The challenges of a long life with MT Connolly

Disclaimer: Unedited AI Transcript

Larry (00:07):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh. Join me in a lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (00:39):

It is my distinct honor to introduce Mt. Connolly to those of you who have never had the privilege and pleasure of meeting her. Mt. Connolly is a national leading expert on elder justice and a MacArthur genius grant awardee. In issuing the award, the foundation said Connolly has, quote, devoted her career to laying bare the many forms of elder abuse, physical and psychological, as well as financial exploitation and wrongful deprivation of rights. Mt is the author of the 2023 book, the Measure of Our Age, navigating Care, safety, money and Meaning Later in Life. She was the architect of the Federal Elder Justice Act, founder of the Department of Justice's Elder Justice Initiative and lead, author of the Elder Justice Roadmap shaping federal, state, and local research policy and practice. She is also co-designer of a community-based rise, RISE model, intended to introduce holistic, hopeful and effective ways to empower older adults, reduce harms, and promote elder justice. Welcome to specifically for Seniors. Mt.

MT Connolly (02:19):

Thanks for having me. Larry.

Larry (02:23):

One thing that stood out as I read through the book, unlike other discussions on the subject, I couldn't help noticing that this was a personal issue for you. What brought you into the field of elder justice?

MT Connolly (02:41):

Oh, it's such an interesting question. You know, why do we do anything? And as I had to grapple with that I think it started with my mother. You know, my parents, my parents were immigrants, and they thought I should be a doctor, and they were both doctors, and that seemed like a good idea to me. But I, as I kind of got further into my, into college, I thought, well, is this actually my idea or somebody else's idea? So I took some time off and I went and did what was called a resident volunteership at a at a big state psychiatric hospital, the one where my mother worked, although she was in a different building. And as I saw what as I came to understand the place better and sort of the challenges we had with addressing mental health, I thought, I really wanna figure out how the systems work that, how, how do the systems work or not work in terms of how, what we're trying to do to assist the people we deemed to be vulnerable in society, and, and what are we, what are we doing?

MT Connolly (03:54):

So I went to law school and then ended up at the Department of Justice prosecuting civilly prosecuting fraud cases, big fraud cases, because I wanna learn how to be a lawyer, and it's a great place to learn how to be a lawyer. But then I had the opportunity to head up something called the Nursing Home Initiative that was being launched at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to take on abuse and neglect in nursing homes, because there was a series of hearings being held in Congress at the time that were looking at that issue. And I thought, oh my God, this is a huge issue. Why has nobody been talking about it? And in fact, people have been talking about it for decades. And so that was my start. I was like, oh, this is a really big issue.

MT Connolly (04:37):

And actually with, you know, abuse and neglect in nursing homes, which remains much too prevalent as we learned in Covid is just one little tip of the iceberg. You know, it's only about, you know, 5% of pe older people who are in nursing homes at any given time. Most of us live in the community in all kinds of other settings. And so but a but, so it became clear to me that there were much bigger issues relating to how we age. So that's how I, that was, that was how I got my start. 

Larry (05:15):

In the prologue of the book, you mentioned that between 1900 and 2000 Americans gained an additional 30 years of life, we're told that 80 is the new, 50 is the new 60. It's not a phrase that I like at all, but what's your feeling about it?

MT Connolly (05:40):

Yes. On average, we went from living in, you know, living 48 years to living 78 years. There are a few things there that are important to unpack. One of them is that the, that on average, our healthy life expectancy is only 66. And so that means a lot of people still can live lives with great meaning, but they may need some help with all kinds of different functional issues. And we are not set up as a society for that. And it's actually one of the reasons that I wrote the book, because just in general, you know, we underestimate aging both on the upside and the downside. So in terms of the challenges we're often, we often underestimate the challenges and are completely unprepared for them. We also underestimate the beauties and what an extraordinary phase of life it is.

