"When I grow up I wanna be just like Gramma Howie," has always started my story of what ageing well looks like. My mum-in-law -Howie- laughed and loved her way through life's challenges & opportunities: becoming a single mom of teenagers, returning to the workforce when it wasn't a mainstream lifestyle, making beautiful things with her hands like art & crafts, or her daughter’s wedding with only her imagination and very little jingle in her pocket, living with cancer, giving back to her community in volunteerism, taking in stray dogs and stray folks giving them not just a meal or shelter, but love and calling them family, finding good and beauty and laughter everywhere until the day she died. That's aging well, and why, even now in my retirement years say: " When I grow up I wanna be just like Gramma Howie".

Sheila F., British Columbia