Tag: aging

Golden Girls Then & Now

Wow. Times have changed. I can’t decide whether this is good or bad. I do remember back when I was a little girl, there were “rules” about women needing to have short hair before “a certain age” and also what was appropriate to wear “at a certain age”. I am happy that those “rules” have been thrown out the window. And of course, due to medical advances, people are now living longer and healthier lives. The life expectancy for American women has gone up about 4 years since the early 1990s when “Golden Girls” was a hit show.

But at the same time, there is a lot of pressure these days for women to hold on to “eternal youth.” In the past 19 years, cosmetic procedures for women has increased 429 percent. (Cosmetic Surgery National Databank) And the high tech filters on our telephones are made to make us feel like how we really look is not pretty enough . . . at any age.

I’m still pondering all of this in my mind, as I enter into this second half of my life. It’s interesting to observe how society changes, when you live long enough to observe all of the changes. I like these quotes on the subject:

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.” ~Sophia Loren

“Your 40s are good.  Your 50s are great.  Your 60s are fab.  And 70 is f*@king awesome!”  ~Helen Mirren

“The trouble is, when a number—your age—becomes your identity, you’ve given away your power to choose your future.”  ~Richard J. Leider

“It annoys me when people say, ‘Even if you’re old, you can be young at heart!’ Hiding inside this well-meaning phrase is a deep cultural assumption that old is bad and young is good. What’s wrong with being old at heart, I’d like to know? Wouldn’t you like to be loved by people whose hearts have practiced loving for a long time?”  ~Susan Moon

“I am appalled that the term we use to talk about aging is ‘anti.’ Aging is as natural as a baby’s softness and scent. Aging is human evolution in its pure form.”~ Jamie Lee Curtis

“Aging isn’t about getting old it’s about LIVING… Learning that you can age well, will actually help you to age better… let’s start celebrating and living an engaged life, and stop punishing ourselves for not looking a certain way, and instead holding ourselves accountable for actually taking care of ourselves inside first, knowing the results on the exterior will be a shining side effect.”  ~ Cameron Diaz

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

Uniforms

The other night, when we were watching a football game, the color/honor guard came out and the announcer proudly introduced some members of our armed forces, representing our “Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Space Force.” I am aware of Space Force. This is not the first time that I had heard about it, but to hear it grouped into our armed forces, in such a natural, matter-of-fact way, kind of gave me a breathless pause. I thought to myself, what used to be only parts of science fiction and fantasy, has now become reality for all of the little ones coming up in this world. For the little ones, there is nothing strange and other worldly and awe-striking about Space Force, or electric cars, or your phone being able to turn on your dishwasher.

I have reached that age in life where a lot of what I took for granted as a little one, is now becoming (or has become) obsolete. It is such a strange mix of feelings to process this fact. Some people fight so hard to hang on to the things and ways of their time of being little ones. Some people desperately try to keep themselves uber-modernized, perhaps with the hopes of remaining “a little one” forever. I think that I am a little bit of a muddled-mix. I find myself liking to shock the younger ones (like my elders did) with stories of just how “crazy” the old days were, such as long summer days of riding bicycles, without wearing helmets, miles and miles away from home. My daughter was aghast to hear that I went door-to-door, in my bright green Girl Scout uniform, with my cute little matching beanie, selling cookies, when I was a little one. “Did anyone try to lure you into the basement?” she asked, when I admitted to going inside houses, while people took the time to handwrite their orders. But, at the same time, I also find myself admonishing myself to remember to not become a boring, old, stodgy, stubborn relic, “stuck in her ways”. There is a lot of progress in change. One of my mentees, the high schooler, who mostly leads a sheltered life at home, mentioned that she went on a trip over the holidays, and she was happy to see so many rainbow flags in stores, supporting gay people. I told her, “I’m happy about that, too. When I was a little one, many people hid the fact that they were gay, and there was so much hurt and brokenness created from people not being able to feel free to be themselves.”

The older that I get, the more I have come to the acceptance of the fact that there is so much in life that I have very little control over. What I can control is my reaction and my response to life as it is, and to life as it unfolds. I am trying to do this gracefully. I admit that I stumble a lot. But I always get back up again. At one time, early in my journey, I was a little girl in a little green beanie, and now I am way further up the road, watching people on my smart TV, in their smart Space Force uniforms. The beauty of aging is the breathtaking appreciation of how purely awesome it is to witness, with every sense in my body, Creation boldly unfold itself into the endless future.