MT Connolly (06:43):

And so sometimes our ageism and our reactions cause us to miss out on what matters most. And so what I wanted to do is write a book that helped give people knowledge to improve their odds of a better old age. And that's true for us as individuals in our families, in our communities, in our professions, and as a society writ large, because there's a lot we know about how to improve aging, but we're not using it. So that was really one of the, one of the reasons that I wanted to write the book. And going back to your question about 80 being the new 50 or the new 60 or 40 being the new, you know, like there are a million of those lines out there. As you know yourself and from other guests you've had on, you know, we, we older adults are not just you know, are not just wrinkled adults, right?

MT Connolly (07:42):

We are, we are different metabolically, we're different in terms of existentially it's a different phase of life in terms of how we see the world. And, you know, we all as a society understand the need for pediatricians, right? That young people need a specific, it's a specific body of medicine, but also sort of a, a social science around promoting healthy early life. But we don't really recognize that so much in late life. Whereas the data are really clear that having geriatric expertise and having access to geriatric expertise and guidance as we grow old really helps improve health and improve in independence and wellbeing. So so we haven't, we haven't done a good job with that. And then the other aspect is that is what's called heterogeneity, but in which Laura Mosqueda, who's one of the people I write about a geriatrician in Los Angeles says, we get more different as we age.

MT Connolly (08:48):

So if you put two in a room, they can all functionally do pretty much the same thing, you know, with a few with a few outliers. If you put 192 year olds in the room, you know, some of them are running marathons. And, you know, some people are having podcasts and are like the leading you know, the leading lights in society. And other people are very, very diminished in their ability to engage with the world. And so, you know, so there's a lot that's different in aging that we don't fully, I think appreciate.

Larry (09:27):

I'm so glad you brought that up. In earlier podcast, we talked with a geriatrician about the difference in their philosophy of practice to that of other physicians. And philosophically, the approach to treating an older adult is really completely different than treating a younger person,

MT Connolly (09:57):

Right? I mean, there are a lot more factors to consider. And, you know, like, is it worth it? Is is it worth it? And, you know, it's not all, oh, we can cure that. We can fix that. We can do that surgery. We can give you a drug for that. You wanna have conversations about what's, what is meaningful. So for example, as you know, I wrote about my father who gave me permission to do so. And you know, he he had a knee replacement because he wanted to be able to walk and he had eye surgery because he wanted to be able to see but he had a large he had a large mass in his belly that he didn't wanna have surgery on because it wasn't impeding his quality of life. And the surgery might have really taken a negative toll on his quality of life.

MT Connolly (10:56):

And so I think that those are the kinds of decisions. And as, as you know from prior guests and probably yourself, you know, making, a lot of times doctors just layer on more and more and more drugs without asking what's the impact? And we metabolize drugs very differently as we age. And so those drugs can have a much different sort of impact, both starting them and stopping them and the interactions among them. So those are just conversations that you have to have with your providers and sometimes with your loved ones so that people know what to advocate for, when do you, when is enough and those are very, very personal conversations, but it's a different kind of approach to medicine. Mm-Hmm.

Larry (11:43):

<Affirmative>, it, it's a question. What do you want as the patient to be able to do how to react to things

MT Connolly (11:55):

And what's important to you? You know Laura Carstensen at Stanford has done some really important research, I think, about how we actually get happier as we age. And I, the theory of it is that as we, as we have a better idea of finitude, that our time is finite, that we tend to make decisions more in alignment with what means most to us. And that, that is a tremendously important thing, but it's, it just, it also means that we're making different kinds of decisions with our health providers with a different kind of criteria.

Larry (12:34):

How do geriatric practices relate to adult protective services?

MT Connolly (12:40):

It's such a great question. Ala too often, not at all. You know adult Protective Services is just for listeners who might not be familiar with it it's a, it's an state entity that, or public entity that is like Child Protective Services for older, for not just older, for any adults who are vulnerable. And so a lot of times vulnerability is determined by cognitive capacity. Like, do you have the ability to make a certain kind of decision that puts you at risk? And so that is one really critical factor that Dell Protective Services workers need to evaluate when they're deciding about whether to whether to intervene in somebody's life who is making very risky decisions that put themselves or others in danger. And so one of the key questions is, do you have the abilities to make this decision cognitively?

