Articles by Freedom in Later Life
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Never Fit In? What It Means to Be an Outsider After 50
Some of us never quite fitted in, and the pressure doesn’t stop at 50. Psychiatrist Rami Kaminski has a name for it, and it might change how you see yourself.
Is It Ever Too Late to Come Home?
A visit to Little Gidding, the chapel that inspired T.S. Eliot, left me with a question many of us carry after 50: is it ever too late to come home?
Is It Normal to Want to Be Alone After 50?
Being alone after 50 was once seen as a misfortune. Now many people choose it after divorce or loss. The psychiatrist Anthony Storr helps explain why, and what makes solitude a freedom rather than a retreat.
Should We Really Trust Our Feelings?
Why guilt, and feelings in general, are often less a verdict on what we've done than a report on how depleted we are, and what it costs us to keep mistaking the two.
What Happens to the Dreams You Never Followed?
I dreamed of becoming a barrister at seventeen. Life chose differently, and it took me decades to work out what that old dream was really trying to tell me.
What Do You Actually Want From Later Life?
Most of what we want in later life was planted there young. How to tell a real want from a borrowed one, and why choosing it is what freedom means.
What Is It Really Like to Be Old? Diana Athill at 89
Diana Athill wrote about old age at eighty-nine, and became a bestseller at ninety. What she found is not what we are told to expect.
How to Prepare for Old Age: You Can't. You Just Continue
Two industries have grown up around growing older. One sells you a plan for your money, the other sells you the appearance of it not happening.
Why We Can't Stop Trying to Fix the People We Love
The one who fixes everything is rarely thanked for it. More often she is blamed. On why we can't stop trying to fix the people we love — and what it costs them when we do.
What Is Ikigai? The Real Blue Zone Lesson
The Blue Zones were never really about the diet. What they teach us is something we've quietly lost: connection, purpose, and a reason to get up in the morning.
Why Making Friends Gets Harder After 50
When a marriage, a job, or the school run ends, the friendships often go too — and most of us conclude it says something about us. It doesn't, and understanding why changes what to do next.
What Does It Actually Mean to Live in the Moment?
"Live in the moment" may be the most repeated and least explained advice of our age. A former mindfulness teacher on what it actually asks of us, why it becomes urgent after 50, and why the usual advice so often fails.