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    • I AM READING
  • Home
  • Educational Videos
  • RESEARCH BLOG
  • SPEAKING PRESENTATIONS
  • HOME COOKING
  • About
  • FAQ
  • I AM READING

 Alena Forbes, PhD, MS, MEd, CNS®
Researcher in human resilience, healthy aging, and clinical nutrition
Author of Where Is Grandma? 

My book is published!

The book presents the findings of an original study with women aged 65 to 96 in Sonoma County, California. The findings reveal how resilience is built and rebuilt across a lifetime. Read it. Give it to your daughter or granddaughter. And if it stays with you, leave a review—that is how it finds its next reader! 

Buy on Amazon

WELCOME!

Welcome to my website, where research, mind-body medicine, clinical nutrition, and healthy aging come together to explore how people cultivate resilience throughout the lifespan.


My work focuses on the everyday practices through which people adapt, recover, and continue to grow in the face of adversity. Drawing on qualitative research, clinical nutrition, and decades of professional experience, I translate these findings into meaningful applications for healthcare, community programs, and healthy aging.


About the Study

My doctoral research included interviews with twenty-eight women, ages sixty-five to ninety-six, in Sonoma County, California. I asked how they had come through what they had come through — the losses, the illnesses, the caregiving, the marriages that lasted and the ones that did not, the decades of holding a life together.  Across the interviews, five connected patterns emerged: participants built daily structures, cultivated inner resources, resisted being defined by adversity, identified the conditions that shaped their opportunities, and continually reconsidered what resilience meant across the lifespan.  When disruption arrived, and it always did, meaning steadied her while she began to build again. 


Resilience is not something we are. It is something we do, again and again, across the whole length of a life. Resilience does not begin at a single moment. It is shaped by biological inheritance, early experiences, relationships, culture, and the environments in which we live. It is strengthened and reconstructed through the choices we make, the meaning we create from what happens to us, the relationships we nurture, and the daily practices that sustain us.


Whether you are a researcher, a healthcare professional, a student, or someone interested in aging well, I invite you to explore the research, resources, and educational materials shared here.

Join the mailing list! Occasional notes on the next book, research on resilience, inheritance, and nutrition, no more than once a month.

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The contents of this website are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other QUALIFIED health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. 


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