MT Connolly (13:47):

Can you appreciate the risk to live with someone who is taking advantage with you, of you perhaps, or live in a for example, in a hoarding situation that is becoming very dangerous? And so those are, those are really complicated decisions because on the one hand, as older adults, we have the right to make decisions, even ones that other people consider to be risky. And on the other hand if we can't appreciate that risk or we're putting others in danger, then it might be time for family or state agencies to step in. And those are tremendously difficult and nuanced decisions that we don't help the people who are in charge of making those decisions make well enough. So we need geriatricians, ger psychiatrists, s psychologists, people who have co, you know, people who have capa who have expertise in understanding capacity to navigate those decisions.

Larry (14:53):

Why is it so much harder to talk about adult protective services than childhood protective services?

MT Connolly (15:03):

Oh, <laugh>, my friend, Zura Wiseman, who was my, my law professor and mentor and friend used to say, it's so much easier to be hopeful for children. I think we can, y you know, we can, we can think about it. We, you know, we don't, we don't like to think about aging period, much less what can go wrong in aging. Even though if we could bring ourselves to think about it, we could do a lot better job in terms of planning. So I think, I think part of it's that you know, Dell Protective Services does a really hard job. I think in part, it's the way that it was constructed. You know, I have a, it's now a very brief section in the book because it was cut back, but adult Protective Services was modeled on child protection.

MT Connolly (15:56):

And child protection is really a very reactive program. It's built on reports and investigations, as opposed to saying, what is a society that we can, can we do to prevent trouble in families? Whether it's relating to younger people or older people. And we don't take that approach very often in society. We mostly say, oh, let's try and go after the trouble once it happens with reports and investigations and prosecution and all that. And, you know, by then, the tears have been wept. We really, I think that was one of the biggest lessons of my writing this book, was understanding that the systems we've built and that we rely on to, as responses to problems come into play way, way, way too late. And that what we really need to focus much more attention on is preventing trouble and giving people tools to prevent trouble in their lives.

Larry (16:50):

Looking through your book, it is a complex subject with so many ramifications. How do you even begin to organize your thoughts to get down on paper?

MT Connolly (17:07):

Well, it's a great question, Larry. I mean, you know, some of the, I have the great good fortune of having people who are, you know, high level political strategists and communications experts and all that. And a lot of people said, you have to pick a lane you know, either write about the legal issues or the financial issues, or the health issues, or the policy issues. And, you know, the problem is that aging doesn't pick a lane. We have health issues and we have social issues, and we have legal issues, and we have policy issues, and we have existential issues. And so I I decided that I wanted to bring those between the covers of the book because to, because I had learned a lot both in my work and in my research for the book, and I wanted to not make other people do that work and to, you know, try to provide some Cliff notes.

MT Connolly (18:02):

So in terms of organizing my thoughts, the way that I've organized the book was that the first part looks at the challenges of aging. The second part looks at things that can go very wrong if we don't address those challenges. And some of the tools that we're using to address the problems once, you know, once things have gone off the rails. And then the third part is looking at how change happens on multiple levels at a community level, and the level where, you know, federal laws are made, how we build social movements that influence culture and society, and then how we change ourselves in terms of our own consciousness. So that's, that was how I structured it. There were many, many, many different iterations in the book, I'll say. And, you know, I, I had I also had lots of different editors who had different ideas about how to, how to frame it. But in the end my editor at Public Affairs really wanted me to write a book that was both helpful to lay readers. Well, not just both helpful to lay readers, helpful to professionals, and helpful to policy makers. So so, but most important was lay readers, those of us who are caring for somebody else that we love, or trying to think about how we wanna navigate our old, our own old age as our, you know, ourselves or in our families and communities. So, so that's, that was my goal.

Larry (19:42):

You discuss a lot of the challenges that come along with living a long life. What do you feel are the major challenges?

MT Connolly (19:51):

You know, I was thinking about that in I think if I broke them down into four categories, and then circling back to one, I think one is getting the care we need when we need it. The second one is financial. And I think here, there, it money plays a role in a few different ways. There's money as a symbol, you know, it plays a huge symbolic role in all of our lives. There's financial planning, like how do you make the money last? And how do you spend it on the things that matter to you? There's protecting against financial exploitation. And that is, that plays at a number of different levels. That is, how do we do it ourselves as individuals, and how do we have better systems to help us protect against financial exploitation? Then the third challenge, I think is that autonomy, safety challenge that we have the right to make our own decisions.

