When Ashton Applewhite published This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, she set out to dismantle a set of cultural myths: that growing older is inherently miserable, that decline is inevitable, and that worth diminishes with age. The book helped catalyze a global conversation about ageism and offered a radically different way to understand later life — as complex, varied, and full of possibility.
Ten years later, Applewhite returns to that work with something only time can provide: lived experience inside the very argument she made. In this conversation, she reflects on how a decade of aging, activism, and adaptation has deepened her understanding of identity, independence, disability, and grace — and why rejecting shame, embracing interdependence, and telling more honest stories about our changing bodies may be the most powerful tools we have for aging well.
