Exploring ways of growing older

Taylor Swift and I inhabit two different worlds, but there was a momentary cross-over when she hit the headlines. No one could miss seeing what was interpreted as her fatphobia in a 2022 video that she had made to accompany her new song Anti-Hero. But there is another sort of fat-shaming that is both highly visible and – yet – so subtle that it stays totally under the public radar.

With all that we hear about dementia, even though only a minority of us will get it, it is – as Canadian doctor Mike Evans said (in The Globe and Mail in 2014) – very normal to be scared of losing your memory, and what that might imply. He has, therefore, provided some useful tips to differentiate what is normal forgetting, from what might be signs of dementia.

On 8 March 2023 Anne was honoured to be named Coogee’s Local Woman of the Year at the NSW Women of the Year Awards.

Recently, I was in a big suburban shopping centre. With a lot of people. And yet, to paraphrase Wordsworth, I wandered lonely in a crowd: the ONLY person wearing a mask.

Anne in conversation with Sue McGrath from the anti-ageism advocacy campaign Every Age Counts.

Recently, I heard the phrase “Stand up and speak out”. And I realised that that is exactly what I’m doing with my book, Engaging with Ageing: What matters as we grow older.

Anne was honoured to be mentioned in parliament on the 13th October 2022 by Dr Marjorie O'Neill MP in a Community Recognition Statement and was later presented with a framed copy of the Statement by Dr O'Neill.

Anne joined presenters Johanna Nicholson and Fauziah Ibrahim on Saturday 1st October for ABC News Weekend Breakfast to discuss the release of Engaging with Ageing: What Matters as we Grow Older.

How many people are – like me – taking for granted all the wondrous things going on inside our bodies to keep us doing all that we do on a daily, and nightly, basis? Unless…. unless something happens to shake us up. Like, for instance, atrial fibrillation.

True story: at our Cremorne Old Girls’ 80th birthday gathering, which I wrote about recently, we had fun sharing our thoughts on which three people we’d want at a dinner party. George Clooney was the man of the moment there, but when it came to my turn, I managed to resist him in favour of one of our old friends who was missing in action, Ronnie Kahn of OzHarvest – and whom, not being a monarchist, I proposed should be Australia’s first president.