retirement – Retreading for Retirement

Last Week’s Links

She was once America’s ‘most-read woman.’ Today, she has largely been forgotten.

“Elsie Robinson was a single mom who eventually became the highest-paid woman writer in the Hearst empire. Authors Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert take a look at her legacy in their new book.”

In their book Listen, World! “Julia Scheeres and Allison [Gilbert] take a look at Robinson’s trailblazing legacy. . . . Robinson stood up for what she believed in.”

Mike Krzyzewski, a five-time NCAA champion and six-time Olympic-gold-medal coach, won 1,202 college basketball games, most notably at Duke University. Now 75, he emphasizes “I’m not retired . . . I’m doing all the things I want to do.” Here he discusses teaching, coaching, public speaking, and gardening.

The big idea: do we all experience the world in the same way?

Anil Seth is professor of neuroscience at the University of Sussex and the author of Being You – A New Science of Consciousness. Here he explains how and why “it’s likely that our inner experiences differ”:

It may seem as though the world just pours itself directly into our minds through the transparent windows of our eyes and our ears. But psychologists have long known that perception is not simply a “read out” of sensory information. We are strongly influenced by context. From the effect of shadows on how we perceive the brightness of a surface, to our tendency to interpret facial expressions depending on what we think is happening, context permeates all our conscious experiences, and it does so in a way that we are typically never aware of.

If you’ve ever wondered why you and someone else remember the same event differently, here’s the explanation.

Using Brain Dumping to Manage Your Mental Health

Basically, a brain dump is the act of writing down everything that comes to mind on a particular topic. Its proponents describe it as a way to get all of your thoughts and ideas down on paper and free up space in your brain.

Saya Des Marais, MSW, explains what a brain dump is, how it works, how to do it, and the benefits it might give you: “While the research supporting brain dumps is still limited, it’s not likely to cause any harm — so go ahead and try it out to see whether it’s effective for you.”

A PT Shares the 7 Stretches He Does Every Day To Keep His Body ‘Young and Healthy’

“The older you get, your mobility holds the key to aging happily and healthily.”

Bennett Richardson, a physical therapist and strength/conditioning coach, explains 7 stretches to help maintain flexibility, a key to continued mobility as we age.

Last Week’s Links

Big Changes Coming to Medicare Part D Plans

AARP reports on the changes coming to Medicare drug plans as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022: “The new law makes other changes to the program’s Part D drug benefits, including putting a limit on out-of-pocket payments for insulin and making vital vaccines free.”

Why a ‘silver gap year’ can be a golden opportunity, and how to start planning your own

Laura Martin describes the “silver” or “golden” gap year: “often an extended break as opposed to a full year. Nearly a quarter of retirees had taken a year to go travelling in their retirement or would consider doing so, according to 2019 research from retirement accommodation provider Inspired Villages.”

I’m Retiring. Shouldn’t I Be Celebrating?

Michèle Dawson Haber has been planning for years to retire from her job as a labor advocate before age 65. But now, at age 56, she has reached the moment:

I feel on the cusp of loss, despite being certain that this is what I want. Sure, I’ll miss the work and my colleagues, but the anxiety I feel is bigger than that. I know I need to stop moping and pirouette into my blessed new life, but first, I want to figure out what it is I’m losing.

She’s afraid retirement might mean the loss of purpose or the loss of youth. But observing her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, makes Laura realize that her retirement won’t mean the loss of self: “I don’t need to worry about holding onto youth, being productive, or staying relevant for others, because that has nothing to do with who I am.”

How America’s ageism hurts, shortens lives of elderly

The Harvard Gazette features an excerpt from the book Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live by Harvard alumna Becca Levy. A social psychologist, Levy tested “the impact of cultural age stereotypes on the health and lives of older people”:

In study after study I conducted, I found that older people with more positive perceptions of aging performed better physically and cognitively than those with more negative perceptions; they were more likely to recover from severe disability, they remembered better, they walked faster, and they even lived longer.

She describes the purpose of her book this way: “In this book, I will show you how priming, or the activation of age stereotypes without awareness, works, what it says about the unconscious nature of our stereotypes, and how we can strengthen our ideas about aging.”

Can You Pass the 10-Second Balance Test?

“Balance training is an important but often-neglected skill, one that impacts both our longevity and our quality of life, beginning around age 40,” writes Hilary Achauer in this article for the New York Times. She describes some exercises to improve balance.

