Life Gets Better

The unexpected pleasures of growing older.

Wendy Lustbader M.S.W.

F*ck It

The expletive leaves our lips when we are about to do something we know we shouldn't, and then we summon our justifications.

Striking Up a New Friendship: It's Not So Easy

How are we supposed to make new friends as adults? We need an entry point into other people’s lives.

Breaking Up With Food

I knew it had to be a permanent separation. This was going to have to be a deep emotional break-up, a rift that would last the rest of my life.

The Weight of the World

We are not helpless.There is power in the collective will to survive and make life good for those who come after us.

Driving Me Wild

I'd like to remain detached when cheaters cut in and just let aggressive drivers have their way. Instead, I go wild. I get agitated and yell expletives.

The Woman Who Does it All

Women seem to hold up the world. Is this an identity, a self-created fate, or a default position when men in our lives do less than their share?

We Change When We are Ready, Not a Minute Sooner

What makes us change, if not deciding to do so? It turns out that we make changes when we have to, not when we want to.

Intimacy is Heaven and Hell

The aspect of a partner that most hurts us and drives us into a frenzy is the part that most cries out for our compassion. This is what intimacy is really about.

I'll Do It Tomorrow

Strategies of avoidance can come to dominate our lives, but there are ways to induce ourselves to get things done instead of putting things off in an endless cycle.

When You Don't Know What to Say

Often we don't phone or visit when a loved one is ill or grieving because we don't know what to say and dread our awkwardness—then we feel guilty about our silence and inaction.

Your Worst Enemy

We make our own misery. Life is hard enough, but we make things worse by exaggerating our failings and piling up proof of our deficiencies.

When You're Hot, You're Hot

Living at the mercy of a hot temper is miserable for everyone.

It's About Time

Rushing around is not a good way to live. We know this, yet we keep cramming in tasks and commitments as if we have no choice. It seems like there just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything we have to do. The irony is cruel – that such relentless pushing to get things done usually doesn’t add up to a day well spent.

What Should I Do With My Life?

This question can give us heartache, whether we are in our twenties or sixties. Having no idea what to do next hurts, even as it might excite us on some level. Whether graduating from college or retiring from a long career, the road ahead may seem intimidating in its blankness. Freedom is supposed to be so desirable, yet its reality is often heavy with perplexing dilemmas.

Can't Sit Still? You Are Not Alone

A friend laughed with relief when I told her how noisy my mind is when I step outside intending to sit and listen to birdsong. She thought she was the only one who could barely quiet her mind enough to sit still. I find that the fresh air, earth aromas, and the bird chorus are there for a moment or two and then all that I am trying to savor drops away.

Get Out of Yourself

We are fortunate when something happens that extricates us from an excessive focus on ourselves. The hardest burden in life is self-centeredness.

When is Enough, Enough?

If we knew for certain how long it would go on, we could pace ourselves in caregiving situations and parcel out our energies. But this is rarely the case. Even when a parent reaches an advanced age like ninety, there can be several more years of mutual captivity when the parent has to receive too much and it's hard to figure how much giving is enough.

Childhood Lasts a Thousand Years

Childhood lasts a thousand years; the rest of life passes in a blink of time by comparison. Thus, an adaptation made to our particular circumstances long ago may live on in adulthood as cringing around conflict, a habit of self-reliance, barriers against intimacy, set ways of doing things, or other expressions of what happened during that thousand-year period.

Emotional Affairs: Why They Hurt So Much

Feeling understood on the level of the soul is far more sexy than sex itself. Restoring such excitement to the marriage is the best recourse for those who want to go on enjoying the privilege of having a partner throughout life.

Boxes of Old Letters, Burdens or Treasures?

Those born into the Internet age may never know how it feels to see a loved one's handwriting on an envelope pulled from a mailbox.

Your Parents Are Afraid of You

Finally seeing our parents as people is similar to reading a novel at twenty and then reading it again at forty. The reader changes so much in the intervening years that the book seems entirely different. In the second reading, passages that were barely noticed before become significant and moving, and chapters previously skimmed become central.

The Great Pool of Grief

Inside all of us is a great pool of grief that keeps enlarging as each fresh loss is added to the others. This is why we often find ourselves weeping for earlier losses along with a present heartache. Sometimes even a sad scene in a movie will get me into that pool, and my tears flow from that indistinguishable source.

pen and ink tree branch

Live Like Your Life Depends on It

Life gets better on every level as we get older, except the physical, but stereotypes about aging are so insidious and the physical realities are so prominent that we miss seeing the inner radiance that so many attain.

Unconnected, Just Alive

I don’t carry a cell phone or a web-connected device. I can’t stand the idea of having my attention taken away from who or what is immediately around me. I like to be where I am. Especially if I am walking with a beloved person in the woods near my home, I wouldn’t want to be transported electronically to the vicinity of some other person and place.

The Difficulty of Receiving

It is much harder to receive than to give, yet this truth is rarely recognized.

Faking the Holiday Spirit

Amidst a convivial atmosphere, feeling blue is a direct route to loneliness but pretending to be happy is a terrible burden. There are ways to break through the pretense.

Dispensing with the Trivial

Imagine being able to rise above an immediate frustration, to relegate it to a pile of trivial concerns and feel much less bothered. We are constantly assailed with pettiness – tasks, errands, irritants, disputes and ordinary mishaps – and so being able to call up a larger, overriding perspective is surely a key to living well. How do we acquire and hone this capacity?

The 20's: Our Hardest Years

Our society's veneration of youth is excessive and misleading. Youth is a time of uncertainty, confusion, and angst. As we get older, we figure out how to live.

The Do Over

Getting Better All the Time

“What makes a good marriage?” I once posed this question to a 99-year-old man with some experience in this matter.

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