This is 67: Spiritual Counselor Priscilla Stuckey Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

"It’s like life is this cosmic compost pile, turning our shit into something beautiful and life-giving. I feel so lucky to live long enough to witness it."

From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”

Here, nature-focused spiritual counselor and author

Priscilla Stuckey

responds. -Sari Botton

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Priscilla Stuckey recently.

Priscilla Stuckey

is a writer and spiritual counselor with a passion for reconnecting people with nature. She is the author of two memoirs, including the award-winning Kissed by a Fox: And Other Stories of Friendship in Nature. She spent her life doing books—studying them, editing them, teaching them, writing them, and helping others write them. Now she lives close to the ocean and loves the deep peace of being in the water. She writes the Nature :: Spirit newsletter and podcast.

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How old are you?

67

Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?

I’ve always been 42 or 43. Kind of came out of the womb as a 40-year-old. I learned to read early and just wanted to bury myself in books—to learn, learn, learn. As a kid I always identified with the adults in the room. And as a teenager I was miserable because adolescent things were beyond me—no clue how to be young, just sitting on my hands waiting to grow up. I look back at that girl now and think, So earnest! Just relax and enjoy yourself! But that all would come later.

Now that I’m 67, I still feel like I’m 43. The people I’m drawn to are about that age. And I have the energy for changing the world that I associate with younger people. I feel in some ways right now like I’m just getting started.

As a kid I always identified with the adults in the room. And as a teenager I was miserable because adolescent things were beyond me—no clue how to be young, just sitting on my hands waiting to grow up. I look back at that girl now and think, So earnest! Just relax and enjoy yourself! But that all would come later.

Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?

A few years ago, in my mid-60s, I was diagnosed with autism, and that out-of-step feeling started to make sense. Turns out it wasn’t just about age—I was out of step, period! Always felt like I had to catch up somehow, always scanning the room to find out how to be. The faster I could figure it out, the faster I could fit in. When you’re autistic and masking like this, and you do it for years, you may figure out over time how to fit in to quite a few different kinds of rooms. I had to stretch to do it, and it was hard work, but I’m glad I did.

Priscilla Stuckey at 45, with one of her true loves, Sapphire.

What do you like about being your age?

I don’t have such an urge to fit in anymore. I adore just following my own inclinations. It’s enormously freeing. I am still tempted to FOMO, fear of missing out, but less and less over time. I remind myself that I did all that stuff; I don’t have to push myself to do it again. And life feels a lot more relaxed as a result.

What is difficult about being your age?

I don’t like having my days interrupted by medical and physical therapy appointments. I’ve had to listen to my body for decades already. I thought I had that all down! So having to pay even closer attention can be annoying.

But if you’re lucky—and I am tremendously lucky—some of those muscle or joint kinks can get ironed out with better movement or more strength. So in physical therapy I’m learning things I wish I’d learned years ago about abdominal muscles. It’s giving me more physical ease than I’ve ever had in my life. I feel more grounded and solid now. And even, for the very first time in my life, graceful! Most of my life I’ve been a clumsy collection of elbows and legs. But now when I walk across a room I actually feel coordinated. What a change! It’s a tremendous gift. And wow, does it make me feel younger. And more confident.

About ten years ago my digestion went into decline, and my life has been pretty limited since then—no going out to eat, no travel, even years before the pandemic. The thing that apparently set it off was aging—the body no longer producing certain substances, and over time trying to digest without them did some damage. But I’ve been working hard to solve this puzzle, and I’m finally on the mend and regaining foods again. Will I be able to get back to pizza and Thai food? I sure hope so!

The takeaway here is that aging isn’t a one-way street toward decline. Even age-related damage can sometimes be healed, or at least improved, if you persist in figuring out what works.

Now that I’m 67, I still feel like I’m 43. The people I’m drawn to are about that age. And I have the energy for changing the world that I associate with younger people. I feel in some ways right now like I’m just getting started.

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?

I didn’t expect life to keep opening, and opening, and opening. I thought at some point it starts to feel like you’re on a downslope. Maybe it does, but I’m not there yet! I still have a passion for learning, for making better sense of the world, for writing, for sharing what I know with others. I am more committed than ever to helping to change the world.

And some years back I was totally taken by surprise when I got the urge to scuba dive. Out of the blue I got seized by this passion—never had it before in my life—to get to know the underwater world. So for my 60th birthday I decided to get certified. It didn’t happen until I was 62, but it’s why I live in Hawaiʻi now—to go swimming with the sea life.

First certified dive, age 62.

What has aging given you? Taken away from you?

Aging introduced me to Social Security. It’s a lifesaver. I’ve always supported the idea of universal basic income. Now I’m experiencing the utter liberation of it, and I couldn’t want it more for everybody.

What aging has taken—I don’t have the social or sensory stamina of earlier years. I have to count my spoons extra carefully, even for things I enjoy, like getting together with a friend. I need more peace, more solitude. I’m more sensitive to motion and speed. Being in wind makes me irritable. Even driving across town has a bigger cost than before. So while I feel physically as strong as I’ve ever been in my life, it doesn’t translate into vigorous activities. I like the quieter, more meditative sports.

