Tag: aging

Cycles

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Lin

When you have spent a good portion of your life striving to get ahead, raising a family, doing your best in the societal constructs of our times, and you come to a point of culmination – family grown, savings in the bank, learning from your past achievements and your failures, you give yourself a little timeout time to just breathe, and to bask, and to celebrate, and to reflect. And then . . . . the fear of growing stale and bored starts building up in you, and so you start to explore new things for new times. And these new things feel exciting and scary and uncomfortable and necessary if you want to continue to grow. My husband and I are starting baby steps into some new things, for this new phase of our shared lives.

Recently, my husband and I talked to each other about an older couple who lives across the street from us. Our neighbors are kind, and predictable and reliable. They are a comfort to watch them in their completely regular everyday routines. They are like a wonderful, well worn pair of your favorite slippers. But this couple is older than us – much older. We aren’t ready for “settled in our ways” yet. And so we have started considering new ideas and new interests and this is kind of unsettling. We are brushing the dust off of some of “our old ways”, and we are getting brave to explore parts of ourselves which we may have yet to discover. We are stirring things up to get “unsettled in our ways.”

If I have seemed distant and distracted on the blog lately, it’s because I am. I am propping up my courage to actively explore what I want in the next five years, and beyond. I am trying to get really real and authentic with myself, about what is working, about what isn’t working, and about what needs to change, and about what needs to be brought in, and about what needs to be let go, now that I am at the early stages of a brand new era of my life. I am starting to execute ideas that have been building in my mind, and this is exhilarating and intimidating all at once. I haven’t felt those kinds of feelings, this deeply, for a while, since I was finishing up my last stage of the first half of my adulthood. I understand that these are just the cycles of life, which keep on cycling us forward into our futures. And like all of the beginnings of my past life cycles, I am full of hopefulness and trepidation in equal measures. But the energetic momentum keeps me moving forward into new adventures. I honestly can’t wait to see what is up ahead and around the bend.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1690. Who makes you laugh without even trying?

Facefit Friday

Hi Friends!!! Happy Friday!!! Happy Best Day of the Week! On Fridays, I keep my thoughts on the surface. On Fridays, I focus on stuff that I like. Fridays on the blog are called “Favorite Things Friday.” Recently I read an article that stated, as you age, you are either more prone to wrinkling or to sagging. Now, I have both issues, but I believe that I am more prone to sagging, particularly in my jowls area. I am loathe to try something potentially expensive, dangerous or disfiguring, at this point in the aging game, but I did spring for a $20 Jaw Exerciser by Facefit on Amazon. Keep your expectations in check. This is not a substitution for a facelift, but I do believe I have noticed a subtle, but positive difference and it is easy to do the exercises when I am doing things at my computer, such as writing this blog. I also try to smile more frequently in my older years. Smiling is the cheapest, most effective facelift around!

Smile! It’s Friday! Enjoy your weekend! See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

419. Do you tend to “live” in the past, present or future?

Monday – Funday

credit: @woofknight, X

The Olympics closing ceremony was yesterday. Weren’t the Olympics great this year? The little ones start back to school today, in our neck of the woods. I heard the school busses making their rounds. We picked up our daughter at the airport last night, who flew in after her study abroad experience that she had this summer in Europe, and she already headed back to her university this morning, for sorority rush events. Our visiting adult kids left yesterday to go back to their own lives and schedules and I . . . . am exhaling.

Despite knowing that we have at least a couple more months of hot and sticky summer weather to endure, from a lifetime of living by the rhythm of school schedules, it definitely feels like I have yet another summer underneath my belt. I have experienced 53 summers in my lifetime. You enter into every summer with excitement and anticipation for plans of fun and leisure and relaxation and reunions and vacations and casual celebrations, and then it kind of takes you by surprise when seemingly all of the sudden, summer’s over. We had been planning my daughter’s summer in London for a long time. Everything went without a hitch. I am so grateful. I’m so relieved. And I am so happy to have her back in our country. And I honestly can’t believe that this long anticipated experience is now just a lovely memory in the past.

Someone once told me that aging is like a toilet roll. “The closer you get to the end,” he chuckled, “the faster it goes.” I thought that this was hilarious when I first heard it (when I was a bit younger). Now, I’m just aghast at the truth of it.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2473. What new memories do you want to make?

It’s Over

I was flipping through my emails this morning, and I came across writer/podcaster Kelly Corrigan’s quick summary of her conversation with Aliza Pressman, who is an author and a counselor and a parenting expert. So, I went down the rabbit hole of watching various interviews and videos Aliza Pressman had made on The Today Show and on her Instagram, filled with excellent parenting tips, and my overall impression was 1.) Aliza makes many practical, useful, sensible, effective suggestions and 2.) Thank heavens that our four kids are grown and I don’t have to frantically try out any of her suggestions! We don’t even have grandchildren yet. Yes, we do have three somewhat unruly, misbehaved dogs. (My daughter kept chiding us, earlier this summer, that we simply weren’t going to believe how extremely well-behaved the darling dogs of London are, running around leashless in Hyde Park only because they listen to every command their owners give to them, every single time. Yes, it seems that even English dogs have better manners than their American counterparts. I have always wholly admitted that we were much better at raising kids, than we were at raising dogs.)