Yoga versus democracy? What survey data says about spiritual Americans’ political behavior

According to Evan Stewart, assistant professor of sociology at UMass Boston, and Jaime Kucinskas, associate professor of sociology at Hamilton College:

Today – the rise of a politically potent religious right over the past 50 years notwithstanding – fewer Americans identify with formal religions. Gallup found that 47% of Americans reported church membership in 2020, down from 70% in the 1990s; nearly a quarter of Americans have no religious affiliation.

At the same time, “other kinds of meaningful practice” and new secular rituals are on the rise. These sociologists studied whether the new focus on mindfulness and self-care is making Americans more self-centered. Here they discuss their findings, which are published in the journal American Sociological Review.

E. Bryant Crutchfield, 85, Dies; Gave the World the Trapper Keeper

Few objects evoke Gen X or millennial childhood as powerfully as the Trapper Keeper, essentially a large binder for your folders. Mead, Mr. Crutchfield’s employer, introduced it nationally in 1981, and by the end of the decade the company estimated that half of all middle and high school students in the United States had one.

I never had one of these myself (although I did sort of covet one), but I bought a few for my child. I understand they’ve been reintroduced in this year’s crop of school supplies, in some sort of ’80s nostalgia movement.

Last Week’s Links

“I’m Not Proud”: Given a Second Chance, Jane Fonda Probably Wouldn’t Do the Facelift Again

“The actor talked aging gracefully with Vogue.”

“I stay moisturized, I sleep, I move, I stay out of the sun, and I have good friends who make me laugh. Laughter is a good thing too,” Fonda, 85, tells Kenzie Bryant.

Serena Williams to ‘move on’ from tennis after U.S. Open

“She declined to use the term ‘retirement,’ which she said doesn’t ‘feel like a modern word.’ She instead called her decision an ‘evolution.’”

Illuminating the brain one neuron and synapse at a time – 5 essential reads about how researchers are using new tools to map its structure and function

The U.S. Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is a collaboration among the National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Food and Drug Administration and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and others. Since its inception in 2013, its goal has been to develop and use new technologies to examine how each neuron and neural circuit comes together to “record, process, utilize, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought.”

“These five stories from our archives cover research that has been funded by or advances the goals of the BRAIN Initiative, detailing a slice of what’s next in neuroscience.”

Even simple exercise may help aging brain, study hints

New research hints that even a simple exercise routine just might help older Americans with mild memory problems.

Doctors have long advised physical activity to help keep a healthy brain fit. But the government-funded study marks the longest test of whether exercise makes any difference once memory starts to slide — research performed amid a pandemic that added isolation to the list of risks to participants’ brain health.

Launching My Debut Novel At 75

Wondra Chang, a native of South Korea, came to the U.S. in 1970. She had begun writing stories as a young child, but after she emigrated to the United States, she spent a long time learning to write English that met her artistic standards. “It was a public affirmation for me when Kirkus Reviews listed my debut novel, Sonju, in its 100 Best Indie Books of the Year in 2021,” she tells us.

Could learning algebra in my 60s make me smarter?

“New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson struggled with maths at school, finding inspiration in literature instead. But aged 65, in the hope of unlocking a new part of his brain, he decided to put the limits of his intelligence to the test”

When Wilkinson decided to study algebra, he consulted his niece, Amie Wilkinson, a professor at the University of Chicago. He asked her how she thought the process would go.

“If I had to guess, I would say you will probably overthink,” she told him.

Boy, was she right.

But five months (Alec had thought his program of study would take six weeks) later, he had learned a bit about how algebra works and a lot more about how the brain works.

And he’s written a book about the whole experience, A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age. This article is “an edited extract” from that book.

Last Week’s Links

The new Golden Girls: Baby boomers are moving in together to save money

In 1987 Betty White told an interviewer for NPR that the older women in the hit TV show Golden Girls lived together not for economic reasons but for social ones, namely companionship. Although loneliness and social isolation remain crucial problems as people age, economic necessity is now forcing many to look for a roommate.

Soo Youn reports for The Washington Post:

Faced with escalating home prices and rents in tight housing markets, as well as careers or earnings curtailed by age or the pandemic, some boomers are looking to share their homes. Enter the boommates.

The article includes references to nonprofit, commercial, and municipal programs that help older adults looking for shared housing.

