Engaging With Aging: how a 99-year-old tackles old age

What’s it really like to be extremely old—in your late 90s, say? How can a frail-but-healthy nonagenarian practice positive aging? What are the everyday challenges of an elderly person aging at home? How do they deal with the inevitable advance of age-related changes, whether physical, mental and psychological? What are the rewards of a very long life?

Engaging With Aging: Gems from Doris Carnevali’s blog answers these questions in a most engaging way!

For the last couple of years I’ve been recommending a remarkable blog, Engaging With Aging: As long as we’re green, we’re growing. But not everyone likes reading blogs and I was keen to introduce Doris Carnevali’s brilliant writing to a wider audience.

So with her encouragement, I selected 124 excerpts from Mrs Carnevali’s blog. Then I condensed them into an e-book for your Kindle device or smartphone or tablet. I want the e-book to expand the reach of this original and compassionate Seattle writer.

Growing old, very old, can be lonely because your family and care-givers have no experience of what you’re going through. Doris Carnevali, 99 at publication time, is a retired Registered Nurse and emerita professor of nursing. In her we find a companion and an inspiring guide for the ultimate developmental tasks, those of very old age. She discusses the realities of her daily life and explains her system for dealing with problems. She tackles formidable barriers with courage, humour, warmth and ingenuity.

What’s unique about Engaging With Aging?

Numerous old people have written brilliantly about their own lives. Numerous not-so-old professionals have written well about old age from the viewpoint of observers or researchers or health professionals. By contrast, Doris Carnevali copes with the challenges of one particular aging body: her own. She combines the subjective experience of a very wise elder with the expertise and long experience of a nursing educator. That’s what makes the blog and now the book so special. In content and style, they’re not only down-to-earth and realistic but also humane and inspiring.

Who needs this e-book?

Engaging With Aging: Gems from Doris Carnevali’s blog will be invaluable for caregivers, health practitioners, and everyone facing their own future frailty. Sample comments from readers are included. The book is loaded with practical tips and precious insights for those who are caring for an elderly person, whether a relative or a patient. The original blog is being used as a resource for nursing students, teachers in various fields, and staff of retirement villages. As an e-book the story will be easier to follow because it starts at the beginning, when Mrs Carnevali was a mere 95.

If you like the e-book please review and recommend it!

How will anybody find out about this labour of love? I’m not associated with any institution—I’m just an individual with a bee in my bonnet. Or should I say, a quixotic mission to share the positive, practical work of an inspiring 99-year-old blogger.

So I would be hugely grateful for your reviews of this little book. Even just giving it 4 or 5 stars will help to make it visible to the world. Amazon makes this easy.

If there is anything you can do to help publicise it, I’d love to know and I will thank you from the bottom of my heart. I would also love to know how you decide to use it, either personally or professionally.

If you plan to use it as a teaching resource, let me know. Why? Well, Amazon authors have opportunities to reduce the price very low for short periods. So let me try to synchronise a cut-price offer with your teaching schedule: I’m not in this for the money!

The blog goes on

The e-book stops at Mrs Carnevali’s 99th birthday, but she continues to add to her blog with weekly posts. Visit her WordPress blog to discover what she is thinking about this week!

Why make a book from a blog?

Here’s a bit about the process of editing a book from a blog.

One more chance to click and peek!