Mitos – 84, CHSP client

If there were ever a poster girl for ‘young at heart’, Mitos is it. Standing knee-high to a grasshopper, Mitos is a pocket-rocket of pure positive energy. She recently took a turn on the catwalk for Your Side, modelling in a campaign to show how ageing doesn’t have to mean fading.

Mitos has a very busy social schedule, juggling time with family with commitments to her various social groups. She has three grandchildren who she sees often. They used to all descend on her house for gatherings and she would cook, but now her sons like to host and let her relax. They recently marked her son’s 60th birthday, and all her grandchildren came to her house to celebrate.

She loves her Filipino culture and returns to Merville every year to visit family and friends. She remarks that in the Philippines, people are very open and friendly, always inviting strangers into their homes. When she migrated here in the 1970s she didn’t find Australians as welcoming and initially she mostly interacted with the Filipino community here.

This has not been the case for the last 16 years, since Mitos became a fixture at her local gym. She started going to improve her posture, as she was beginning to stoop. She was hesitant at first, seeing it was mostly young people who went. Soon enough, she was a fitness fanatic. She now gets up at 6am every day and goes to the gym to do Pilates, body pump and Zumba classes. She likes how it makes her feel strong, she can do lunges and hold a plank.

The Zumba class was where she found people opened up, the high-energy dancing naturally broke down barriers and everyone has a giggle together. Her friendships now span generations, she regularly lunches with women as much as 20 years younger than her after their workouts.

She and her gym friends always wear make-up and jewelry when they work out, they like to look their best. According to Mitos, she looks better now than she did in her 60s, because she is healthier. She likes to match her shoes to her outfits, so she has seven different coloured pairs of runners. Her photos for Your Side were not her first foray into modelling – she was featured in a promotion for her local gym’s Body Shape program on social media.