Margaret Atwood is not your ‘elderly icon’ or ‘witchy granny.’ She’s better than that

Carolyn Kellogg profiles Canadian author Margaret Atwood: “Audiences want to hear from the 82-year-old author whose fiction foresees the rise of a patriarchal fascist state and cataclysmic environmental collapse.”

The piece centers on Atwood’s recently published book Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021.

Eleven Over Sixty: A Reading List of Later in Life Debuts

Kathleen Stone recently published her first book, They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men. “With a career in law behind her and over 60 herself, she was thrilled to discover 11 other writers who debuted between 60 and 93 years of age.”

Al Pacino on ‘The Godfather’: ‘It’s Taken Me a Lifetime to Accept It and Move On’

“Fifty years later, the actor looks back on his breakthrough role: how he was cast, why he skipped the Oscars and what it all means to him now.”

In this interview with Dave Itzhoff, Al Pacino, now 81, recalls “making ‘The Godfather,’ the weight of its legacy and why he never played another film character like Michael Corleone after it.”

Denzel Washington tackles Shakespeare and life’s fourth quarter with grace

Denzel Washington has been one of my favorite actors for a long time. I regret that I haven’t yet seen him and Frances McDormand in The Tragedy of Macbeth, which is still available only on the streaming service Apple TV+.

I don’t read many celebrity-lifestyle pieces, but I’m glad I read this one, in which the 67-year-old Washington talks with Glenn Whipp, film and television critic for the Los Angeles Times. They talk about the Bible, Shakespeare, music, and preparing for life’s fourth quarter:

The only way to get overtime is doing the work now. If life has four quarters — zero to 20, 20 to 40, 40 to 60, 60 to 80 — you’re about to enter the fourth quarter. Anything after 80 is overtime.” He pauses, then reconsiders. “This is a sliding scale now that I’ve passed 65. Let’s say, 65 to 85. But the principle remains: You prepare for war in times of peace.”

Last Week’s Links

The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried

“The clearest way to reduce deaths is to push to vaccinate more of the elderly—yes, still!”

Sarah Zhang reports in The Atlantic: “even though America’s vaccination and booster rates look better in the older groups compared with the young, they are still too low. As a result, deaths in the United States are still too high.”

Category: Health

How to get better at making every type of decision

Allie Volpe describes certain human biases that can complicate the making of decisions, particularly decisions about complex or life-altering questions. She also offers concrete suggestions about how to deal with these biases and how to manage the decision-making process.

Category: Mental Health

The Dog Breeds That Are a Woman’s Best Friend

“Especially when one lives alone.”

Because men generally die at a slightly younger age than women, many women face a period of widowhood. Social scientists have long known that having a pet to care for can reduce feelings of loneliness or depression for widowed people, either male or female.

When my husband and I were looking at various retirement communities in preparation for our retirement relocation, something I noticed was the number of older adults out walking their dogs. This article, though emphasizing women, provides some advice appropriate for either men or women looking to take on a pet.

I have one consideration to add that this article doesn’t mention. Most retirement communities I’m familiar with allow “small pets.” If you anticipate moving into such a community, I’d advise you choose one of the smaller breeds described here. A boxer, golden retriever, or mastiff probably won’t be welcome in a much down-sized living situation.

Or maybe you’d rather consider a cat?

Category: Assisted Living, Retirement

There Will Be No Post-Covid

Charles M. Blow, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, expresses something I’ve thought for quite a while now: As much as we’d all like to get back to normal, normal won’t ever be the same again, and we are going to have to learn to live with that reality.

Or, as Blow puts it: :the America we knew ended in 2019. This is a new one, scarred, struggling to its feet, dogged by moral and philosophical questions that on one hand have revealed its cruelty and on the other have forced it into metamorphosis.”

Category: Health, Personal

Activist Learning: How Anti-Vietnam War Academics Reinvented the Strike

The escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 brought about the creation of a new form of protest—the teach-in. It was so effective a vehicle for dissent that the academic community quickly became the main source of opposition to the war. Though it was later eclipsed—notably in the media and, thus, the popular mind—by younger noisier protests, for about a year and a half the nation’s faculties, with the assistance of graduate students and some undergraduates, provided the leadership and the intellectual framework for the growing challenge to the escalating conflict. An initially small group of professors literally taught the rest of the country why the war was wrong.

