On an early November morning, as the threat of winter began to descend upon a central Albertan city, 16 friends were nestled tightly in a Boeing 737 about to depart for a place that promised a beautiful wedding and a return to summer. One of these friends, seated an aisle away from the comforting nearness of her husband, was trying to sort through the turbulence in her mind. Would her kids be alright? What if something happens to them while they’re away? What if they get sick and can’t attend the wedding? What if her speech isn’t received well? As the plane took off towards the Gulf of Mexico, she wondered when, or even if, she would relax.

Spoiler: it took her four days.

Second spoiler: it’s me. Hi. Not Taylor Swift, but Stephanie Morris as the main character of this story. And, yes, it is based on real events.

Hot equator sun, refreshing salt-water breeze, and crippling anxiety—that’s what I found in Mexico when my husband and I ventured to the beautiful Grand Sirenis Resort for the celebration of my best friend’s wedding.

I wager my anxiousness stemmed from a mixture of mom guilt, wondering what mother dares to revel in a week of no obligations?;and ignorance towards slowing down, thinking choosing inefficiency is simply a preposterous notion, is it not? These were the nagging questions as my mind grappled with its new location and lack of responsibilities.

Ironically, the understimulation of my to-do/to-think list became a stimulant itself. No one needed me. I didn’t need me. No cooking, cleaning, parenting, or working for seven whole days. Soon I found myself searching for familiarity, for place, for purpose—only to be met with no plan, no time restrictions, and no distractions.

It was agonizing.

In recent years, my life has been under increasing pressure—pressure to be enough “mom” for each of my children, to be present enough for my friends, to excel at something outside of my home for my own sake, and, most recently, to excel at something outside of my home for economic necessity.

So why, with toes in the sand and ocean mist upon my cheeks, did I not feel this pressure release? Why couldn’t I let go and just rest?

I have known for some time that rest is not restricted to sleep or motionlessness; it’s not even simply letting your mind drift away and think of nothing. While these practices can be restful, battery-filling, life-giving rest may call for a more active remedy.

The antidote to my restlessness?

A hefty dose of disco.

For three of the seven nights we were blessed to be in Mexico, my husband and I made the longish (I say -ish because it was a resort and the bar for inconveniences was awfully low) trek along the cobbled path, past the habitations, to the remote side of the resort where the silence of nature was interrupted by the reverberating Discoteca.  

Night one, we stumbled in to find a Columbian wedding reception was underway. As it was a public disco, we were welcomed to the venue and were treated to an energetic mix of cultural and Top-40 hits. At the request of one of our party, we got the privilege of teaching the beautiful wedding guests a Canadian line dance. That brought me my first taste of enjoyment.

Night two at the disco was less crowded with about a dozen guests, but I was determined to have a good time. I have always loved to dance, and I was desperate for catharsis. Some may blame it on Wilberth the bartender’s Electric Lemonades, but I credit ABBA for being the catalyst for enjoyment that night. It was a very mindful experience as I nearly forced myself to abandon thought and absorb the music. I may not have had the most skillful dance moves, but I can guarantee they were soulful—and I brought a slightly more relaxed soul back from the disco that night because of them.

Night three at the disco happened on Day 5 of our trip—the wedding day. The night prior, I was on the brink of an anxiety attack. Without a reason in sight and already 4 days behind me in physical relaxation, I cried out desperately in the night for a breakthrough for my mind.

The next day, I tepidly passed the hours. I needed to balance my fragility with my honoured role in my best friend’s wedding. Thankfully, weddings are a beautiful distraction, and the bride was a joy to be around. While getting ready in the spa room, the bridesmaids turned on some 90s and early 00s music—and it was the perfect start to the rest for the rest of the vacation. As I had practiced on previous disco nights, I let the music absorb my energy, and I let go.

Sweet release! The rest of the afternoon, the ceremony, the reception, and even my speech, glided off my shoulders as pressures used to when I was a young child.

And it didn’t stop there.

