Month: January 2026

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Originally posted at: Erika Girardi’s Khaki Studded Cargo Pants and Red Sunglasses

What framing is to a building, that’s what bones are to our bodies – a support system that shapes them and gives us the ability to move.

However, there’s a certain point in everyone’s life called peak bone mass and it happens around the age of 30. Up to that point, your body is producing bone mass but after peak bone mass, the rate of building bones slows down and problems start piling up.

Bone weakening and osteoporosis are common problems for everyone over 60 but especially for postmenopausal women over the age of 65. Luckily, there are things you can do preserve your bones and make them healthier, regardless of your age.

There’s More to Healthy Bones Than Calcium

Everybody knows that calcium is essential for healthy bones – it’s the mineral necessary for their proper development and it can be found mostly in dairy products. On the other hand, it’s possible to include calcium into your diet even if you decide to go dairy-free – kale, almonds, white beans, and sesame seeds can be your sources of this precious mineral.

But simply eating these foods every day won’t benefit your bones. The trick is in pairing foods rich in calcium with foods that contain vitamin D. These two work best when together – vitamin D is like a key that unlocks calcium in your body – so make sure you include fatty fish, such as salmon, mackerel and tuna; fortified cereals, eggs, and beef liver in your diet, too.

For bone density, vitamin K is a must since it can help your body make proteins for healthy bones while potassium neutralizes acids that remove calcium from your body. Pump up both of those by eating more leafy greens, white and sweet potatoes and bananas. Maintain a healthy diet to do what’s in your power to help your bones.

Get Your Body Moving

Regular exercise is the most effective way to keep your bones healthy, especially once you reach the golden age. In fact, a sedentary lifestyle can lead to osteoporosis but it’s also important to understand what kinds of exercise will the most beneficial.

Weight-bearing activities, such as jogging, walking, skiing, rope jumping, etc. keep bone health issues at bay. Moderate weight-lifting activity is also fine; it will keep your bones strong and help you move more easily.

Another important thing to consider is the quality of the clothes you’re going to work out in. Namely, adequate fitness clothing will provide proper support for your muscles and bones and let you exercise freely – without the fear of injury. It’s also important to choose the right athletic clothing for the physical activity you wish to engage in – good running shoes for jogging, professional gloves for weightlifting, etc. Better results also come with proper clothes, so make sure you’re adequately equipped.

The Biggest Don’ts for Healthy Bones

Besides eating the right foods and exercising regularly, preserving your bones depends on other factors, too, and there are certain behaviours that can surely do your bones no good.

Smoking gets the top of the no-no list. Smoking reduces the amount of calcium your bones get because it interferes with the way your body uses vitamin D, essential for proper calcium absorption. Smoking also lowers the levels of estrogen, which is important to help bones keep calcium and other minerals.

Besides, it’s toxic to osteoblasts, bone-forming cells that are essential for the good health of your skeletal system.

Although caffeine can have some health benefits, that’s not relevant to the bones. Too much of it also interferes with calcium absorption and makes your bones brittle. Alcohol also affects the vitamin D in your body, so try to moderate the intake. There’s no need to avoid coffee and an occasional glass of wine but try to lower their consumption – your skeletal system will be thankful.

Although osteoporosis is very common, there are certain steps that can be taken to counteract it and keep your bones healthy. Watch what you eat, stay active and up on your feet, and try to kick at least some of the unhealthy habits. Remember that your bones are there to support you – the least you can do is to support them, too!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What are you doing to make sure that you have healthy bones in the decades ahead? Are there certain foods you have added to your diet? What about exercise routines? Have you had any experiences with osteoporosis that you would like to share with the community? Please join the conversation.

We are now halfway through January and, for those who made New Year’s resolutions and are still going strong, well done. If you are sitting on the other side of the fence, where things haven’t quite worked out as planned, don’t be too hard on yourself. You are not alone, many people will have already abandoned their goals by now.

Although the concept of New Year’s goals is a wonderful thing, sometimes we can set ourselves up for failure simply because we make statements that are unclear or unrealistic.

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions quite a while ago and instead started setting intentions for the year, alongside mapping out the actions I need to take to achieve them.

So, What Has 2026 Got in Store for Me?

Well, in six days’ time, I leave to embark on a three-month trip to India, where I will be studying how to teach meditation and chakra healing. I feel excited to see where this path takes me and to learn more about these ancient holistic therapies, which I hope will have a profound impact on my future coaching sessions and retreats. I’ll also be very glad to swap the cold, dreary mornings for a warmer, sunnier climate. Get me out of here!