This excerpt from The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s by Ellen Schrecker brought back memories for me. I was a student at Boston University, a very politically active campus, from 1966 to 1970.

Categories: History, Personal

Her dad died. So her favorite NFL star took her to the father-daughter dance.

“Philadelphia Eagles player Anthony Harris flew across the country to escort his 11-year-old fan to the event”

Amid all the incivility and protest, I hope we take a moment to appreciate and publicize stories such as this.

Category: Personal

Last Week’s Links

Graeme Edge, Drummer and Co-Founder of the Moody Blues, Dies at 80

“Many of their songs incorporated his spoken-word poetry, making them pioneers in the prog-rock movement of the late-1960s and ’70s.”

The Moody Blues are probably best remembered for “Nights in White Satin” (1967), a darkly ruminative song that ends, in the version included on their album “Days of Future Passed,” with “Late Lament,” written by Mr. Edge and read by the keyboardist Mike Pinder. (It was missing from the shorter version released for radio.)

The New Retirement: How Golden Girls are Redefining the Golden Years

The golden years are getting a makeover. Old-school thinking about retirement is being called out, in many cases led by women who are challenging the status quo. We’re the same women who broke glass ceilings and forged new definitions of work-family balance and partnership. We’re the same women creating new role models as business owners and leaders proving age is not a limiting factor.

Cindy Morgan-Jaffe, “a nationally certified money, life and recovery coach,” explains what the redefinition of retirement by these women will look like.

This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later.

“Long marginalized and misrepresented in U.S. history, the Wampanoags are bracing for the 400th anniversary of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in 1621.”

Here’s an illustration of how history has marginalized native peoples and rewritten events to produce a glowing, aggrandizing national narrative.

If history is a guide, schools will start requiring COVID vaccines

An examination of the history of vaccination mandates for schools, in comic form.

The school that pioneered polio shots will give kids the coronavirus vaccine, too

Jackie Lonergan, age 75, recalls when she and other second graders at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, VA, received their polio shots on April 26, 1954—“the very first children in the country to receive the polio vaccine as part of a massive national trial to test the immunization before offering it to the general public.”

Recently First lady Jill Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy were at Franklin Sherman “to help launch another mass pediatric vaccination campaign — this one aimed at protecting children ages 5 to 11 from covid-19.”

A Brief History of the Crockpot on its 50th Anniversary

The Rival Crockpot made its debut in 1971 at a housewares show in Chicago.

I’m willing to bet most of us had one of these in our kitchens, and probably many of us still do. But when I searched a couple of sites for free images, the only photos I could find for either “crockpot” or “slow cooker” were pictures on an Insta-Pot. I wish I still had my avocado-green crockpot—trendy at the time—to photograph, but it has been replaced by an Insta-Pot since we moved into a retirement community and had to downsize.

Did Covid Change How We Dream?

“All around the world, the pandemic provoked strange nocturnal visions. Can they help shed light on the age-old question of why we dream at all?”

Brooke Jarvis takes a deep dive into this topic in the New York Times Magazine. You can listen to the article if you’d prefer that to reading.

Follett’s “Never” Shines With the Horrific Brilliance of a Nuclear Bomb

“Now, at age 72, he has given us a book that could be his most important.”

“Follett has updated the nuclear-disaster narrative for these crazier, more complex times. Never should scare the you-know-what out of you,” writes Dennis Hetzel.

Last Week’s Links

At 91, Clint Eastwood throws a punch and rides a horse in his new movie. And he’s not ready to quit

Eastwood’s first film behind the camera, “Play Misty for Me,” came out half a century ago, and he’s still at it. At age 91, with his new “Cry Macho” set for a Sept. 17 release in theaters and on HBO Max, Eastwood — whose acting credits date to 1955 — is perhaps the oldest American ever to both direct and star in a major motion picture.

Pandemic prompts more teachers to consider early retirement or new career

New research into how the pandemic has affected teachers found that “during the pandemic, teachers became less certain that they would work in the classroom until retirement. In March 2020, 74% of teachers said they expected to work as a teacher until retirement, but the figure fell to 69% in March 2021.”

The researchers discuss how such turnover in the profession can negatively affect students’ success and look at three areas in which teachers need support.

What Is Life?

“An astrobiologist finds the heart of his work in a new novel by Richard Powers.”

book cover: Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia University, writes that the “puzzle of ‘what life really is’ might be the ultimate goal of astrobiology—we don’t just want to know whether or not we’re alone in the universe, we want to understand what we really are.”

