Relocating in Your Eighty's?

To All Senior Citizens who are Downsizing:  Read this and you may feel Better, I hope! This is a must read to all Senior Citizens and their Families who are in the process of moving/downsizing to an active senior living community, assisted living, memory care or a nursing home facility here in the US.   

I moved from my single-home residence ( 4BR, 3B) in June 2023 to a 2-bedroom Apartment here at THD.  I was 88.5 years old then and had made a decision that living alone is no longer safe and valid option of spending the last stages of my life. I moved here to be near my 2 older children and be free of maintaining a single residence house etc, etc...... 

I was the reading the following article the other day-titled what it really meant to be relocating at 80 and it struck a cord in my Heart.  

Here's an excerpt from the article that probably most of the senior residents here at THD could identify.     

" Moving is never easy. But relocating in your 80s?  It’s not just about packing up boxes and changing your address.

It’s about leaving behind years—sometimes decades—of memories, routines, and familiar faces.

It’s about navigating big change at a time in life when even small changes can feel overwhelming.

Whether you’re moving to be closer to family, into a senior community, or simply downsizing, the emotions that come with relocating late in life are often brushed aside.

People may tell you it’s “for the best.”

They may talk about safety, convenience, and how much easier things will be.

But few talk about the quiet grief, the emotional weight, or the unexpected joy that can come with this kind of move.

This article is for you—the one packing more than boxes.

You’re carrying memories, fears, hopes, and a lifetime of experiences.

Let’s talk about the things no one tells you about relocating in your 80s.

Saying Goodbye Hurts More Than You Expect

People will tell you that moving in your 80s is just a change of scenery.

They’ll say it’s about safety.

They’ll say it’s about getting closer to family or living somewhere more manageable.

They may even call it “a fresh start.”

But what no one really says is how much it hurts to say goodbye.

It doesn’t matter if your house is too big now.

Or if the stairs have become too much.

That place was more than a building.

It was your life.

It held your laughter, your tears, and every version of yourself from the past 30 or 40 years or longer.

You knew how the floor creaked in the hallway.

You knew which window let in the best afternoon light.

You knew your neighbors, your mail carrier, your grocery store clerks.

And even if things were starting to feel harder, they were still familiar.

That familiarity gave you comfort.

When you say goodbye, you’re not just leaving a house.

You’re leaving memories behind.

You’re leaving the garden you planted yourself.

The walls where your kids’ heights were marked in pencil.

The kitchen where you danced while cooking dinner, even when no one was watching.

It’s okay to grieve that.

You’re not being overly sentimental.

You’re being human.

Because you don’t just walk away from a place like that without feeling it deep in your bones.

You may cry after the movers leave.

You may cry while folding towels in your new space, suddenly missing the old linen closet.

Let yourself feel it.

This is a goodbye that matters.

And it’s okay to mourn it like you would a dear friend.

Because for many years, that home was exactly that.

A faithful companion.

A quiet witness to your life.

And saying goodbye to it takes real courage.

When you relocate in your 80s, everyone talks about the logistics. They talk about downsizing.

About packing boxes.

About transferring your mail and updating your address with the bank.

But what no one really tells you is that the move shifts more than just where you sleep at night.

It shifts the way you see yourself.

Suddenly, you’re not the person who knows every creaky floorboard in the house.

You’re not the neighbor everyone turns to for advice on the garden.

You’re not the woman who bakes cookies for the community potluck, or the man who knows the shortcut to the post office.

You’re new again.

And that can be unsettling.

You might feel like you’ve lost more than your house.

You’ve lost your place in the world.

There’s Still Room for Joy in a New Place

It might not feel like it right away.

In fact, joy may be the last thing on your mind when you’re surrounded by cardboard boxes and unfamiliar walls.

You’re adjusting.

You’re grieving.

You’re figuring out how to live in a new space with a heart still full of memories from the old one.

Final Thoughts

Relocating in your 80s is not just about where you live.

It’s about who you are, what you carry with you, and how deeply you’ve lived.

The move may feel overwhelming.

It may bring tears, doubts, and moments of deep sadness.

But it can also bring clarity.

Peace.

Even joy.

You are not starting over—you are continuing a life that still matters.

And wherever you go, you bring the most important part of home with you: your heart".

For Details visit: 

https://wordselector.com/more-than-a-move-what-relocating-in-your-80s-really-means/

Meanwhile, here's my recent photo taken during THD Cinco De Mayo Cocktail Hour:

It is featuring my red Mexican Hat and My Personalized(with my photo) Black T-Shirt and my prospective first great grand son-the mother is in labor as of this writing date.