MT Connolly (20:49):

But that, you know, at, at some point, when does the risk outweigh the safety? So when does the right, when do our rights as to make decisions as autonomous adults? When are those outweighed? And there's a wonderful saying here that we we want safety for the people we love, but autonomy for ourselves. And so we need to keep that in mind because I think there's, there's a huge cost to overriding people's autonomy rights. And so we, it really, really needs to be it, you know, that needs to be on the scales. And then the fourth big challenge is that our society really hasn't kept up with our longevity, our social norms. And so, for example the predominant modes of living and housing as we age are either isolation that we stay bunkered up in our own homes, and, you know, we don't wanna leave at any cost, or that we're segregated together with other older people, not an age integrated settings.

MT Connolly (21:56):

And that's, that's a real loss. And I think that is part of the reason that two of the predominant emotional conditions and norms that are evolving in terms of society and aging are loneliness and ageism. And ageism is one of the, you know, it, it's incredibly prevalent. It's very damaging, and many of us don't even see it. So so those are, I think, care, money, autonomy, safety, balancing and lagging norms that have not caught up with our aging society. And then if we look at Care <laugh>, A Care is really a huge one because we have I think it's either a broken long-term care system or no system at all, depending on what your perspective is. But we have tens of millions of more older people who need care. We have a long-term care system that very few people wanna use in terms of nursing homes, assisted living group homes.

MT Connolly (23:07):

We have really no coherent way to pay for it. So Medicare, a lot of people think Medicare covers long-term care. It does not. And long-term care insurance is very expensive and often doesn't cover what you need when you need it. And health insurance often doesn't cover long-term care either. And so what that means is that either people have to be poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, which is a poverty program, or they have to cover long-term care themselves. And so there are more than 50 million people providing care, informal care, largely family members mostly unpaid. And that it's not just like a little bit of care. It's an average of 24 hours a week for an average of four years, and, you know, estimated to be worth over a half trillion dollars a year, and a estimated to cause lost income to those caregivers of about a half trillion dollars a year. So that's a ton. It's just such a huge gaping need in our society to really build what iGen Poo is called, you know, a care economy or care infrastructure. We need an infrastructure bill to help caregivers, and we haven't done it. So that is, that is one of the big challenges, I think, in terms of care. And there's all, you know, there are many things under that umbrella. We talked about geriatrics, long-term care, helping caregivers better et cetera.

Larry (24:46):

One of the things that I found lacking under the care category when an older adult goes into a hospital the advocacy issue, speaking for someone, especially those with some degree of dementia how do you provide a advocacy if there's no one around to provide it?

MT Connolly (25:16):

It's such an important question. And actually, that was why I spent I, I, I spent some time in the book talking about advocating for an older adult drawing on both on, on the experts on Laura Musk scada, the geriatrician that I wrote about, and Louise Aronson, who's an esteemed geriatrician at UCSF, who wrote the book Elderhood she's also a great writer. But so I think we can learn how to be better advocates. We can plan in advance, we can ask somebody to be our advocate in case we need it. I know you spoke with Roseanne Leipzig about about signing documents. You know, powers of attorney Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> for Health, or, you know, they go by a bunch of different names. So those, we should have those in place early on. It doesn't mean that that people will, that the powers of attorney will be making those decisions for us, but it means that if we need somebody to make decisions, that there is somebody there.

MT Connolly (26:25):

So I think planning can help, but also we need better advocates in the health system for, because as you point out, a lot of people don't have somebody and or crises happen. And sometimes we're quite alone. You know, we postponed this, we postponed this podcast, you kindly postponed it because I broke my leg and ended up in the hospital, ended up needing surgery, and I had the great good fortune of having my extraordinary daughter Fiona, advocating on my behalf and with me. But I really I got a firsthand dose of what it means to be very dependent and really need both a caregiver and an advocate. And I was very fortunate. But it's a, it's a huge issue. And I think, you know, here, the, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program can also help the, it's a federal program in every state that advocates for people in long-term care settings. So that, that's one chunk of what we're talking about. But it's not enough.

