the same time find purpose and meaning in their lives.

How do boomers navigate these formidable and intimidating currents? Is it simply the luck of the draw, with some having better outcomes than others? Or are there steps that boomers can take prior or during the riptide that can improve the quality of their journey. This is what Linda wanted to know. What needs to change to make things better? Fortunately there are strategies that improve boomer’s chances for a successful crossing. This is what the remainder of Riptide is about. It is about which navigational tools will help boomers successfully complete the mission of middle age and arrive well-prepared and ready for old age.

Navigation tools are designed to keep travelers on course. This is the goal of Riptide: keeping boomers on course. Understanding the currents of middle age is a critical first step, but knowing the developmental risk of middle age is only half the battle. Learning how to successfully navigate them is what determines outcome. Riptide presents boomers with a small but powerful group of navigational tools that are designed to keep them on course in the face of adversity and setbacks. All travelers will have difficult periods and their needs will change with changes in circumstances. The tools presented in Riptide arm boomers with the resources they need to overcome the challenges of aging. There were selected primarily on their ability to increase stability and facilitate reinvention. It not necessary for boomers to use all of them, only the ones that address their current navigational needs. As important, the themes of tools are familiar, topics boomers have heard from other sources as being important to preserving quality of life. What is different about Riptide is these themes have been reframed in terms of developmental utility, a unique approach that makes them “task friendly” and, as important, offers boomers new motivation to integrate them into their lives. It is an emotional reframing that resonates deeply with boomers offering them encouragement and much needed hope for the difficult stretches ahead.