 

Adjustment Disorder, Food For Thought and Cinco De Mayo

All of us Residents here at THD must have suffered some forms of adjustment disorder during our move to this senior community. Most of us suffered very mild adjustments ( Like Me). Others perhaps  experienced more serious adjustment, that may require intervention of mental health professionals. Thus this posting on this subject relating to our downsizing move -hopefully the last stage and may be the best stage of our life.   

This posting is inspired by a recent event here at THD. One of my Bridge friends and fellow residents was not able to play bridge during our regular game a couple of Tuesdays a few weeks ago. However, the other day, she was back here at THD. She told us she has been diagnosed as having Adjustment Disorder. This was triggered by her move here at THD from her single-home residence where she has resided for over 55 years. So I did some reading on this subject and here's what I learned.  I love sharing it with you.  

" Adjustment disorders are excessive reactions to stress that involve negative thoughts, strong emotions and changes in behavior. The reaction to a stressful change or event is much more intense than would typically be expected. This can cause a lot of problems in getting along with others, as well as at work or school.

Work problems, going away to school, an illness or any number of life changes can cause stress. Most of the time, people get used to such changes within a few months. But if you have an adjustment disorder, you continue to have emotional or behavioral responses that can make you feel more anxious or depressed. Treatment can help you regain your emotional well-being.

Symptoms depend on the type of adjustment disorder. These symptoms can

 vary from person to person. You experience more stress than would generally be

 expected in response to a trying event, and this stress causes a lot of problems in your

 life.  Adjustment disorders affect how you feel and think about yourself and the world. 

They also may affect your actions or behavior.

Some examples include:

• Feeling sad, hopeless or not enjoying things you used to enjoy.
• Crying often.
• Worrying, or feeling anxious, nervous, jittery or stressed out.
• Feeling irritable or like you can't handle anything and don't know where to start.
• Having trouble sleeping.
• Not eating enough.
• Having difficulty concentrating.
• Having difficulty with daily activities.
• Withdrawing from family and friends who support you socially.
• Not doing important things, such as going to work or paying bills.
• Thinking about suicide or acting on those thoughts.

Symptoms of an adjustment disorder start within three months of a stressful event. These symptoms last no longer than six months after the end of the stressful event. But constant or lasting adjustment disorders can continue for more than six months. This is especially true if the stressful event is ongoing, such as being unemployed.

When to see a doctor

Stressors are usually temporary. You learn to cope with them over time. Symptoms of adjustment disorder usually get better when the stress eases. But sometimes the stressful event continues to be a part of your life. Or a new stressful situation comes up, and you face the same emotional struggles all over again.

Talk to your doctor or a mental health professional if you continue to struggle or if you're having trouble getting through each day. You can get treatment to help you cope better with stressful events and feel better about life again.

 For Details visit: 

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adjustment-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20355224

Meanwhile, Did you Know That.......

During the Marcos regime, the Central Bank quietly gathered pre-colonial gold artifacts from across the Philippines. It wasn’t for display — it was for safekeeping, hidden from public view for years. Today, this once-secret treasure is part of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Gold Exhibit — showcasing golden necklaces, masks, and ceremonial items from a forgotten Filipino past.

Lastly, My Food for Thought For Today:

Regular physical activity has been linked to a range of benefits, from better immune function to reduced risk of chronic disease, and it's a boon for your brain as well as your body. That's because exercise increases blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain while reducing inflammation, Dr. Eubank says. The Alzheimer's Association adds that some research indicates exercise can help those with Alzheimer's maintain memory function and even increase the size of the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory that's typically impacted in early Alzheimer's and later stages.   So, Let us get moving, stop the laziness and perhaps live longer! 

( I should really think of going back to Zumba and the Stretching and Balance Exercises Program here at THD).  

Personal Note: Cinco De Mayo Celebration- May 2, 2025

Our Dinner Menu for the Cinco de Mayo Special Dinner Yesterday and with My Mexican Gallon Hat at the Cocktail Hour. I had the chicken tortilla soup, fish tacos and the Tres Dulce Cake (Flan not Available).     

 Kudos to Ted and Monica for a very successful and colorful Cinco de Mayo Party at the Liberty Pavilion.  Here are two photos Jenny S took at the party. Muchas Gracias, Jenny! 

Highlighting my Galloon Mexican Red Hat and My Personalized Black T-Shirt

Do You Cry Watching Sad Movies and TV Shows?

From My Reading on Tyler.com This Week: 

Psychologist reveals why crying at movies might actually mean something more. Don't feel bad about blubbering at the screen by 

Britt Jones

Crying while watching movies is considered a sign of emotional strength rather than weakness. As per psychiatrist, when you cry during a movie, it indicates that your attention is deeply engaged and the storyline has successfully elicited strong emotions. Yeah, that makes absolute sense.

If you find yourself getting weepy at movies, you might have a quality that surprises you.

