The last week in September is nationally known as Active Aging Week and it focuses on senior citizens and what they can do to better their lives mentally, physically and spiritually.
Friendship Village of Dublin is getting its residents involved in different activities this week, including painting, dancing, yoga and aerobics.
According to the Pew Research Center nearly half of adults in their 40s and 50s are taking care of their parents or grandparents who are 65 years old and older.
Friendship Village of Dublin Wellness Director Jeanne Joseph says Active Aging Week is about finding ways for seniors to enhance their minds, explore talents, be social and explore. She encourages the elderly, and those who might be caring for the elderly, to take advantage of ways to stay active.
“It’s an opportunity for residents to get out of their apartments and engage in life and to move and just celebrate being active,” she said.
Joseph says Active Aging Week celebrates nine different dimensions of aging, including physical, nutritional, social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, vocational, intellectual and health services.
Resident Padge Weait, 76, says actively aging should be and is fun.
“You’re still able to express yourself and then people want to talk to you about it so it’s an opening for conversation and interaction with people,” she said.
She says she continues to be inspired by her neighbors at Friendship Village of Dublin who constantly push her to better her own health.
“There’s a fella [who’s] 95 and they’re still moving just amazingly and I’m thinking ‘I want to be like you when I grow up’,” she joked.
To learn more about Friendship Village of Dublin, and simple activities you can do at home to better your physical and mental health, check out www.fvdublin.org/living-well/wellness.