As I sit in my kitchen, tapping away on the keyboard of my MacBook, I find myself wondering what these next few months have in store. It feels like a mixture of inquisitiveness, excitement, and the wonder of the unknown. Whatever happens, I’m ready to embrace what God sends my way, choosing to be guided rather than thinking too intensely or following a rigid plan.

New Year’s Eve Was a Quiet Affair for Me

I had people I could have seen and places I could have gone, but I wanted to be alone. It’s quite ironic, as I had been feeling rather lonely after the Christmas period. Despite having a Christmas filled with love and quality time with family, once I returned home, I dipped into a lull of loneliness. When I could have pushed myself to be around others, instead I retreated and kept myself at home… alone. And yes, it doesn’t really make sense; feeling lonely but not wanting to be around anyone. Either way, it was what I needed at the time.

Instead, I spent the day running, writing, practising self-care, setting intentions, and honouring my emotions. There were tears. There was solitude. There were confusion and despair. And yet, I needed all of it.

While a large portion of the world celebrated, counted down to midnight, and watched fireworks, I went to bed before the clock struck 12 and shut myself off from it all.

I Received Clarity About My Goals and Intentions

The next day, I woke up feeling a shift, a little more clarity and a sense of peace. My intentions centred around moving forward with my business, my love life, and my finances, but what I realised was that while I may have intentions and plans, I want to be led more by God’s intentions for me. I listened to a webinar recently that spoke about asking God not to start you, but to stop you. So, while I will continue to take action and follow my intentions, I will also pray for guidance, especially to stop the things that are not meant to be in my life.

While the New Year can bring change, reflection, and mixed emotions, it’s okay not to have all the answers. It’s okay to honour your feelings. It’s okay not to feel obligated to list endless New Year’s resolutions. It’s okay to honour yourself, take things at a slower pace, and resist the urge to rush into commitments about what must change this year.

Perhaps the best thing we can do for ourselves is give ourselves a little more time to reflect on what we truly want 2026 to be.

If you’ve been feeling stuck when it comes to what you’re calling in this year, maybe it’s about looking at your life through a different lens. Perhaps it’s less about what we will do and more about what we won’t do, or even how we want to feel.

Questions to Get You Out of a Rut:

What can you let go of this year? What hindered you in 2025 that you no longer want to repeat in 2026? What is the feeling you want to experience this year, and how can you create more of it?

I’d love to hear in the comments what’s in store for you this year.

This morning, a small wave of fear caught me off guard.

I’m more than six months into retirement, and I’m enjoying it. I love slow mornings. I love not having meetings. I love the lack of daily pressure. And yet, out of nowhere, I found myself thinking: What if this changes?

People often talk about the first stretch of retirement as a “honeymoon phase.” That phrase popped into my head, followed quickly by another worry: What if I eventually get bored with all this spaciousness? What if the art class I’m loving loses its spark? What if I start to feel lonely or unmoored?

Later that same morning, things went sideways in a very ordinary way.

While I know exactly what helps me start the day feeling centered – journaling, reading, sometimes a guided meditation – I didn’t do any of that. Instead, my husband was already immersed in the news, sharing his concerns. I checked email. And within minutes, I was pulled into my other post-retirement role: helping care for my 95-year-old dad as he recovers from a serious fall.

I’m deeply grateful to be there for him. It’s meaningful. But it’s also demanding. By mid-morning, I felt rushed, scattered, and oddly behind – despite the fact that no deadlines were looming and no one was waiting for me to turn something in.

That’s when it clicked: this is what unstructured days can do.

Why Open Time Can Feel Unsettling

Retirement is supposed to feel freeing. No calendar. No deadlines. No one telling you where to be.

And yet, many women feel off-balance once the structure of work disappears.

For years, work organized our days. There were projects to move forward, colleagues waiting for input, students or clients expecting follow-up, and a built-in sense of when the day had “counted.” Without that underlying rhythm, time can start to feel slippery.

My coaching clients describe it in familiar ways:

• “I’m financially ready, but I don’t know how my days will actually look.”
• “I want freedom, but I don’t want to drift.”
• “I worry my world will shrink.”

This shows up most often for women who spent decades managing multiple roles at once: demanding careers, caregiving for children or parents, volunteer commitments, and emotional labor that often went unnoticed. Retirement doesn’t erase that complexity. It removes the structure that used to help organize it.