Larry (27:33):

Let's talk a bit about the extent of elder abuse in this country. What, how prevalent is it? Where does one turn for help?

MT Connolly (27:49):

Alas, it is much more prevalent than we know. It's about one in 10 adults, 60 and older, who become victimized by elder abuse every year. And for people with cognitive impairments and dementia, the number is much higher, probably around 50%. And we don't really know the rates in facilities. So that is a chunk that we don't have a good nu we don't have good numbers for in terms of just understanding the phenomena, verbal abuse that some people discount or psychological abuse can be very, very damaging because it goes to the core of who we are. And so I think that's often under appreciate, the harm of that is often underappreciated. Financial exploitation is on the rise. AI is gonna make it ever worse with you know, people impersonating the, your grandchild or your banker or your accountant or God knows who.

MT Connolly (29:04):

So that the prevalence is extraordinary and really quite invisible when you think about it compared to other kinds of social problems. One of my great one, what I believe is one of the great challenges is that we have not done a good job as a field in figuring out how to prevent it. This is more what we were talking about, that a lot of our social systems are built or are built downstream. Once the trouble happens, then we say, oh my God, I'm cha Chacha. There's been trouble and we're gonna, you know, make reports or mandatory reporting laws and investigations and prosecutions. But we don't do a good job with prevention. We have very, very little data on prevention. The one thing we do know is that social support and social connectedness matters a lot. So don't get isolated. It's as far as what we know as one of the most important things you can do that appears to be a protective kind of behavior, is stay connected to your community.

MT Connolly (30:06):

You know, if, if you need help, reach out to Adult Protective Services. I'm working with a group of colleagues to really, it comes outta the book. But to build a better kind of react responsive model that brings to bear a number of different methods from other fields and also focuses on the relationships that matter to people. So, one thing, one really common kind of scenario in elder abuse is that an older adult is either living with or trying to support an adult child or grandchild who has mental health or addiction issues. They don't wanna put that person in jail. They don't wanna report that problem to the law enforcement. They wanna, they want help for the person in their life, right? It's often a late chapter in their life. They don't wanna blow up their families or drive wedges.

MT Connolly (31:06):

They want healing. And so that then becomes an impediment to seeking help because they're scared to go to a state agency or an, or a professional maybe, who has mandatory reporting obligations. So one of the questions was, can we help people with those relationships? And so what we did in building This Rise program was to say, how could we help you to make it very person-centered? And to say, what are your wishes? Put, put the older adult in the driver's seat. And often what they say is, I want help for my drug addicted grandson, or for my mentally ill daughter. And so trying to respect those wishes and do that, and then to do, using a methodology called restorative justice that's being used in criminal justice reform. And we've called it a restorative approach to try and then rebuild the relationships where the person who has done something, you know, to cause harm takes accountability, but also how do we, how do we rebuild and restore as opposed to burn it down?

MT Connolly (32:18):

So in any event, that's, I, I'm very hopeful about it. And we've had extremely promising results. In initial pilot in Maine we're using rise along with Adult Protective Services, reduced re referrals to Adult Protective Services by 50%. And in asking the older adults and asking the adult protective services workers and asking the RISE advocates about their experience of it, they were very, very positive. So that's, you know, cautiously optimistic. And we're in the process of trying to expand, rise to other jurisdictions and to other systems. So for example, we're test driving an initial case in the criminal justice system with drug court to try to find an alternative to incarceration. And instead you know, the defendant who had longstanding fentanyl addiction issues went through residential drug treatment and is now in clean and sober HO housing. And we're just beginning to work on the restorative component. But if he goes through the whole system successfully, then the prosecutor will drop the charges. And, you know, that's, I think we need, we need to give everybody who's working in this space better tools and better options, because the ones we've used have not been enough

Larry (33:47):

Is Rise an acronym.