Just listen to me—as if I do sports! As a child I hated sports. But apparently I’ve lived long enough to outgrow this one. I couldn’t be more thrilled to be swimming and snorkeling and diving at this stage of life.

I think I started out life pretty hesitant and afraid. For me aging is just more growing up. And as I’m growing up I’m learning to live with more trust and more joy.

A few years ago, in my mid-60s, I was diagnosed with autism, and that out-of-step feeling started to make sense. Turns out it wasn’t just about age—I was out of step, period! Always felt like I had to catch up somehow, always scanning the room to find out how to be. The faster I could figure it out, the faster I could fit in.

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

It’s amazing how much you keep feeling the same over the years. I feel like just a slightly better version of the person I’ve always been—better in the sense of being more peaceful. More ready to let things be. Way more content. And more willing to trust discontent when it does arise—to trust that it’s saying something truthful. Life has taught me to make changes sooner when I feel the urge. To trust my own perceptions and honor them. And to trust the process of living itself—that life has rhythms and seasons beyond our knowing, and if I let myself go where life leads, things have a way of working out. And sometimes in spectacularly better ways than I could ever have thought up on my own.

What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?

My life happened totally out of order—I was so serious in the early decades, had more fun later. So I’ve never fit the milestones. Didn’t have kids. Didn’t get out of school until age 40. Didn’t get together with my true love until 47. Didn’t get published until 55. Never could hold a full-time job—now I know because of social and sensory limits with autism. And for all that, my life has been incredibly rich and full. I explored a lot. I tried all the things I wanted to try. I made some beauty, made some mistakes, made some friends, and made enough money to live on. So now I don’t feel the need to go looking for experiences I might have missed out on. It’s a really wonderful place to be in life.

There’s one huge milestone waiting up ahead, the one we all share. I’ve always been more than usually fascinated with what comes after dying. Even as a child I felt that there was something beautiful out there. Death itself wasn’t scary—it was the deaths of others that made it horrible, the fact that my loved ones could just disappear. But going there myself?—it might even be magical.

For the past decade I’ve practiced a kind of meditation that involves watching imagery unfold in your mind, kind of like a novelist watching a story develop in their imagination. It’s shamanic-style journeying, and I wrote about it in my second memoir, Tamed by a Bear.

A neurological study was done on journeying, and it showed that the brains of people who engage in it light up in similar ways as those of people engaged in psychedelic therapy. One of the known benefits of psychedelic therapy is that it relaxes people’s fears about dying; it eases their dread and helps them make peace with their own end. A decade of journeying has done some of that work in me, just without ingesting any substances. I’ve seen enough on these inner travels that I feel even more strongly now than I did as a child that what comes after is beautiful—that we all come from there, we all return there in the end, and rejoining it most likely will be blissful.

There’s a story told about the Zen teacher Sunryu Suzuki. When he visited Yosemite he looked up at a huge waterfall. When the river approaches the cliff, he said, it is one river. Then it plunges over the edge, and it separates into all these individual drops. Each of our lives is like one drop making its way to the bottom. Through the long fall we travel separately, but at the bottom the river is waiting. All we have to do is rejoin it.

Stuckey on her 35th birthday.

What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

For me life really did begin at 40. Before then I had so much emotional work to do, and it felt like it would never end. But at 40 I started to feel happy for the first time in my life. So I’ve loved my 40s, 50s, and 60s. Especially because Tim and I found each other again at 47. We met during our first semester of college and were friends all during college but never got together. It took going our separate ways and marrying other people and living on opposite coasts to bring us back to each other. We’re celebrating 20 years together now, and we couldn’t be more amazed and grateful.

I wouldn’t go back to any of it. What I know now is hard-won.

Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?

I think of my diving idol, Sylvia Earle. She’s the oceanographer who holds the depth record for solo diving. She’s 89 and says, “I still breathe, so of course I still dive.”

Then there were Russ and Mary. We got to know them about 20 years ago. They had been Freedom Riders in the South in 1961, and when we knew them they were both 90, still protesting war, still getting arrested and jailed. Mary always had the biggest, fiercest hugs for us. Tim and I were newly together then, and one day Russ gave Tim some advice on making a relationship work over decades. He was always so quiet and dignified, but at that moment he got a wicked twinkle in his eye and said to Tim, “Flirt with her every day.” They were so much themselves at 90, so alive, so full of love.

Some years back I was totally taken by surprise when I got the urge to scuba dive. Out of the blue I got seized by this passion—never had it before in my life—to get to know the underwater world. So for my 60th birthday I decided to get certified. It didn’t happen until I was 62, but it’s why I live in Hawaiʻi now—to go swimming with the sea life.

What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?

I’ve only ever paid attention to style for special occasions, and then I like to do it up right. I will not tell you how much I dropped on makeup when I got to be a seat filler at the Oscars.