Here Scharf describes how “the profoundly interconnected goals of astrobiology form a central theme of Bewilderment, a new novel by Richard Powers.” He describes it as “an immersive and astonishing book, a novel where the state of our world, and others, is a central anxiety for its protagonists.”

Lost perspective? Try this linguistic trick to reset your view

Social psychologist Ariana Orvell, assistant professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, explains how distanced self-talk, the “process of reflecting on one’s self using parts of speech that are typically used to refer to other people,” can help us align “our thoughts, feelings and behaviour with our goals.”

The most common example of distanced self-talk occurs when we address ourself either by name or in the second person (“you”). This process produces psychological distancing that allows us to change perspective, to “move beyond our default, egocentric perspective, and consider our thoughts and feelings from the stance of a more objective observer.” Such a shift in perspective can help to promote reasoning, to increase willingness to search for compromise, and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge.

‘Imagine’ at 50: Why John Lennon’s ode to humanism still resonates

Sociology professor Phil Zuckerman writes:

As a scholar of secularism and a devout fan of the Beatles, I have always been fascinated by how “Imagine,” perhaps the first and only atheist anthem to be so enormously successful, has come to be so widely embraced in America. After all, the U.S. is a country that has – at least until recently – had a much more religious population than other Western industrialized democracies.

The Roe Baby

“Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, never had the abortion she was seeking. She gave her baby girl up for adoption, and now that baby is an adult. After decades of keeping her identity a secret, Jane Roe’s child has chosen to talk about her life.”

This deeply moving article by Joshua Prager is adapted from his recently published book The Family Roe: An American Story.

Last Week’s Links

9 websites that will bring you back to the old internet

“The internet has been around for long enough — and shifted so drastically in that time — that it’s really easy to get nostalgic for past versions of online life.”

Costa Ricans Live Longer Than Us. What’s the Secret?

“In the United States and elsewhere, public health and medical care are largely separate enterprises. Costa Rica shows the benefits of integrating the two—it spends less than we do on health care and gets better results.”

Raw Granny Power: 100-Year-Old Woman Is the World’s Oldest Female Powerlifter

A portrait of “Edith Murway-Traina, who is heaving around major poundage at the age of 100—making her a Guinness World Record holder for being the oldest known competitive female powerlifter in the world.”

In ‘Rumors,’ Lizzo and Cardi B pull from the ancient Greeks, putting a new twist on an old tradition

Grace B. McGowan, a PhD Candidate in American Studies at Boston University, celebrates the return of Black women to “the classical tradition, a style rooted in the aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome.” McGowan writes that artists like Lizzo and Cardi B are “adding their own twist” to this tradition.

Being chased, losing your teeth or falling down? What science says about recurring dreams

I periodically dream about losing my teeth, forgetting to go to class for an entire semester, or being unprepared for an exam. Here a professor of psychiatry and a doctoral candidate in neuroscience from the University of Montreal discuss recurrent dream motifs and their possible meanings.

Baby Boomer Bloggers: Are you out there?

Jane Trombley, a Baby Boomer herself, laments, “I don’t see enough of my peers initiating the conversation. And that’s a drag. Millennials and everyone else need to hear much of what Boomers have to say.”

She ends with a challenge: “Over to you, Boomers.”

So, whadda ya say?

‘No one wanted to read’ his book on pandemic psychology – then Covid hit

In October 2019, a month or so before Covid-19 began to spread from the industrial Chinese city of Wuhan, Steven Taylor, an Australian psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, published what would turn out to be a remarkably prophetic book, The Psychology of Pandemics.

The Guardian reports on Taylor’s psychological approach to understanding pandemics in general and, specifically, the current state of world affairs surrounding COVID-19.

The Best Part of Being 60-Something

Lorraine Duffy Merkl basks in the freedom that being in her 60s offers: “We can finally let go of the please-like-me baggage and secrets that have been weighing us down, as well as the insecurities based on what others think of us, and realize what really matters is being ourselves and letting the chips fall.”

Last Week’s Links

Biden administration asks for public’s help to bring science back

It’s hard to believe that a news story like this exists. But here we are.

The White House is asking the public for help over the next 30 days on how to best restore scientific integrity to the federal government, as a part of its effort to bring science back to the forefront of policymaking and restoring faith in government — no small task.