The groom has a background in DJing, and, with the help of his wife, he compiled a vitalizing reception playlist that lasted four hours.

Still high on joy over the blissful occasion, after the reception finished, we waited a mere half hour for the Discoteca to open. We topped our night off with two more hours of soulful dancing. I felt like a true Dancing Queen.

When I say I relaxed the last two days of the trip, I really did. My mind floated in my head as delicately as my body did on the ocean.

I would never have thought that three nights of physical exertion was the key to my ability to relax on an all-inclusive vacation, but I guess that’s why the professionals point anxious minds like mine toward fitness. Mind and body really are bound together.

I’ve recently learned I have lost an inch and a half in height in the past decade. I shouldn’t have been too surprised; my maternal forebears weren’t very tall to start with and they all lost height as they aged. However, an inch and a half is still a lot when you are as short as I am.

I got the news as the result of tests I take as part of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. It’s a 20-year national study with more than 51,000 participants aged between 45 and 80.

Every three years the researchers take measurements and assess competencies, both physical and mental. Every 18 months or so, I also participate in an interview where they ask me about my work, hobbies, relationships, habits and so on. During the pandemic, they also sent surveys to monitor how we were all managing with COVID.

The CLSA has been publishing papers regularly and I encourage you to dip into their research pages to see what they have learned about how we are aging in the 21st century.

Anyway, back to my height, or lack thereof. Bone loss is not unusual for older people. Women have less bone tissue than men and they also lose bone density faster during menopause. The CLSA tests came right as I was finishing menopause thus they were able to track my downward descent.

Losing bone density increases your risk for osteoporosis, which also leads to an increased risk of fractures. The bad news is I can’t recapture my height; the good news is there are things I can do to reduce my risk for the bone loss that leads to shrinking.

The Harvard Health page offers several useful tips:

1. Eat a calcium-rich diet. I already drink milk and eat yogurt and cheese, as well as lots of kale, nuts and seeds. So this is on the keep-doing list.
2. Take a Vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium. The fact is, while I may be ingesting my daily servings in my food diet, I don’t know if my body has been absorbing it. I am going to start and see if this helps.
3. Weight-bearing exercise. I weight train twice a week and try to walk regularly, especially when I am on holidays. However, I may not being doing enough. According to Harvard Health, “Putting pressure on your bones helps maintain bone strength.” Time to be creative and add more steps in my day.
4. Avoid stooping and hunching. This is a hard one for me as I spend most days sitting at a desk. More times than not, I catch myself curled over the laptop or my sewing machine. My posture is suffering and I need to keep working on my core.

Still, I’m glad to learn there are things that I can do to hold steady. While we can’t control our genes, we can cultivate positive habits that can reduce the negative impact of our genetic inheritance.

MarthaFitat55 lives and works in exceedingly rainy Newfoundland and Labrador.

A few months ago, a Stanford study came out that said humans experience two big “bursts” of aging: 44 and 60. Like everyone on the cusp of 60, it set off an internal sputter for me — what can I do that I’m not already doing? I’m already pretty active and fit? What the hell is a “burst” of aging?

I’m not gonna lie, as the kids say — that study was probably one of the things that impelled me to join a bourgeois (mostly white, very middle class, mostly older lady) tennis club as my next gym, mostly because it’s close by, not bro-y, clean, not loud and — did I mention — close by, with free parking? It’s definitely a different vibe for me — any gym that teaches both mahjong and line dancing sure seems like a gateway to a retirement community, doesn’t it?

Anyway, antics with the Magic Age and Fitness Measuring machine in my initial fitness assessment aside (more about that later, no doubt), the gym is serving its purpose. I go with some regularity, lift things, stretch. Go to yoga, went to a line dance class (more about the Canadian Stomp also later). Allowed myself to be talked into a few sessions with a personal trainer, who made me feel good by telling me I control my breathing better than any of his other clients. (My sister finds this hilarious — “was ‘you know how to breathe‘ the only nice thing he could say?”).