And when there’s no rhythm, something else often fills the space: checking email one more time, scrolling the news, saying yes to errands or favors, or carrying a low-grade sense that you should be doing something – even if you can’t say what.

Enjoyment Feels More Reachable Than Joy

One client said something recently that stayed with me. After a long career and a series of health and family challenges, she told me that choosing joy as a goal felt unrealistic. The word felt heavy and out of reach.

Then she landed on a different word: enjoyment.

Not constant happiness. Not a perfectly curated life. Just moments of enjoyment – walking her dogs, taking in the desert landscape, lingering over a conversation with a new friend.

That distinction matters. Most women aren’t looking to fill their calendars or reinvent themselves. They want days that feel steady, satisfying, and alive – without pressure.

And enjoyment tends to show up more easily when days have a bit of shape – not a plan, just something to lean into.

What Actually Helps When Days Feel Undefined

When many women hear the word structure, they imagine schedules, rigid routines, and being boxed in. That’s not what most women want in retirement. Too much structure feels confining. Too little leaves them feeling unmoored.

What tends to help is a combination of anchors and rhythms.

What Are Anchors?

Anchors are small, repeatable touchpoints that help the day feel grounded and familiar. They’re often personal and simple:

• reading a book with your coffee before the day fills up
• walking outside
• exercising
• journaling
• checking in with yourself about the day ahead

What Are Rhythms?

Rhythms operate at a bigger scale. They give the week some shape without locking it down:

• Themed days, where one day leans toward social connection, another toward learning or creativity, and another toward contributing skills or finishing something that matters to you.
• Energy-based rhythms, with more demanding activities grouped together and other days intentionally lighter.
• Anchor-first days, where one meaningful anchor happens early and the rest of the day stays open.
• Bookend rhythms, with a consistent start or close to the day while the middle remains flexible.

These patterns help your days feel intentional rather than accidental – and more like your own.

A Simple Experiment to Try

If your days have been feeling scattered, try this.

Choose one rhythm that feels supportive to you right now. You don’t need to analyze it or pick the “best” one. Just notice which option you’re drawn to.

Once you’ve chosen a rhythm, anchor it lightly:

• Pick one anchor that helps you feel like yourself (5–20 minutes is plenty).
• Add one meaningful block that fits the rhythm you chose.
• Leave the rest of the day open.

For example, on a day that leans toward connection, your anchor might be a quiet cup of coffee and a few pages of reading in the morning. Your meaningful block could be lunch with a friend or a long phone call you’ve been meaning to make. The rest of the day stays unscheduled.

That’s it.

You’re not trying to design the perfect day or solve retirement all at once. You’re noticing what steadies you, what drains you, and what makes the day feel more livable – or even enjoyable.

A Realistic Word About Health

Health challenges can interrupt plans, limit energy, and make enjoyment harder than we expected.

At the same time, retirement often brings something many women haven’t had in decades: time. Time to move more intentionally, rest without guilt, attend appointments without rushing, and recover without pushing through exhaustion.

This is where rhythm becomes especially important. When days already have some shape, health disruptions don’t automatically unravel everything. There’s something to return to, something steady to adapt around, rather than starting from scratch every time something changes.

Why “Watering Your Own Garden First” Matters Here

When days are undefined, it’s incredibly easy to default to other people’s needs – especially for women who’ve spent a lifetime being reliable, helpful, and responsive. Without clear rhythms of your own, your time gets claimed before you’ve had a chance to claim it yourself.

Learning to water your own garden first is what creates the rhythm that open days lack.

Many women tell me they appreciate the permission they get through my writing and our coaching sessions – permission to take themselves seriously, to protect time, and to design days that support their own wellbeing. I wish women didn’t need that permission in the first place.

But if that’s part of the learning curve, I’m glad to offer it.

A Place to Start

If parts of this article felt familiar, you’re not imagining things – many women struggle with open time in ways they didn’t expect.

I created a free Retirement Vision Starter Kit to help you gently explore what actually steadies you when your days feel open and undefined. It includes a few short reflections and low-pressure experiments to help you notice what gives your days energy, meaning, and a sense of flow.

It takes about 20 minutes. You can do it all at once or come back to it over a few days – whatever feels supportive.

 Download the free Retirement Vision Starter Kit here.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What’s the hardest part of open time for you right now – having too much of it, not enough structure, or something else entirely?

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Style Stealers

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Originally posted at: Rachel Zoe’s Gold Chunky Confessional Necklace and Ring