Boomer Dilemmas Archives - Aging, caregiving and the journey through the second half of life

Major Dave and The Dilemma of the Stairs

July 19, 2021

“Things do not always go according to plan.” David Richo from The Five Things We Cannot Change… The plan has always been for boomers to transition to smaller, one-story homes in the last phase of life. The underlying assumption of…

The Drama of Control Never Gets Easier and Never Goes Away

August 2, 2020

Control is the current we ride to the end. Sometimes It’s buried in a dilemma between two unsavory choices and no escape hatch. Sometimes heroic efforts to facilitate control provoke dilemmas we never saw coming. My point is that control…

The Dreaded Outcome Boomers Never Envisioned

June 26, 2019

Nursing homes are one of the top three dreaded outcomes that Boomers fear the most. The other two are Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, a trifecta of destinies they hope to be spared from at the end of life. While none…

Read The Dilemma Card Once A Week…

January 8, 2019

You can’t manage dilemmas with problem solving strategies `Dilemmas show up and have no intention of leaving Key blog posts about dilemmas: The Unavoidable Dilemmas of the Last Phase of Life The Rise of Dilemmas Problems Versus Dilemmas of Aging…

The Unavoidable Dilemmas of the Last Phase of Life

January 9, 2018

Dilemmas are messy, confusing, threatening, no-win situations where choices have to be made. Dilemmas dominate the last phase of life and extract a heavy toll on the entire family. The link below offers a short summary of the important differences…

What Happens When There Is No One To Take Care Of You?

September 2, 2017

This sobering article is about a brutal irony of the age wave flooding the ranks of the U.S. population. The hands-on home health care workers who tend to the old and sick are giving up on the profession at an…

Can Boomers help solve the looming caregiver shortage?

August 6, 2017

The article below reconfirms the sobering fact that in ten years, when Boomers become eighty-something, the mainstays of support, paid and unpaid caregivers, will be scacre. Aside from handwringing, what can be done about this mismatch? Maybe it’s time for…

Aging Boomers Playing the Cohabitation Card

April 20, 2017

“The rising number of cohabiters ages 50 and older coincides with rising divorce rates among this group. With the higher divorce rates and a growing share of people who have never been married in this age group, more individuals are…

What do you do when aging in place isn’t working out for aging parents?

April 12, 2017

I was recently asked this question by a professional in the senior living industry. Here is what I said: While the need for control is a consumptive task for aging parents in the final phase of life, it doesn’t necessarily…

Home Unfurnishing Your Parent’s Stuff

February 15, 2017

This is an excellent article by Richard Eisenberg that offers eight strategies for systematically paring down the stuff of aging parents that apparently nobody wants. It’s a necessary but ultimately awkward ritual of sorting with an eye towards aggressively casting…