I have reached that early empty nest realization that my younger self (and my husband’s younger self, and my friends’ younger selves) were total badasses. Parenting is hard! I was cleaning out ancient emails the other day and I found an email which I had sent to a family member, trying to schedule some time to get together one weekend. With four kids at home, balancing four crazy schedules of school and sports and activities, the schedule read like something you’d expect from a rock star’s world tour, or a dignitary visiting a foreign land and trying to make the utmost of the short time allotted. And I sounded so calm in my email. Just reading the schedule exhausted me. But my former self seemed to take it all in stride.

I loved raising my family. However, I also love that this mission is completed. Parenting is hard work: physically, mentally, and particularly emotionally. There is no job in the world that you don’t beat yourself up more for not doing it “right.” When you are actively parenting, you are on call 24/7. Even when we were on vacation, when the kids were little, it often seemed like we had just packed up our life of parenting, and unpacked it (and unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked) in a different location.

The thing about parenting is that it always carries a low level of “guilt.” Even now I feel “guilty” writing that I am relieved that my “raising my kids days” are complete. I see many people pining away for the days when the kids were little. I’m not completely sure what that pining is about. Is it loss of our own youth and vitality? Is it stuck in regrets of wishing we had done things differently, or that circumstances had gone differently? Is it losing too much of our identity in our roles as parents, that we feel a loss of who we are currently? Is it feeling a loss of control, and loss of great amounts of time and insight, into the separate lives of our now adult children?

I feel kind of fortunate that I don’t feel too sad that my active parenting phase is over. My friend loves to repeat the adage, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Be happy that it happened.” Thankfully, I believe that I am a “moving forward” kind of a person. That is not to say, that I don’t ever get caught up in the grips of nostalgia from time to time, or that I don’t ever look in the mirror and wish that I could bring that 30-something body and energy back into being, but overall, I’ve plunged fully and enthusiastically into each new phase of my life, and I intend to do the same with this empty nest phase that I am just wading into now. Life is a journey forward. I know that someday, in my quiet, elderly years, I’ll look back at what my empty nest emails/texts/communications looked like, and I will be in awe of my empty nest self, and everything that she experienced and completed and learned in that phase of her life. I will think to myself, “She (and her husband and her friends) sure were badasses” and then I’ll keep being my badass elderly self until it really is all over.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1591. Do your goals and dreams energize you – or exhaust you?

Forgetfulness

I saw this poem the other day and I had the idea to keep it until Sunday (poetry day on the blog), but I feel like writing about this today. So I will. As I have entered into my fifties, I am more cognizant of everything that I forget. I’m actually pretty good with birthdays and anniversaries and taking out the trash days, mostly because I am obsessive about writing things down. I scare myself with the things that I do forget though. I instantly forget names of movies and books and the characters in them. I stumble with the words that I want to use when I am relaying a story in conversation, I forget the names of towns I have visited, I couldn’t tell you what cars my friends drive, and I often mix-up our kids’ and our dogs’ names when I am talking to them. But honestly, I think that I have always been that way. I really don’t believe that I am headed towards early dementia.

The things that I do recall clearly, are like they happened yesterday. I’ll recall a story someone had relayed to me years ago, and their mouths drop open. “I can’t believe you remembered that,” they’ll say. I remember the oddest things. I remember a lot of random moments, I guess because for some reason that moment struck me as emotional, or unusual, or important in some nuanced way. Most of us writers are curious. We are always looking to understand, to see the deeper meaning in things and experiences. Most of us writers are observers and “sensers” (not censors). We are always looking for the right words to describe the way things feel. We are a little possessed with the question, “Why?”

I wish that I could remember names and numbers and historical facts better than I do. But I’m grateful that I can remember how a moment felt, what was really being said behind what was being said, tiny trinkets and plants and artwork that marked both sets of my grandparents’ homes, and trivial stories told to me by strangers that turned out to have a lot more meaning to them, when I was willing to explore the plot twists.

My memory is fickle, but it is deeply entrenched in what is really important to me- the heartfelt connection we have with each other and with the Life Experience in general. My heart remembers better than my aging computer of a brain ever did, or ever will. And honestly, that’s all that really matters to me.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1394. What sound relaxes you?

Footsies

credit: posted by Joseph Fasano on X

This one got to me. ^^^^ I guess it always comes down to being the light that we wish to see in the world. I’ve also read that it is interesting that we never question the Heavens as to why we have all the abundance and beauty and goodness and love that we experience on a daily basis. Perhaps we are all a little more spoiled and negative than we believe ourselves to be.

