The Visionary Institute for Total Ageless Living (VITAL)

VITAL's Beginning
The Visionary Institute for Total Ageless Living, Inc. (VITAL) emerged from a series of discussions among three baby boomers. These boomers were part of the ever-growing sandwich generation rearing their own children while being the primary caregivers for their parents. After living the emotional roller coaster ride and witnessing firsthand the often unsettling realities of independent living, assisted-living, and nursing home care, several truths emerged for these boomers:

1.  The powerful need for social support, and the decline in emotional and physical health that
     ensues when such support is not available.

2.  The need for advocacy skills to ensure the best care and treatment available for one's parents,
     and the burn-out that occurs even under the best of circumstances when dealing with these 
     highly-emotional issues.

3.  The emotional strength and healing nature of feeling needed, and the shrinking of one's world
     when one loses control and is segregated from multi-generational connectivity.

4.  The vision needed to learn from these lifetime lessons and forge a new map of growing older for
     society.

VITAL is committed to exploring, implementing, and promoting innovative options for baby boomers to enjoy and enhance their lives. These options require that we redefine retirement and old age. The options must embrace growth and change, characteristics used by this generation in the past. Boomers need to unite to dismantle the stereotypes of old age and lead the rest of society into establishing new avenues for "ageless living."

We as boomers cannot leave it for our children to decide where and how we will live: We need to have the foresight now to create fun, practical living paradigms. As sculptor Louise Nevelson so aptly expressed at age 80, "I never feel age.... If you have creative work, you don't have age or time."

VITAL was founded as a not-for-profit organization to pursue the mission of redefining the dynamics of aging in our society, destroying the stereotypes of aging, and promoting productive, ageless living. We call on all baby boomers to join with VITAL in helping to create and promote new models of healthy and productive living.