So with the trainer, I’ve started lifting heavy things again. Before Covid, I lifted heavy things — two weeks before the first lockdown, on my 55th birthday, I deadlifted 200lbs, I frequently brag! — but I got out of the habit. And yes, I accept that for healthy aging, I need to start lifting heavy things again. So I push the sled, playing Chappell Roan in my earbuds, momentarily deluding myself I’m still part of queer pop culture.

So yes, there are some aging type things we can push against. Literally in the case of that damned sled, which is my nemesis. But some things just … happen to us.

About a year ago, I lay down to do some infernal figure fours after a sweaty session on my spin bike. For some nebulous reason to do with the kind of world we live in now, I took a selfie and sent it to someone. Then I looked more closely. My face looked weird. What was wrong? Then it dawned. Where the fuck were my eyebrows?

Gradually, mysteriously, my eyebrows had just … fled. Menopause? Post-covid alopecia? Just Plain Age? Who knows. No one had warned me.

And I looked again. What the hell was happening to my eyeLIDS? Both my mother and my grandfather had to get surgery for ptosis when they were in their 70s — but my eyelids are already drooping. Like, sometimes I have to manually adjust them because the folds get stuck.

Well, I hied myself off to an eyebrow maker post-haste and paid her an unfathomable amount of money to tattoo me up some fake brows. And I consulted a plastic surgeon about what I assumed was ptosis.

“Hm,” he said, his fancy, privately funded office shiny around me, before and after boob jobs flashing onto the tv behind him. “This isn’t classic ptosis. This is just age. And it’s not really your eyelids — your eyes are drooping because your forehead is drooping. I would actually recommend a forehead tuck — this is what you actually want.” He pulled back the skin on my temples showing me that indeed, it’s my whole face that is drooping.

I thanked him and the nice receptionist who gave me the list of fees (both cheaper and more expensive than you think), warning me that the prices would only be valid for three months.

I am pretty sure I am not the kind of person who gets a facelift. But I also assumed I’d have my eyebrows forever. Who can tell what I might do in the future?

So that was my face. Then, for my 59th birthday, I did a trek in Patagonia I’d been longing to do forever — the four day W trek. I carried my own pack over incredible terrain, about 29 km a day, most of it up and down — but stayed in huts where they also fed us. It was incredibly hard and amazing and once in a lifetime — and, at the end of the third day, where my feet were screaming in pain because of an endless rocky downhill, I realized that my big toenails were loose. Like baby teeth.

I ended up bagging the final part of my Patagonia trip, spending a day in a hotel in Santiago trying to soak my feet in the bathroom sink without bashing my head open.

When I got home, I had to get my big toenails surgically removed. They have grown back (remarkably!) But my feet are… bigger. My well worn in blundstones don’t fit. I need all new winter shoes. Did anyone mention that with aging, your toenails might grow back, but your feet will stay…expanded? And then last week, after three days on my feet facilitating a group in a comfortable pair of fluevog boots, I suddenly developed, for the first time in my life, plantar fasciitis. And I’m hobbling around. Sigh.

The notion of “aging in a burst” sounds like it’s the time when you suddenly might experience a massive heart attack, early onset dementia, the need for a hip replacement. But I’m finding it’s a steady drip. Small indignities that form a pattern. On one side of the coin, I’m this hale and hearty person climbing Patagonian mountains, riding my bike across Poland by myself, pushing a heavy sled in the gym. And on the other side of the coin, I’m a saggy-faced, metabolically challenged, no-eyebrows, splaying-feet person with chronic insomnia and a prescription for HRT I guard with my hot-flashing life.

Bodies are gonna body. Aging is gonna happen. I am still going to have adventures, build my strength and stamina and flexibility and try to ease my sleep and fascia. But what new, unforeseen indignity will show up next? I’m betting it has something to do with hemmorhoids.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who is planning to be in a nunnery in Bhutan on their 60th birthday.