5 Surprising Causes of Back Pain After 50

“About 6 million older adults in the U.S. live with chronic lower back pain,” reports AARP. Here’s an explanation of “five surprising culprits that may play a role in the pain in your back.”

Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking

“Speaking out loud is not only a medium of communication, but a technology of thinking: it encourages the formation and processing of thoughts,” writes Nana Ariel, a writer, literary scholar, and lecturer in humanities at Tel Aviv University.

Children commonly talk outloud to themselves while learning new activities such as tying their shoes. But as they get older, such rehearsal of learning switches to unvocalized thought—“inner speech” as opposed to talking out loud. But, Ariel writes, talking aloud to oneself can help people of any age: “Not only does speech retrieve pre-existing ideas, it also creates new information in the retrieval process, just as in the process of writing. Speaking out loud is inventive and creative – each uttered word and sentence doesn’t just bring forth an existing thought, but also triggers new mental and linguistic connections.”

How to Quiet Your Mind Chatter

“To break the tape loop in your head, talk to yourself as another person.”

There’s a type of inner speech different from the one discussed in the previous article: that nagging voice in our heads, sometimes called “monkey chatter.” Here Liz Greene takes a good long look at the voice in our heads that often becomes “a vicious nag, just looping uselessly over the same things, again and again and again.”

Greene emphasizes that she’s not writing about the voices of mental illness, but rather about “just the little voice we all have, cheerily (or naggingly) narrating our lives as we go about our days.”

Her discussion is based on the book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It and an interview with the book’s author, Ethan Koss, an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

College can still be rigorous without a lot of homework

It’s not uncommon to hear people lament that college students are not learning to think critically because they don’t read and write enough. Here K.C. Culver, Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California, reports on her recent research into whether lots of reading and writing are necessary for students to develop critical thinking skills.

The study found that a curriculum that challenges students to use higher-order thinking skills like analysis and evaluation is more effective in building critical thinking than is a heavy workload measured by number of pages read and written.

Pandemic caused many boomers to retire. What that means for the economy — and everyone else

I’m old enough to have retired a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This article in the Los Angeles Times reports on older workers who “have reassessed their finances and other factors and have concluded that they are about as well off retiring now as they would be going back to work and soldiering on for a few more years.”

Anxious as we transition out of the pandemic? That’s common and can be treated, experts say

“If you are tense or anxious about reentering today’s so-called “normal,” experts say that’s understandable.”

“I think for many people this ‘return to normal’ feels awfully abrupt and jarring,” said [psychologist Kristen Carpenter, director of Women’s Behavioral Health at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center], adding that the pandemic has been an incredibly difficult period, “with lots of opportunity for confusion, for disagreement, and for discord.”

The article discusses anxiety, panic attacks, and depression and offers advice on how to seek help if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Last Week’s Links

A Guide To Gender Identity Terms

June is the annual celebration of Pride Month. Over the years I’ve sometimes been confused about how to use correctly the applicable terminology. I’m grateful to NPR for putting together this glossary of terms relating to gender identity.

Proper use of gender identity terms, including pronouns, is a crucial way to signal courtesy and acceptance. Alex Schmider, associate director of transgender representation at GLAAD, compares using someone’s correct pronouns to pronouncing their name correctly – “a way of respecting them and referring to them in a way that’s consistent and true to who they are.”

Where Gender-Neutral Pronouns Come From

“People tend to think of they, Mx., and hir as relatively recent inventions. But English speakers have been looking for better ways to talk about gender for a very long time.”

Michael Waters offers a history of the long search for language that steps outside the traditional, normative binary of man/woman, his/her.

Do you ever feel like an impostor — and did the pandemic make it worse?

“Experts say anytime you’re facing a new challenge or you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re more susceptible to impostor syndrome. Here’s how to deal.”

Imposter syndrome is a real psychological thing, the fear that you’re not really qualified to do something, that you’re just pretending to have knowledge and ability that you think you really don’t possess. When I was going through a particularly challenging time several years ago, I dreamed that I was trying to pass myself off as a flautist in a symphony orchestra. The trouble was, though, that the flute I was pretending to play was carved out of wood and have no moving parts at all. And, for the record, I have never had a single flute lesson in my life.

This article offers some advice if the pandemic has forced you to take on new roles or situations that you feel unqualified to handle.

If this quotation describes you (as it does, at least a little bit, me), here’s some advice.

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