Radical Endurance : University of Minnesota Press : 9781517918064 : 1517918065 : 12 Nov 2024 : A personal guide to the transformations, hard truths, profound pleasures, and infinite possibilities of aging One May morning shortly before her seventy-fifth birthday, Andrea Gilats awoke to a startling, sudden spike in consciousness that she was about to leap from older to old. Radical Endurance is the story of the reckoning that followed, a candid, clear-eyed journey of discovery through the pitfalls and possibilities of aging. Facing the realities of her age, Gilats explores her fears of failing health and loss of independence while navigating the terrain of an ageist culture. But among such troubling uncertainties, she also encounters the singular pleasures of "growing up again," of finding fresh and unexpected ways of understanding herself and making meaning during this new era of her life. Reflecting on moments in midlife, from the painful adjustments of widowhood to life-altering m