Our Future Selves: Love, Life, Sex, and Aging

M. Annabelle Richardson is head of Twilley Richardson & Associates,
Counselling and Consulting Services, in Perth, Ontario.

Weisbord’s work models a way of learning as practiced by our wiser
elders. Through story, thought, and opinion, the author and her
“teachers” reflect on their lives in all those key areas that,
together and separately, constitute meaning. The honesty and fullness of
expression in this book helps the reader arrive at fresh and sometimes
startling insights.

Perhaps younger beings truly can’t understand the basis for happiness
in the face of what, for us, appears to be frightening physical
realities. As Weisbord shows, “loss of short-term memory” isn’t a
foible of senior years, but rather a characteristic that is named by
younger people, who are, in fact, observing a full mind at work. From
the senior’s perspective, we may not even be able to be truly sexual
until sometime in our 70s. Current standards of what is “healthy,”
both physically and mentally, have become unreasonable and unnecessary.

A vividness of sight and sound pervades the author’s conversations
and interactions with the people she presents—people who provide the
reader with believable examples of living, loving, and preparing for our
next journey. Most important of all is the model provided by Weisbord
herself; in it she confronts her own myths and terrors, develops new
understandings, and achieves inner peace.