Don't Feel Bad About Getting Older

Many people don't get the chance

Nearly a decade ago my daughter decided she didn’t want to play basketball with her middle school team anymore. When I thought about why I was so upset with her decision to quit, I realized that I loved the sport. So I decided to start a weekly all-ages all-abilities pick-up game.

A lot of us were new to basketball. There were only three rules:

1) Don’t get hurt
2) Call your own fouls
3) Have fun

Ours was a friendly game. We’d choose teams that were evenly matched. And if one team started winning, we’d switch up the players to even things out.

Even so, rule #1 was the hardest. Especially for players who’d been really athletic as kids. They were adults of a certain age who were used to excelling at sports in general and at basketball in particular and they didn’t know how to play down. One broke an ankle. Another got a serious concussion. A third ended up with a black eye.

These players never came back. I guess they felt like they were “too old” to play basketball and it was “too risky.” But the game itself isn’t dangerous, especially our community game. The problem was that these adults couldn’t figure out how to enjoy themselves at a lower level of play.

That’s the thing about aging: you can still do the things you love, and learn to do new things, but you may have to do them at a different pace.

Walking soccer instead of traditional soccer.

Long slow lovemaking with lots of lube without having an orgasm in the first half hour (and perhaps without having an orgasm at all) instead of juicy, slippery, frenzied sex.

Suspected melanoma

Last Tuesday, almost two weeks ago, a retinal specialist told me he was 99 percent sure I have a cancerous tumor growing in my left eye.

(If you want to know more about this oh-so-joyful news, I wrote about it on Substack. The article, “N=1,” is behind a paywall. My plan right now is for my cancer (if-I-do-have-cancer-oh-my!) healing articles to be exclusive content offered only to subscribers.)

This diagnosis won’t be confirmed until I go to one of the very few ocular oncology specialists in the country. That visit is scheduled for May 17. (“If anything changes before then, go straight to the ER,” the doctor’s administrative assistant told me. Words to warm your heart by. Not.)

Massive action

In the meantime, I’ve taken what Chris Beat Cancer calls “Massive Action” and spent three hours being evaluated by an integrative-minded alternative medical doctor who was able to squeeze me in.

[For those of you who are interested, this “Massive Action” so far has been: cutting out all processed sugar; converting to an all vegan all whole, real, fresh, organic diet for the time being; adding wild harvested flash frozen organic wheat grass to my cancer-beating smoothie (my friend Jane says I need to take 18 cubes a day. I’ve started with 6. Wheat grass is gross not my favorite “food,” god help me); taking amla powder (Indian gooseberry) and wild cranberry powder daily (fresh cranberries are better but it’s hard to find them this time of year); drinking green tea, matcha, dandelion root tea, and nettle tea instead of coffee (please pause your reading to observe a moment of silence for my delicious cup of morning Joe); eating a lot of fresh organic ginger and garlic (yes I smell like a cross between a pizza and a Japanese curry dish); cutting out all dairy and even alternative milks (because they’re processed); doing organic coffee enemas daily and castor oil packs at night; intermittent fasting; and being more committed to daily meditation and my other stress-relieving activities like journaling and long walks.]

Who gets cancer in their eyeball? I mean, c’mon. But there’s nothing like a life-threatening rare cancer diagnosis to make you think about death and dying how (and if) you want to live.

Your aging body tells the story of your life

I’m 53 (the internet says 54. The internet lies.). If you’re in my age bracket or older, you may regret some of the things you can no longer do. You may wish you were wearing crop tops instead of staring at your menopausal middle.

But consider this: Especially now, with the continued upsurge in sudden deaths among young people, many people don’t get the chance to age. Growing older is a privilege many aren’t lucky enough to enjoy.

Brandalyn Mae Porter works with older adults. Awhile back she posted this on Facebook:

“Today I painted a new residents nails at work and as we were going over colors, she mentioned she wanted clear.

“The only thought that came to my mind was, ‘CLEAR?! That's no fun.’

“I asked her why she wanted clear and she said, ‘My hands are ugly, I don't want to draw attention to them.’

“I then carefully responded with, ‘Your hands tell the story of your life. They tell the story of love, of care and adventure. These hands have touched and held things that most people can only wish to one day.’ And with that, she went with the color pink for her nails.

“Sometimes what we are so insecure with, others find beauty in. 💖”

My green eyes, which I got from my mom who got them from her mom, have always been one of my favorite features. The retinal specialist who diagnosed me with ocular melanoma made it sound like losing my sight and/or my entire left eyeball was among the best case scenarios in my future.

I hope a combination of evidence-based allopathic medicine and integrative healing will get my body back in balance and restore the occluded vision in my left eye. In the meantime, though, I’m just feeling grateful to still be alive.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Love,

Jennifer

About the author: Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist. She is the author/editor of eight books and the mother of four children (two young adults and two teens). Her green-eyed mother, Lynn Margulis, Ph.D., was a renown evolutionary biologist who developed a theory, the endosymbiotic hypothesis, that has profoundly changed our understanding of evolution. To support her healing journey, you can become a paid subscriber to Vibrant Life; donate via GiveSendGo; or Venmo her directly: @Jennifer-Margulis-2.