What Lloyd Hammons and Diane Mahree reveal about belonging in later life Some lives are spent searching for where they belong. Others settle into place almost without intending to. In the first reflection in this series, The Man Who Stayed, we considered the story of Lloyd Russell
A man who stayed. A woman who traveled. What their lives ask of us. Last Sunday, we reflected on a man who spent nearly his entire life on the land where he was born. Lloyd Russell Hammons didn’t leave when others did. He didn’t stay to
Some people spend a lifetime searching for where they belong. Others simply remain. Questions of belonging in later life rarely surface all at once. They tend to emerge slowly, often in the very places where our lives have already taken shape. In rural Oregon, on land that had
In the first half of life, much of our energy goes outward. We build. We prove. We establish roles that help us survive and belong. We learn what is expected of us—and, often without realizing it, we learn how to meet those expectations well. For many
A Different Conversation About Aging There is a problem with the way we talk about aging. Public conversation about later life is mostly about managing decline. We talk about blood pressure and balance, retirement accounts and housing plans, staying active, staying positive. But it leaves out what many
The Fourth Agreement sounds, at first glance, like the most demanding of the four. Always do your best. For some, those words feel like encouragement. For others—especially those who have carried responsibility for a long time—they feel more like a not so quiet accusation. There are days when
“I presume nothing.” — Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) Assumptions are easy. Correcting them is hard. Most assumptions don’t announce themselves. They look like understanding. We think we know why someone didn’t respond, what a silence meant, or how a look should be taken. We rarely say, I’m
The Second Agreement and the Freedom of Carrying Less “What other people think of you is none of your business.”— Regina Brett What makes that sentence unsettling is not its bluntness, but its accuracy. Most of us have spent a lifetime tending to other people’s opinions—anticipating
Beginning the Four Agreements “Language is not a subject. It is the medium in which we live.” — Wendell Berry The Words That Stay Language is not something most of us ever imagined we would have to
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. –George Bernard Shaw The past weekend was heavy. As reports circulated from Brown to Bondi Beach to Brentwood, a sense of foreboding covered