Famous Quotes On Aging Gracefully. QuotesGram

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

Drag

I’m excited for this afternoon because I get to meet with one of my long-time mentees “in person” for the first time in well over a year. Granted, we will be masked and there will be plexiglass between us, but it will be so good to share each other’s energy and expressions in physical form, versus Zoom. We are both pretty animated people. My mentee is a fifth grader, so this year, she is officially one of the “big dawgs” at her elementary school. She and her mom opted for us to meet in person this school year because my mentee decided that this was best. “No offense, but your dogs are kinda loud on Zoom,” she said. I am not offended. I can’t wait to see her. Isn’t it just so crazy about how much we once took for granted, before this pandemic came around and changed the world?

In other news, I downloaded a book recently which I have not yet read, but I think that the title is incredibly intriguing. (I always have several downloaded books on my Kindle, in queue. I like feeling excitement and anticipation for what to read next.) The book is called The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul. In reading a little blurb about the book by the author, Dr. Connie Zweig, she mentions that she thinks that people should stop counting age after 55. She suggests that around that age, you shift from all of your “roles” in life, into becoming a wise “Elder” which Zweig describes this way: “to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are.”

Reflecting on this thought, most of our adulthood is full of roles, isn’t it?

Wife/Husband/Mother/Father/Writer/Teacher/Doctor/PTA Parent/Committee Person/Banker/Executive/Supervisor/Entertainer/Mentor/Sister/Brother/Best Friend/Lover/Listener/Consumer etc. etc.

Dr. Zweig believes that “This identification with ego and self-image is a key obstacle to overcome in aging from the inside out. The ego’s goals are not the real tasks of late life. Our tasks now require us to move our attention from the exterior world to the interior one, from the ego’s role in society to the soul’s deeper purpose.”

I recently finished reading No Cure for Being Human, which is a heart-wrenching, brutally honest account of a young woman living with Stage 4 colon cancer. The author is Kate Bowler, a 40-year-old religion professor at Duke University, happily married to her high school sweetheart, and a mother of a young son. After her diagnosis, she decided to keep teaching and writing after conferring with one of her colleagues. Bowler was questioning whether continuing these activities, was “good” use of her quite possibly limited time left on Earth. Her colleague said, “I guess that depends if this is a career or a calling.”

That’s one of the blessings which we can find in aging. We can really start to hone in on our callings. We can start to shed everything that isn’t calling us, from our deepest, most intuitive self. We can stop identifying with our “doing selves” and our “roles”, and we can start to become lovingly intimate with our “being” selves. And we can choose to do this at any time in our lives. We don’t have to wait until we are 55. The older we get (not necessarily in age, but in wisdom), it becomes clearer that the only certainty in life is uncertainty. We can choose to stop fighting against that truth and just explore with profound curiosity, what it really is, that calls to each of us.

I once watched an interview with RuPaul, the famous American drag queen. RuPaul said this, “My therapist said to me once, ‘You know Ru, the power you have in drag is available to you out of drag.’ ”

Maybe wisdom is coming to the realization that our power does not come from “our drag” – our roles and our identifications and our achievements and our appearances. Perhaps our real power is the fathomless summons of our souls. And that enduring power, deep inside of us, is timeless and has been with us from the beginning of time. Today, let’s quiet down and take some time to remove all of the heaviness of “our drag” and just sit still and listen. What is calling to us from our hearts? What feels most authentic? How can we shed what no longer resonates? What is true? What is real? What is beautiful to us? What really matters?

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

M. and B.

The other night we attended a large graduation party for one of my daughter’s tennis team members. The party was held in a big banquet hall, and it was the size of a medium wedding reception. We knew the graduate, my daughter, a few of my daughter’s friends, the graduate’s parents and one other mother attending. That’s it. In a hall of at least a hundred people, we knew about eight of them, and four of those people who we knew were kids who, understandably, had no interest whatsoever, in hanging out with parents. We had been having work done on our house that day, so in waiting for the workers to finish up for the day, my husband and I ended up arriving to the party, a little later than most. Our daughter was already ensconced in some corner tables with a bunch of her friends, and was fully engaged with talking and laughing with them. The graduate and her parents were being excellent hosts, going from table to table, talking to everyone. I nodded “hello” to the one other mother who I knew at the party, who was sitting at a table, with all of the seats already taken. I could feel a little social anxiety creeping into my gut, especially with being so out of practice, from dealing with the pandemic shutdown, for over a year.