MT Connolly (33:49):

RISE is an acronym. So it so it's the restorative component. So Repair Harm, inspire Change is based on the motivational interviewing, which is a which is a a method from the mental health field support, you know, build social support, which is I mean, it's ubiquitous. It's the, it's the secret sauce for everything. And then empower older adults, which is from the from Disability rights, which is really a, a technique called supported decision making, or inner dependent decision making that helps people who have some dec cognitive decline make their own decisions. Not saying, I know about what's best for you, but just say, what's important to you, and how can we get that done?

Larry (34:45):

Now, that's on a community level,

MT Connolly (34:48):

That's community level. Yes.

Larry (34:50):

You were the architect of the Federal Elder Justice Act and founding head of the Department of Justice's Elder Justice Initiative. Tell us about that.

MT Connolly (35:05):

Well, you know when I was at DOJ, I think I mentioned, I thought, oh, you know, here's a problem. What have we done about similar problems? I looked at the laws relating to child abuse and domestic violence, and found that in 1974, Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act. And I thought, oh, a law, why not? And so I managed to make my way to the Aging Committee, the in the Senate and worked with colleagues there to draft the elder Justice Act. And we had a lot of bipartisan co-sponsors. We were so excited. We thought the thing would sail right through, and it didn't. And it didn't, and it didn't, and it didn't. And I thought, huh, what's going on here? Why does a law that has so much support, why, why is it languishing?

MT Connolly (35:58):

And it finally was enacted with the Affordable Care Act as a little tiny bit of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, but then there was no fundamental 2015, and then there was just a pittance. It had a little bolus of funding during covid as part of the covid relief bills. And it's gone down back down to a pittance. And so the lesson for me was that I was missing something. And that, that was really if there was so much consensus, what was going on? And the lesson for me, what, there were a bunch of lessons lessons. One of them was that there wasn't enough of a groundswell. There was no movement, there weren't networks like in the women's movement, excuse me. There was, it was really a very invisible issue. And a philosopher friend of mine said, you know, big problems need a common language.

MT Connolly (36:57):

We didn't have a language. We don't really have a vernacular to talk about it. You know, if we say the words domestic violence or violence against women, that conjures an image in our brains. We understand that it's a big problem that isn't true really with elder abuse. And and so I wanted to understand the problem better. I also wanted to write about it. And as I wrote about it, it became clear that it wasn't just, I couldn't just look at elder abuse. I had to look at caregiving. We're not helping caregivers. And a lot of times people are so scared of what might happen to them in long-term care that they're staying at home. And very risky situations, often with caregivers who are wholly unprepared to take care of them. And then we blame them. We blame, you know, we blame the older adults for making bad decisions, and we blame the caregivers who may have like, mental illness or addiction for, you know, and, and, and we need to provide people better support through aging.

MT Connolly (38:02):

You know, we, we, as a people, we often end up feeling like we're failing at aging and failing at caring when in fact, our social systems and our society has have failed us in not providing sufficient support. So you know, that, so that's what prompted me to write the book, was I wanted to understand the problems better and at a more deep level. And I wanted to give people tools based on what I was learning to navigate old age better, and to, you know, basically troubleshoot to, to get out ahead of the problems as opposed to always being caught flatfooted.

Larry (38:45):

As I get older, I, I myself, I understand more and more of the problems of aging with people I know with situations I'm familiar with. Getting back to you, we

MT Connolly (39:01):

All have stories, you know, like, I, I, everybody has a story, right? It's, it's, it's, it, it is every bear wear. It's just very, very invisible.

Larry (39:12):

I found the last chapter of the book, especially Powerful, you talk about meaningfulness and aging. Could you describe that a little bit?

MT Connolly (39:24):

Absolutely. I'm so glad it was it's really in many ways my favorite chapter of the book two. And it was the one that changed me the most. You know, the wonderful Grace Paley said, you write from what you know, but you have to write into what you don't know. And that was that was one of many examples in the book, but certainly sort of as a, as a whole, the largest one. So we too often miss out on the things that matter most in our lives. And and, and, you know, we've done this extraordinary thing of managing to lengthen our lives, so we have more time, but we've paid much less attention to how we have wellbeing and meaning in the time that we've gained. That's something called the Longevity Paradox. And so I really wanted to understand it, like, how is it that we make meaning of time?

