11-11-2008
Sexy In Your 60’s: How You Can Naturally Reverse The Aging Process and Rejuvenate Your Life
Joan Bunney
Aviva Publishing, 2008
ISBN: 9781890427665
“Sexy in Your 60’s” is an amazing book that will surprise, inspire, and gratify you with its knowledge, wisdom, and straightforward style. Not only have I had the pleasure to read and review this book, but I also had the honor of being Joan’s editor and learning from her directly how to reverse the aging process as we brought the book into its final format. Most stunning to me was that while the book is written by a sixty-four year old and very sexy female, its information is just as beneficial for men as it is for women—Joan’s practical applications relevant to Body, Mind, and Spirit can help a man reawaken to his spiritual and sexual sides just as readily as any “crone” or woman of any age.
Women will love this book because Joan talks like a sister to them as she recounts her own experiences. She has undergone many of the trials and hardships women of her generation have faced—being expected to live a perfect married life, experiencing divorce, and having her own mother be ashamed of her when she gave birth to a child out of wedlock. Joan gave into the shame culture of her youth by giving up her son for adoption. Over thirty years passed before she reversed that mistake, only to find blessings had resulted from it. Her reunion with her son will bring tears to the reader’s eyes. Her confrontation with her mother and her refusal to end for herself the cycle of fear and shame too many women experience make her one of the most vibrant voices of her generation. Joan is from the age group that led the women’s movement, but she knows her generation’s work is not yet done, for now they must fight the battle against ageism. Joan encourages women to embrace becoming “crones” as they enter post-menopause and become grandmothers, for “crone” is a word of great power whose true meaning of wisdom and strength has too long been forgotten.
Joan Bunney continually highlights the inestimable value and nobility of women. She focuses upon the ancient goddess culture and a woman’s power to give birth—men have so much to learn from women and women’s sacred past that only in the last few decades has begun to be reclaimed. Joan joins her voice with many other voices she humbly refers to as her mentors to help bring about this changing viewpoint on women’s contributions to society.
But what about that word “sexy” in the book’s title? Just look at Joan’s pictures and you will be convinced by her sexiness. You might say, “Well, it’s easy for her. She was born with that petite body—she was probably a model when she was younger.” The truth is that Joan used to eat two-pound bags of M&Ms and had a career in restaurant management that revolved around food, which did not help her figure. Only in the last few years did Joan begin to study health and nutrition, and the result has been a reversal of her body’s aging. She tells readers how they can also experience the youthful look she has acquired, which is not at all impossible, nor even a secret, by simply making some wise and common sense choices—choices she has made for herself as she explains in “Sexy in Your 60’s.”
Women of Joan’s generation, and also women a generation older or a generation younger, will be inspired by this sister crone who encourages them no longer to live in fear of what men, their mothers, and patriarchal society think. Joan teaches women to shatter dysfunctional conditioning from fear-based restrictions. Instead, Joan guides women down the path to reclaiming their lost vision of themselves as goddesses, and she lets women know they do not have to age as their grandmothers did. Sixty may well be barely the halfway mark of a vibrant life if we follow Joan’s advice.
“Sexy in Your 60’s” is a book filled with resources. Not only does Joan tell her own story, but she constantly expresses gratitude to all her mentors for what they taught her. She discusses and provides access to over eighty resources, including books, websites, and films from which she has drawn her information, and she tells us her own experiences and the results she received from applying this information to her own healthcare routine.
And just look at her! She dates men decades younger than her; she lives a vibrant, energetic life, and “Sexy in Your 60’s” is only the first of many books she intends to write. As a living testimonial that anyone can know joy well past age sixty, Joan Bunney has turned herself into the sexiest woman alive today.
- Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., and author of The Marquette Trilogy