I’ve spent my life in jeans and sweaters and fleece jackets. Here in Hawaiʻi, it’s shorts and T-shirts. No makeup. But lately when I see myself in the mirror I find myself wondering if I need a little foundation or freshening up. Then I have to laugh: I don’t go out anywhere, so who am I kidding?

Priscilla and Tim after the Oscars at 55, and after snorkeling at 63.

What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?

If my body needs something to stay happy, I do it, whatever it is.

What turn of events had the biggest impact on your life? What took your life in a different direction, for better or worse?

When I was 32, I came down with a flu and didn’t recover for 4 years. Now it’s called Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). It basically put my life on hold. I lay flat on my back for days and weeks on end, staring at the ceiling, while my friends in school were graduating and launching their careers. It was awful. I have a lot of empathy for people with Long Covid.

And because I got stopped in my tracks, I started to look at the world differently. I began connecting with nature. My priorities shifted. I started putting health absolutely first, ahead of my work ambitions or being respectable.

After a couple years of this I had recovered quite a bit and was stronger again, so I ended my marriage. And that happened to be the year when not one but both of my parents died. So right after turning 35 I lost my parents as well as my ex’s family. I was so alone. It was terrifying. Life was pretty rough for some years after that—grief, depression, despair.

My life happened totally out of order—I was so serious in the early decades, had more fun later. So I’ve never fit the milestones. Didn’t have kids. Didn’t get out of school until age 40. Didn’t get together with my true love until 47. Didn’t get published until 55. Never could hold a full-time job—now I know because of social and sensory limits with autism. And for all that, my life has been incredibly rich and full.

In my first book, Kissed by a Fox, I wrote about how connecting with nature helped me come to life again. My books—and becoming a writer in general—are evidence of how much that time changed me. I had not intended to take up creative writing. I didn’t expect to listen to trees and birds and Earth. But all those wonderful changes came at such a cost. Chronic illness is devastating. And then the losses on top of it? My 30s are one long blur of writing a dissertation and taking naps and editing books and crying. And when I could, hiking and visiting the ocean—I was in the Bay Area—and trying to patch my life together again.

Order Stuckey’s memoir…

What is your number one regret in life? If you could do it all over again, what is the biggest thing you’d do differently?

Do I have regrets? I will say I am tempted to have them. Like, if I hadn’t been so studious in my 20s, could I have gone out to see the world earlier? If I hadn’t gotten married at 22, or if I’d gotten divorced before 35, could I have come into my own earlier? Obviously I could have. But just as obviously, I wasn’t a person who could make that choice at the time. And besides, who am I to judge what was best for my younger self?

I find now that life has a way of shifting the lens on each of those events. A huge gift of living this long is that I see that each of those earlier decisions had a certain perfection to them. They might have been mistakes, yet every last one of them made other things possible, opened certain doors that wouldn’t have opened otherwise. It’s the kind of thing you can see only in hindsight—sometimes only decades later. Some of my worst decisions have worked themselves over time into bringing the most benefits—but it took several decades for them to ripen in this way. It’s truly a gift to live long enough to watch the transformation. It’s like life is this cosmic compost pile, turning our shit into something beautiful and life-giving. I feel so lucky to live long enough to witness it.

I’ve loved my 40s, 50s, and 60s. Especially because Tim and I found each other again at 47. We met during our first semester of college and were friends all during college but never got together. It took going our separate ways and marrying other people and living on opposite coasts to bring us back to each other. We’re celebrating 20 years together now, and we couldn’t be more amazed and grateful.

What is high up on your “bucket list?” What do you hope to achieve, attain, or plain enjoy before you die?

More diving! I’m a little out of practice, so I’m right now working up the courage to go underwater again. And I want to go deeper than before, say 50 to 100 feet down. I’ve noticed that around 45 feet a different kind of silence begins to settle around you. It’s very profound, very peaceful. And I want to keep snorkeling the rest of my life just to enjoy the fish—so beautiful, all the fancy fish! They are all so different. They all have personalities. The undersea world is utterly fascinating. It’s marvelously queer, lots of gender transitioning. I love watching the fish turn in the water and catch the sunlight, and stripes on their face might light up neon pink. Many have fantastic color-changing ability for camouflage. I want to hang out with the fish and thrill to their colors until the day I die.

First birthday, 1958.

Is there a piece of advice you were given, that you live by? If so, what was it, and who offered it to you?

I read that a very wise woman—I wish I could remember who—said that she hopes in five years she doesn’t think exactly the same as she does now. How freeing, to expect your thinking to change! I hope I can live by that.

A huge gift of living this long is that I see that each of those earlier decisions had a certain perfection to them. They might have been mistakes, yet every last one of them made other things possible, opened certain doors that wouldn’t have opened otherwise. It’s the kind of thing you can see only in hindsight—sometimes only decades later.

What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?

Doing the most fun thing I can think of, which has changed over time. It used to be gathering all my friends together and eating. But I need things to be quieter now. So these days I sink into the ocean in the morning and spend time with fish and turtles and octopuses and waves. Then for dinner Tim cooks my favorite foods, and he always bakes me this incredible birthday cake: gluten-free Double Chocolate Orange Torte.