MT Connolly (40:32):

Like we have this sacred gift of time, of, you know, on average we're living longer than any other people in the history of humanity. And so what was really exciting for me, and what has really changed the way I approach my own life, is that it's actually quite concrete. Like, there are really concrete steps that we can take in terms of making meaning of time and life. So there are five of them that I write about in the book. First connection, love, and connection. You know, that, I mean, the, the loving relationships in our lives are, and the people we love, and our relationships with them are clearly the most important aspect of our lives. But also it's not just, it's not just the people that we love and we're closest to, but also being part of our human family. You know, the, the gardening groups and the book clubs and the, and the community groups, those are tremendously important in terms of connecting us to other people.

MT Connolly (41:39):

And you know, the people who are running the, the Harvard Study of Human Development, the longest running study came out with a book last year called The Good Life, where they say, you know, we should think about our relationships. Like we think about other things that are important to us, like do a year end review and make that part of your new Year's resolutions. Like, who, how are you gonna stay in touch with the people who matter to you? Because it requires work. Often it requires work, and it's worth doing that work, but it's worth paying attention to. So that's the first thing. Second thing is purpose. You know, you and I have I think are, are united in our mixed feelings about the term retirement, because, you know, often retirement is this many decades long phase, and how do we make meaning of our time?

MT Connolly (42:34):

What is it that we do that gives us a sense of purpose? And it's really clear that purpose is very tied to wellbeing and health. And and, you know, a guy named Steve Cole at UCLA has done studies on this that show that people who have meaningful activity in their lives, and often that's doing something for other people, it's being of service, gives us better sense of purpose have better health. You know, on the order of like stopping smoking or getting good sleep or eating a good diet. Like it really has a profound impact on us. And, you know, when I broke my leg, I found that having purposeful activity really mattered a lot in terms of my, my wellbeing upstairs. You know, I had to, I had to buy what I was selling. The third thing is I kind of mush it together, but it's, it's a curiosity, creativity and play that, you know, this is like, this privilege of additional time is also existentially this great opportunity for more expansive thinking of how do we you know, how do we wanna spend our time, like, of just this renewed curiosity.

MT Connolly (43:51):

I mean, your podcast is a great example of it, right? Of you're curious about all what all kinds of people are doing or thinking. And it's a really, I think, and, and to be creative in a different way in our lives. It's, it's a wonderful it's a, it's a it's a wonderful opportunity to do that. And, and when we don't take advantage of enough, the fourth one is awe or transcendence. And this is you know, that feeling of being really small, the the astronauts called it the overview effect. You know, seeing, seeing the earth from, from space, or if we see like the, the night sky feeling very small and just part of the flow of the earth can make us, ironically, can help us sort of feel our commonality. You know, it kind of tamps down the ego that causes so much trouble often.

MT Connolly (44:54):

And there, you know, there are researchers at Hopkins doing research into the really powerful world of psychedelics in terms of helping us feel awe and transcendence sort of getting out of ourselves literally. And that too has, is being, is showing itself to be quite powerful in terms of the health effects. And then the fifth one is storytelling. That, you know, we're as, as human beings, we're homos, you know, all these random things happen to us over the course of a life. And how we make sense of those is how we tell the story of our life and how we, how we think about ourselves as human beings. But then there's another component to it, which is that attention and curiosity about another person is like, the greatest gift we can give really is like, that that human connection is, is sacred. And so if we ask somebody else about their stories and then share those stories, then there's a new connection made you make, there's a new human connection. And too often we don't ask older people about their stories. This is why Dave, I say in StoryCorps encourages younger people to ask their older relatives about their stories, because there's, they're incredibly rich stories, but they're too often not being told. So it's it's, you know, so in even those five things are, I think, very tangible ways of making meaning.

Larry (46:34):

Thank you so much for tying together everything we're trying to do with this podcast. <Laugh>, we just spoke to someone who's an expert on storytelling. We've spoken to geriatricians. We're trying to get people to tell their stories. What do you hope the book accomplishes?

