How We Heal When We Stop Treating Aging Like a Disease

Maybe what we call decline is actually an initiation.

Key Takeaways

➡️ Western medicine excels at fixing, but often fails at listening, especially to the emotional, spiritual, and existential dimensions of aging.

➡️ The real medicine may be presence, not prescription—something Christa Johnson discovered in her years at the bedside and in meditation.

➡️ Aging is not a medical failure, but a profound invitation to awaken, reflect, and return to the heart of who we are.

When Aging Is Treated Like a Problem, We Miss the Deeper Invitation

We live in a culture obsessed with maintenance—body, productivity, youth. So it’s no surprise that our dominant medical model mirrors that mindset. It treats aging like a long decline to delay. Something to manage, patch up, or “age-proof” as if getting older were a malfunction of biology rather than a natural unfolding of life.

But what if aging isn't the crisis? What if the real harm is how we respond to it?

This is the inquiry at the heart of Dr. Christa Johnson’s work—a former physician turned mindfulness teacher whose life experience bridges two worlds: the clinical precision of Western medicine, and the soul-deep insight of contemplative practice. In her book Mama J. Unchained: The Potential Joy and Freedom of Aging, Johnson invites us to rethink not just how we grow old, but how we care for those who are aging—including ourselves.

This piece weaves in a thread first explored in Why the Last Chapter Might Be the Most Liberating One Yet, where Johnson reframed aging as a return to one’s essential self. But here, we turn the lens outward—to the systems, biases, and blind spots that shape how society treats aging. Together, these perspectives offer a fuller vision of what healing could look like when aging is met not with fear or fix-it urgency, but with reverence, presence, and respect.

The Limits of the Stethoscope

In her years of practicing medicine, Johnson saw firsthand how Western healthcare could extend lives—but not always deepen them.

Hospitals, clinics, and even well-meaning caregivers are trained to fix what’s broken. But for older adults—especially those nearing the later stages of life—what’s often needed isn’t repair. It’s reflection. Connection. A kind of care that sits with discomfort rather than trying to erase it.

“Medical training doesn’t equip us for silence,” she writes. “It doesn’t teach us how to simply be with a person in pain who doesn’t want to be fixed—just seen.”

The problem isn’t that Western medicine is wrong. It’s that it’s incomplete. It excels at the mechanics of the body, but it struggles to hold space for the soul. Johnson's pivotal shift came not in a classroom but in hospice rooms—where the need wasn’t for cures, but for comfort, meaning, and presence.

Stillness Is a Form of Medicine

After leaving clinical practice, Johnson turned to mindfulness—not as a retreat from healing, but as a return to it.

Her practices, which blend neuroscience, meditation, and ancient wisdom, encourage what she calls “the inner being”—a quieter, wiser part of us that isn’t defined by age, illness, or external achievement. Through stillness and attention, she helps readers discover that healing doesn’t always mean reversing damage. Sometimes, it means meeting ourselves fully, perhaps for the first time.

“Beneath our ego-driven need for success... lies an inner being that is naturally loving, compassionate, wise, and accepting,” she writes.

This inner approach isn’t just gentle—it’s powerful. Especially for aging individuals who may no longer feel seen by a world racing past them, or who have internalized messages that their worth is tied to productivity. Johnson’s work reminds us: presence is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. And for many, it may be the most powerful medicine of all.

Aging as Spiritual Intelligence

Johnson doesn’t view aging as a passive surrender—but as a sacred transition. In fact, she sees it as a kind of curriculum. One that invites us to unlearn old identities, release attachments, and reconnect with the essence of who we really are.

In her stories—sometimes playful, often deeply reflective—she shares what it means to embrace “mindful mischief,” cultivate joy in the mundane, and reclaim voice and vitality beyond societal expectations. She challenges the narrative that later life is a time of diminishing, offering instead a vision of late-life becoming.

And perhaps most radically, she positions aging not as a problem to solve, but as a wisdom path.

Where Western medicine stops, Mama J. Unchained continues—with questions, with stillness, with soul.

What Happens When We Stop Trying to Fix What Was Never Broken?

Christa Johnson’s message is clear: the body may grow older, but the soul grows clearer. And if we stop long enough to listen—to elders, to ourselves, to what’s underneath the surface—we might discover that aging holds more gifts than our culture has ever dared to admit.

We don’t need more anti-aging products. We need pro-aging presence.

And for those who are beginning to walk that path—or caring for someone who is—Mama J. Unchained is less of a prescription and more of a companion. Not to fix, but to feel. Not to chase youth, but to welcome what’s real.

🌿 To learn more, visit christajohnsonmd.com or find Mama J. Unchained on Amazon.