According to psychologists, crying while you’re watching something means a great deal and it shows what type of person you are.

There are so many films that have made me cry, it’s genuinely embarrassing to think about, but if you ever watch Vikings and see a man named Athelstan… just turn it off and don’t look back.

The same can be said for any Grey's Anatomy character ever created.

Crying happens to the best of us and when we watch a touching moment, something that is shocking or makes us feel like an injustice occurred, it’s only right that a tear or two falls down.

These tearjerking movies and shows are designed to catch you in your feels.

Neuroscientist Paul Zak - who has studied the effects of heart-wrenching stories - told The Conversation, you might be crying because of the release of oxytocin.

Oxytocin is released during childbirth and breast feeding, which help to stimulate the milk ducts to produce milk and to help contractions too.

It’s also the hormone that’s released during intimate or sexual touches, such as hugging or kissing, and even stroking your animal or having a good time with friends. Oxytocin is also released during massage, 

Neuroscientist Robert Froemke told the publication that oxytocin amplifies what we’re experiencing in the moment.

So, if you’re getting choked up by the greatest love story in front of you, it might just be that your hormones are making you feel it deeper.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman also shared that empathy is one fifth of characteristics which are key in emotional intelligence.

You might not know this, but studies back up the reason why emotional intelligence (EQ) is uber sought after in leadership roles as people with high emotional intelligence tend to be able to communicate well, perform active listening, take and give feedback well among other things.

So, crying could indicate that you’re empathetic, and your emotional intelligence is high.

So, if you feel like a tear is about to drop when you’re watching an emotional film, just let it happen.  Feel free and do not be ashamed of your reaction! 

Question: Do empaths cry during movies?

Yes, a person who cries while watching TV can still lack empathy in real life. Emotional responses to fictional scenarios, like crying during a sad movie or TV show, are not necessarily indicative of a person's capacity for empathy in real-life situations.

Here's a list of the top-ten tearjerker movies.  

1. The Impossible. 20121h 54mPG-13. 7.5 (253K) Rate. ... 
2. Finding Neverland. 20041h 46mPG. ... 
3. Schindler's List. 19933h 15mR. ... 
4. Million Dollar Baby. 20042h 12mPG-13. ... 
5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. 20081h 34mPG-13. ... 
6. The Color Purple. 19852h 34mPG-13. ... 
7. Brokeback Mountain. 20052h 14mR. ... 
8. Forrest Gump. 19942h 22mPG-13.

For Details read:  

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls003577423/

Here are a few TV Shows That Are So Heartbreaking, Depressing, And Just Plain Sad, It's Hard To Watch Them Again

• First, Parenthood. NBC. ... 
• Maid. Netflix. ... 
• When They See Us. Netflix. ... 
• BoJack Horseman. Netflix. ... 
• This Is Us. NBC. ... 
• Six Feet Under. HBO. ... 
• Grey's Anatomy. ABC. ... 
• The Handmaid's Tale. Hulu.
• Lastly, my photo of the Day!
  
  Is the Dragon Crying or Laughing? The dragon is a symbol of wealth and good luck. Give this exquisite dragon to your loved one and wish her/him all the best in 2025.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North- New TV Mini Series

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a 2025 Australian drama miniseries. It is based upon the novel of the same name by Richard Flanagan and directed by Justin Kurzel. It stars Jacob Elordi, Odessa Young, and Ciarán Hinds. The series follows Dorrigo Evans across three periods: before his deployment to the Second World War, during his time as a Far East prisoner of war, and several decades after the war. Each period reveals different parts of Dorrigo's love affair with his Uncle's wife, Amy. The series was released on Amazon Prime on 18 April 2025 to critical acclaim.

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 8.3/10, based on 21 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "A difficult watch made riveting by director Justin Kurzel and star Jacob Elordi's sterling work, The Narrow Road to the Deep North chronicles the inhumanity of war with fierce intelligence."  Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 84 out of 100 based on 7 critics, indicating "universal acclaim " reviews.

In a review for The Guardian, Luke Buckmaster awarded the show 4 out of 5 stars, noting the strength of the performances and the complexity of the relationships depicted. He also complimented the direction, writing: "You never doubt the show’s realism, or the compassion underpinning it". Hugh Montgomery of the BBC praised the acting of Elordi and Young and described them as possessing "smouldering chemistry".

 Here's one of the reviews, that I concur. I enjoyed the TV mini-series very much.  I cried because of the cruelty and inhumanity of war. It reminded me of my childhood experiences during the Japanese- American War in the Philippines. The incidence of brutality by the Japanese to the Australians is similar to the brutality committed by the Japanese to the Filipino and American Prisoners during the Bataan Death March.   

https://chateaudumer.blogspot.com/2024/07/tears-in-darkness-my-book-review-update.html

W

What do we want from our war stories? That's a question at the core of this new five-part adaptation of Australian author Richard Flanagan's Booker Prize-winning novel. Preparing to make a speech for a book launch, World War Two veteran Dorrigo Evans (Ciarán Hinds) ruefully says people just want tales "of heroism and mateship" – where he would rather give them "the truth".

