Charles Garfield - Our Wisdom Years: Growing Older with Joy, Fulfillment, Resilience, and No Regrets

Inviting, illuminating, and informative, Our Wisdom Years offers great inspiration while meeting a growing personal and cultural need: new ways to live our later years with joy and fulfillment. Charles Garfield provides mature and younger readers alike with the guidance theyll need to grow older with resilience, gratitude, and forgiveness. Dr. Garfields passion for cultivating the potential of lifes later chapters without ignoring the undeniably challenging parts of aging is unsurpassed. This book captures the essence of a master class on aging for all those who wish to awaken to its possibilities. If you are over fifty, please read this book now.

DAVID SHEFF, author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Beautiful Boy

Our Wisdom Years provides a step-by-step guide to growth and development in the autumn of life. Dr. Garfield cuts right through the layers of self-protection we wrap around ourselves to open up the possibilities of living in authentic relationship with our true self, our loved ones, and the mysteries of eternity. The reader will not find ready-made answers here, but what he or she will find instead is Garfields gentle, courageous voice, offering creative ideas and practical exercises that serve as guides toward finding ones own authentic answers to the absolutely unique questions of our lives. This is a book best used by lingering with it, not rushing througha book of questions each of us might ponder in the silence of the heart until we hear the response of the still small voice within.

STEVE ZEMMELMAN, MSW, PhD, Jungian Analyst and Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California at San Francisco

Our Wisdom Years offers a gentle, thorough, and soulful way into lifes deepest and most challenging stagethe path of aging. Although he is an accomplished psychologist with many stories to tell (including, most wonderfully, his own), Dr. Garfield writes like a gentle friend. This book is a guide for the journey into the glorious mess of self, at a time in life when self is most poignant. Full of questions to ponder, exercises to engage, and thoughts to contemplate, Our Wisdom Years will help you foster your own relationship to eternity.

NORMAN FISCHER, poet, Zen priest, author, The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path

Our Wisdom Years arrived shortly after I turned eighty-two. Ive lived a fulfilling life, but am all too aware of my age-related declines and struggling with them. The book is so helpful! Im underlining most of it. I havent done that since college! Garfields understanding of my and others transitions, understanding from the heart as well as the head, is opening possibilities and easing transitions. Thank you!

CHARLES T. TART, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of California at Davis and author of The Secret Science of the Soul

Charles Garfield has one of our biggest hearts and wisest minds, and I am privileged to call him a mentor of mine. Our Wisdom Years, a true masterpiece, is a marvelously rich mix of wise counsel and comforting possibility for all of us who are feeling the pull of our later years. It is a profound reflection on aging that offers all those of a certain age the guidance well need to navigate later life with soul and satisfaction. This is a book of immense honesty, courage, and grace. Youll be delighted that youve moved it to the top of your reading list.

KAUSHIK ROY, executive director of Shanti Project: Enhancing the Health, Quality of Life, and Well-Being of People with Terminal, Life-Threatening, or Disabling Illnesses or Conditions

Charles Garfield is one of our most open-hearted and intelligent teachers on the subject of aging. His latest book, Our Wisdom Years, is an exciting and illuminating look at the potential we all have to live later life with wisdom, compassion, and courage. This book stands out in its genre as a beacon of guidance and generosity, a genuine gift to all those who have entered their wisdom years. I enjoyed and learned an enormous amount from this work of Dr. Garfield. Youll be extremely glad youve read Our Wisdom Years.

JIM SANTUCCI, executive director of Kara: Grief Support for Children, Teens, Families, and Adults

Once again, Dr. Charles Garfield offers us a deep work of soul with a book exploring the wisdom, joy, and resilience that can be found with aging. Garfield tenderly invites the reader to consider nine tasks, empowering one to deeply consider the growth and healing available to us all when we allow ourselves to accept the true gifts of age that bring us into our own. As I stand firmly in midlife, I find the sacred storytelling in this work provoking and challenging. This marvelous book allows me to consider how Id like my own wisdom years to unfold.

DR. GINA BELTON, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Saybrook University

CHARLES GARFIELD, PhD

Growing Older with Joy, Fulfillment, Resilience, and No Regrets

Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics.

For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.

2020 by Charles Garfield

All rights reserved. Published 2020. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

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Las Vegas, NV 89129

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Garfield, Charles A., author.

Title: Our wisdom years : growing older with joy, fulfillment, resilience, and no regrets / Charles Garfield.

Description: Las Vegas, NV : Central Recovery Press, 2020. | Summary: In Our Wisdom Years, Dr. Charles Garfield skillfully and practically guides readers through nine tasks that can transform the struggles of aging, bringing fulfillment, joy, and serenity-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019054966 (print) | LCCN 2019054967 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949481181 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781949481198 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Older people--Life skills guides. | Aging--Social aspects.

Classification: LCC HQ1061 .G365 2020 (print) | LCC HQ1061 (ebook) | DDC 305.26--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054966

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054967

Photo of Charles Garfield by Stu Selland. Used with permission.

Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders. If copyright holders have not been properly acknowledged please contact us. Central Recovery Press will be happy to rectify the omission in future printings of this book.

Publishers Note: This book contains general information about aging and related matters. The information contained herein is not medical advice. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.