On Thursday and Friday, I finally got started on a thorough clean-out process I’ve been meaning to get to, since our daughter and youngest child left for college almost two years ago. (yes, I have procrastinated) Lately, while experiencing the empty nest phenomenon, a lot of our friends and family have been moving and downsizing and changing lifestyles, and while we have no plans to do anything like that yet, I have been envious about just how cleansing it feels when you move, and how during those times of moving homes, you get rid of a bunch of energy-clogging stuff. (We’ve lived in our current house for ten years, which is longer than we have lived anywhere.) Anyway, I started with my personal clothes closet and yesterday, I got really real with myself, and I gave away almost all of my beautiful high heeled shoes to Goodwill. (and there were a lot of pairs given away. I LOVE shoes) I had a lump in my throat. I used to joke that I had “Barbie feet” – they didn’t go flat. But it’s been a long time since I donned any of my truly high heels and they were collecting dust and clogging energy. It is time for them to go to a younger Barbie. As I asked my husband to help me to put the bag of shoes into the car to take to Goodwill, he noticed my “quiet” and he jokingly asked me not to cry on him. Then he gave me a hug and told me how sexy I am. This Barbie has a really good Ken. Ken stays.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1219. What one trait do you have that would make you a terrible boss? (Impatience. I’m not known for my patience, but I’m working on it.)

The Boss

RIP – Iris Apfel (We lost a good one yesterday. What a strong inspiration to live your life fully, up until it is the time to pass on, at the ripe old age of 102 . . . . ) A fashion designer once said this about Iris Apfel’s trademark look: “It appeals to a certain kind of joy in everybody.” Thank you, Iris, for your bravery, your audacity and your authenticity. Thank you for your joy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Here are some of Iris Apfel’s best quotes:

“When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else.”

“More is more and less is a bore.”

“Remember not to be bossy… be the boss!!”

“Get comfortable outside of your comfort zone.”

“Get old, but don’t get boring!”

“If your hair is done properly and you are wearing good shoes, you can get away with anything.”

“You don’t have to be an artist to be a creator, because creativity comes in a lot of forms, like cooking or keeping a house or dressing well. What you need is imagination, to make things up for yourself.”

“The worst fashion faux pas is looking in the mirror and seeing somebody else.”

“When you try too hard to have style, you look uncomfortable, like you’re wearing a costume, like the clothes are entering the room before you do. If you’re uptight, you won’t be able to carry off even a seemingly perfect outfit. If that’s happening, I say abandon the whole thing. It’s better to be happy than well dressed.”

“You can’t go home again. If an experience was wonderful, don’t try to re-create it. It will never be as beautiful as it was the first time.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

592. What is your favorite decorative piece or artwork that you own?

Stream of Thought

I just read a story about the second oldest woman in the world. She is 116. She was born when Theodore Roosevelt was president.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the fact that if we are lucky enough to grow old, we live through a lot of decades. We live through an incredible amount of change. My friends and I laugh that often we no longer recognize who the stars are on the covers of magazines. Sometimes it feels like I have entered an entirely different world from the one I knew.

We all adapt to change. It’s not really a choice. But how often do we embrace change?

What decade of your life do you feel like you most belong to? What decade did you feel the most comfortable in your own skin? Which worlds of your lifetime resonated the most? Is it wise to believe that the best is yet to come?

A friend recently remarked, “Curiosity killed the cat.” I replied, “But satisfaction brought him back.” She laughed. She had never heard the second line. I honestly believe that curiosity is my lifeline. I don’t want to revel in old “glory days.” I want to have glorious days until the end of my life. And I do believe that this is possible.

“When our mind is in shambles and we dare to reflect on the story of our life, we may discover, in the stream of our thoughts, the fault line between what we have underfelt and what we have overthought on our way.”
― Erik Pevernagie

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

830. Name your secret obsession.

Monday – Funday

I’m back!! As promised, Mommy always comes back. I missed you all. I definitely missed writing my blog, but I learned something important by not writing at all, on this particular trip. For a true “getaway”, you must escape all of your everyday life – even the good stuff. By really experiencing life completely out of your element, it makes it really easy to sort out what is important to you. The people/places/stuff that you miss the most about home, are what’s really important to you. These are your priorities. These are the vital things that make your life hum to your own unique inner rhythms. You also get clear about the other stuff in your routines, that aren’t so important, and you realize things that might need to be changed or finessed, in order to live a life which is more authentic and contenting to you.

It is also surprisingly shocking to me, every. single. time. after vacation, just how much needs to be done when you get home. I have piles of mail to sort, piles of laundry to do, piles of souvenirs to find places for, piles of groceries to buy, piles of emails to go through and unusual surprises to deal with, like the fact that my web server for this blog, must have had an entire major update while I was gone, and I had to watch a tutorial and go through security measures more stringent than the ones on my bank accounts, in order to load this precious space back up on my computer. Welcome back. Ugh.

I saw a shortened version of this beautiful thought, on a pillow in a shop in the beautiful town that we visited. Here is the full version of “I Want to Age Like Sea Glass” by Bernadette Noll:

“I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.“

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

I read a good interview with Martha Stewart, age 81, in AARP magazine. These were some good quotes (takeaways) of hers from the article:

“Aging isn’t something I think about. How old I am, slowing down, retiring – I just don’t dwell on that. People talk about aging successfully, but I think of it as living gracefully and living to the absolute fullest.”

“And I continue to think that the most important part of aging well is to stay curious, to try new things every day.”

“In this life, you have to work at staying better. That’s really all you can do. You work at it.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.