It's certainly true that in general cultural discourse, there can be a tendency to present war history through a romanticised, "inspirational" lens – but on screen there is also a strong lineage of works that have sought to lay bare its abjectness, from Apocalypse Now to All Quiet on the Western Front. However, if this miniseries is not radical in that respect, it is, on the evidence of the first two episodes that have premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, set to be a stunning, shell-shocking piece of work nevertheless – as well as an impressive showcase for Jacob Elordi, the in-demand star who made his name with HBO series Euphoria and, after working with the likes of Sofia Coppola and Paul Schrader, continues to make judicious choices.

It sets out its stall right from the opening scene, in Syria in 1941, in which a group of Australian soldiers' blokeish banter is cut through by a bomb explosion that gruesomely takes out one of their number and a Syrian child: filmed with tight, disorientating camerawork by  director Justin Kurzel, the visuals drained of colour amid the murk of the landscape, it immerses you completely in the horror. 

From there the story moves between three timelines. There's young Dorrigo (Elordi) in 1940, as he is stationed to Adelaide for military training and forms an intense connection with his uncle's young wife Amy (Odessa Young); Dorrigo in Thailand in 1943, now one of thousands of prisoners of war in the Thai jungle forced by the Japanese to help build Burma's notorious "Death" railway; and 77-year-old Dorrigo in 1989, an affluent surgeon with a happy-ish marriage who nevertheless can never hope to forget what he witnessed all those decades ago – "the strange terrible neverending-ness of human beings," as he puts it – or make others who didn't experience it understand.

(Credit: Curio Pictures)

The older Dorrigo's sense of alienation is deftly sketched in an early scene in which he is interviewed by a combative young journalist, prepared to question his blanket definition of the Japanese as "monsters". It's a measure of Shaun Grant's skilled writing that as she prods him, and with his rebuke, you sympathise with both characters' point of view. Similarly impressive is the way the show deals with Dorrigo's extra-marital affairs, as both young and old man, with no crude judgements. There are no heroes and villains in either set-up, exactly, just messy feelings and a search for connection.

It's a show as much about love as war, and it's good that the romance has equal impact, thanks to the smouldering chemistry of Elordi and Young

Where the drama possesses clearer moral definition is in the indisputable evil of the sadism directed at the captured Australian soldiers. It is in these prisoner of war scenes that Kurzel, known for films like Snowtown and True History of the Kelly Gang, really excels himself, creating grimly powerful images – take a scene early on of a heap of dehydrated men being transported in a truck, sticking their tongues out ecstatically as rainwater comes through the slats of their container. But he also deftly colours in the bravado and, yes, mateship, that (barely) sustains them in the most terrible of situations, as they share penis jokes and impromptu comedy skits amid the unbearable slog of their labour.

When it comes to their Japanese captors, meanwhile, the dangers of presenting them as one-dimensionally malign are counterpointed in part by the character of a conflicted young major. At the same time, the way one of his seniors talks about how cutting off someone's head feels both "euphoric and horrible" could not be more chilling. It will be interesting to see how their perspective develops, as the episodes progress.

But this is a show as much about love as war, and it's good that the romance has equal impact, thanks to the smouldering chemistry of Elordi and Young. Young gives a beguiling sense of a woman with a wisdom and self-knowledge beyond her years, while Elordi has simply never been better: returning both to the small screen and his homeland Australia, he holds the screen with a particular kind of reserved charisma, suggesting his character's hidden recesses of pain and desire with mere flickers of expression. And even if he hardly resembles Elordi, Hinds is equally superb in the older timelines, his natural lugubriousness put to good use.

As for Kurzel, he brings an auteur's confidence to everything here, creating a seamless symphony of visuals, editing and music. The Narrow Road to the Deep North feels like a searingly "true" account of war, indeed, but also one founded on the finest artistry, if that's not too much of a contradiction. I watched this on Prime Video. 

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20250215-the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-review-this-ww2-miniseries-is-a-stunning-showcase-for-jacob-elordi

Meanwhile, another new TV Series on Starz is Etiole ( pronounced it tual), that I enjoyed also very much this week. Etiole is a French word meaning-Star. This TV series has mixed reviews. If you love Ballet and Comedy, this is a must view TV show. Amazing Choreography! 

 For Details visit: 

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/etoile/s01

Finally, here are two photos of Grand Daughter Carenna Katague Thompson on her recent trip to the Netherlands.