Lisa notes

Do you know Sister Jean?

I first discovered Sister Jean in 2018 as I was watching March Madness, the annual NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.

At 98 years old, she was cheering on her favorite team, Loyola University Chicago, as they reached the semifinals as a Cinderella Final Four team (they later lost to Michigan). As the team chaplain, she knew the players by name, led them in pregame prayers, and knew the scoop on their opponents.

I watched for Sister Jean on TV every year after that.

But last week on October 9, 2025, Sister Jean died. She was 106 years old. What an amazing life she had lived.

Maybe you have someone in your family like Sister Jean.

Or maybe you also know someone who is older but instead of being the life of the party, they are the grouchy one.

This is my grandmother who lived another 10 years after this photo, dying at 97 years old. (She was never grumpy around me.)

As we age, none of us want to become the grumpy older person; we’d rather be a Sister Jean. But how do we become that way?

If the question intrigues you, you might enjoy Dr. Kerry Burnight’s new book Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life’s Second Half as much as I did.

Burnight, known as “America’s Gerontologist,” writes with warmth and humor. Her well-researched message is simple yet profound: we don’t want to just live long (lifespan) or even just remain healthy (healthspan); what we really want is to enjoy living however long we have (joyspan).

Challenging the Anti-Aging Industry

You already know that our culture is obsessed with youth. It’s hard to find a pleasant birthday card to give an older person that isn’t a lewd joke about being over the hill. In advertising, we’re surrounded by products that promise to reverse aging. They play into our fears of getting older.

And often it works.

To counter that, Burnight says:

“People spend their lives trying not to age, trying not to die. Why not try to live instead?”

In her view, joy comes not from erasing your wrinkles but from nurturing your “ageless qualities,” like kindness, curiosity, humor, and resilience.

Redefining Aging: From Fear to Fulfillment

Joyspan again and again reinforces the idea of living better, not just longer. Burnight says that joy in later life isn’t accidental—it’s an “inside job.”

She outlines four practical actions that people with long joyspans consistently take:

1. Grow
Growth might mean learning a new skill.

2. Connect
Connection could be as simple as making time for old friends—or finding new ones of different ages.

3. Adapt
Adaptation helps you meet life’s challenges with flexibility

4. Give
Giving feeds your sense of purpose.

The book is full of great suggestions under each category for practicing these skills.

The Gifts of Growing Older

Your body will decline as you age. There’s no denying that. But Joyspan points out other things that actually strengthen over time:

• emotional stability,
• spiritual depth,
• problem-solving wisdom,
• and the freedom of not caring as much what other people think about you.

Burnight says science backs this up—studies show older adults often experience greater well-being and emotional balance than younger adults.

This is my daughter, me, my mother, my grandfather, and my great-grandmother, who lived to be over 100. She was very pleasant, active, and a joy to be around until the end.

Love as the Final Word

But to me, the book’s most powerful truth might be this one: love endures. Even when your body and health fade, your capacity to love—to mentor, to comfort, to show up in whatever ways you can—lives on.

To grow that direction for later, though, start living that way now. Whatever your age, be intentional to live with joy, purpose, and connection, even alongside life’s sorrows that are also bound to come.

Most of us won’t be traveling to basketball games at 98 years old like Sister Jean did. And we probably won’t live to be 106.

But like Sister Jean, we can hopefully make our older years as meaningful and joyful as possible.

Perhaps our best days aren’t behind us. They may still be ahead.

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Are you one and/or do you have joyful older people in your family?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

My thanks to NetGalley for the review copy of Joyspan