MT Connolly (46:58):

I hope that the book can help people live more fully and more meaningfully and in old age, and with less fear and denial and all the negative stuff. It doesn't help us, you know, it's it, the fear, it doesn't do anything for us. It's wasted human emotion. And if we can embrace old age, that will help us really realize the gift of the time. And also that there are a lot of challenges, but that we can face them much. We can do stuff to face them. I mean, that's the amazing thing. We're not helpless in the face of aging. And that if we can think about it as a gift and accept it, and then embrace it and say, okay, how do I make meaning of this tremendous opportunity that has not been realized by any other humans before as a, as a society then, you know, let's, let's figure out how to do this better.

MT Connolly (48:23):

Because, and, and that, that happens at a number of different levels. It can happen inside ourselves, it can happen in our families, it can happen with our, you know, with the people we see as professionals you know, the doctors and accountants and PAs and lawyers, all of them, you know, by sort of reshaping what those relationships look like, and then how we how we live our activism. Like, you know, at the most fundamental level, voting who we vote for and asking our political representatives to be more accountable for <laugh>, for, for how old age, how we experience old age in the United States, and that we can do better. We can do a lot better. So so I think it's at, it's at many different levels, and I'm, I really hope that the that the book is useful to people on a lot of different levels, because that's how I tried to write it.

Larry (49:30):

And once again, the title of the book is

MT Connolly (49:35):

The Measure of Our Age Navigating Care, safety, money and Meaning later in Life,

Larry (49:42):

Life. And it's available

MT Connolly (49:45):

Anywhere where books are sold. I have a website which is www.mt connolly.com, that has all kinds of different options. You can buy it online, you can buy it at your local independent bookstore. So it's you know, it's, it's available and there are a lot of different links. And if you happen to be having an event, there are bulk sales purchases where it's much, you know, where it's at a reduced price. So

Larry (50:13):

One final question.

MT Connolly (50:15):

Okay.

Larry (50:16):

You open and close the book with the metaphor, the River. Why

MT Connolly (50:23):

<Laugh>? 

MT Connolly (50:27):

So you know, my mother-in-law, Janet Corman, was just this extraordinary human being. And one metaphor begat another. We were on the river literally celebrating her 88th birthday, and we were singing Happy Birthday, and she suddenly was scared that we were gonna live her on an island on this little island. And it was this moment of joy and richness and, you know, the grandchildren and the children, and everybody had, you know, little, I mean, the, the kids had made her a little crown out of wildflowers, and she had this moment of fear, and I thought, oh, we're a, that is about the greater abandoning of older people in old age, that we as a culture have done that. I wrote my way into that realization. I started the writing. It was an intuitive thing. It wasn't a, it wasn't conscious, but I came to understand it through the writing of the book.

MT Connolly (51:31):

So the first river in the opening scene is about that, is about how even, you know, is, was, was for the, it was the, let me try that again. The opening scene. It's there. The river is there for that reason. Then in the middle of the book I feel like it's really important to illustrate the upstream, downstream, and even, and geriatricians talk about upstream is, you know, that we wanna move upstream in terms of our perspective of old age, age. There's a lot we can do if we're not always just reacting to trouble. And so I literally looked at the different characters in the book about whom I was writing, and some are working much more upstream, and some are working much more downstream. So, for example, criminal prosecutor, all the tears have been wept. The harm has been done, they're coming in at the very end.

MT Connolly (52:22):

Whereas whereas a doctor or health professionals, or the meaning making or a program like Rise, hopefully can be more instrumental upstream. So there, it was a, just trying to help us understand that. And at the end of the book the River is there because we're all made of matter and it's transformation, right? We, we are we're part of the great flow of life and and rivers transform themselves and water transforms itself and our, our atoms do too. So, so that's that's, that was the role of the river in a few different parts of the book

Larry (53:14):

Empty. This was marvelous. This was inspiring. This was terrific. Thank you for a great podcast. Thank you for a great discussion.

MT Connolly (53:28):

Thank you for your interest and for doing this. You're an inspiration, Larry. You're really an inspiration. Thanks. Yeah. To many, to, to, to, to many more conversations.

Larry (53:39):

Thank you so much.

MT Connolly (53:41):

Thank you. Okay. Take care.

Speaker 3 (53:46):

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