Growing With Our Grandchildren

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Hello, friends, Shirley Showalter here, co-author with Marilyn McEntyre of The Mindful Grandparent: The Art of Loving Our Children's Children, from Broadleaf Books, May, 2022. Having embraced elderhood, we invite you to do the same.

In 2013 I published Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World. Previously, I was a professor, a college president (Goshen College), and a foundation executive (the Fetzer Institute).

Most recent blog posts

Why We Installed Solar Panels: Old Age and the Triple Bottom Line

It makes no sense. We are not likely to recoup the money it takes to buy and install solar. We’re too old. But we did it anyway.   Our next door neighbors went first. They were in their eighties! When I saw their solar panels going up, I remembered a proverb: A modern way of…

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Owen, Lydia, and Julia with their grandparents. June 22, 2019

Grandparent Camp: Like Baking a Cake

Grandparent week at our house started out at the Showalter Reunion. Owen and Julia’s parents drove 8.5 hours to Mountain Lake Lodge in Pembroke, Virginia, to participate in the festivities. At the end of the reunion, Owen and Julia jumped into Grandma and Granddad’s car, and their parents drove back to Philadelphia and Montclair so…

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Screen shot from the campaign website store: https://store.peteforamerica.com/collections/gear/products/pete-2020-embroidered-hat

In Defense of Iowa Caucuses and an Explanation for Mayor Pete’s Popularity Among Seniors

  My best friend in Iowa is a country girl. Like me, Carol Bodensteiner grew up on a dairy farm in the 1950s. She wrote a childhood memoir, which brought us together. We are both writers. For the last two years, Carol and I have talked with each other once a month, discovering that we…

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