But then, my eyes glommed on to the buffet tables, which were overflowing with incredible delicacies (all handmade by the graduate’s mother). The graduate’s mom is Italian, and so it naturally follows that she is an amazing cook. It’s just in their genes. I have never had an Italian friend who wasn’t an incredible chef. I don’t mean to stereotype, but this has been my divine experience, and I have my fair share of Italian friends. Seeing the delightful spread, I got over my sinking feeling of not knowing anybody, and I got right to the task of filling up my plate, as high as it could go. My husband followed suit.

With my mountainous, overfilled plate, I started scanning my seating options. What appeared was several full tables of people laughing, and enjoying each other’s familiar company. There were also two empty tables, which I started to make a beeline towards, but then the table with M. and B. appeared. M. and B. (keeping their names private), were two older ladies sitting by themselves at a table, quietly eating their food. To get to the empty tables, I would have had to walk right past M. and B.’s table, but my arm was getting heavy with my food (and my husband was at the buffet, still filling up his plate), and plus, my mama taught me good manners. “Are these seats taken?” I asked M. and B politely, with a frozen smile on my face. “Oh no, please take a seat!” they both exclaimed.

Okay, this is the part of the story in which I admit that I am an ASS. As the saying goes, “When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.” I had already made a bunch of assumptions. I assumed M. and B. were elderly family members. (wrong, they were neighbors of the graduate and her family) I then assumed M. and B. were a lesbian couple. (wrong again, they lived on either side of the graduate’s family and they were both widows. They did get a charge out of the question, though. M. looked at B. with her eyebrow raised and said, “Well, I never considered that before . . . ” B. just laughed) The biggest assumption which I had made is that I was going to be bored to tears, making polite, careful conversation with two senior citizens. Ha! M. and B. were a blast! They were interesting, inspiring, witty, edgy, and funny as hell. They teased and flirted with my husband, who teased and flirted right back. Before long, we had become “the raucous table”. I wasn’t even getting to gorging on my delicious food, because I was having so much fun. We were creating so much merriment, that the other mother, who we knew, noticed, grabbed her purse, and excused herself from her own table (full of boring, dull people of our own age, according to her) and joined and added to the merriment. I was sick when M. and B. said it was time for them to leave. We were having such a good time.

It turns out that M. was 83 and B. was 79. We were all shocked. Besides the teens, M. and B. were the most lively, fun-loving, vivacious people at the party. (on an aside, shocked to learn their ages, my friend asked them what creams they used on their faces. “Oh you know, that stuff in a red jar,” M. said, which I assume is Olay and I am not surprised.)

Whenever I start into a new decade (I turned fifty last December), I find myself looking at the generations older than me. I am goal oriented. I like to look ahead to be inspired to be who and what I want to be, when I become of the next age subset. When I am in my eighties, I want to be young. I want to be lighthearted. I want to get a kick out of living, no matter what I am doing. I want to be M. and B. I want to pleasantly surprise the hell out of a fifty-year-old woman, who almost walked right past me, full of her dumb assumptions. And I want to have good skin, so I am going to run out to Walgreens, after I post this, and get some Olay.

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

I Know

15 Inspirational Book Quotes We Loved in 2017 | Scholastic | Parents | Quotes from childrens books, Inspirational quotes from books, Children book quotes

I was sad to read that Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, passed yesterday, at the age of 91. What a lovely man! What lasting gifts he has given to so many of generations of kids! (including my generation, and my kids’ generation, and likely my future grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s generations, to boot!)

Last night, I was having dinner with some friends and one friend was relating about how maturely her twenty-something daughter was handling a drama with her friends. We all marveled at how wise her daughter seems to be, at such a young age. We all talked about what life lessons that we wished we had figured out earlier, and really let sink in, when we were in our early adulthoods, such as: “Whatever anyone thinks about me, is none of my business.”, and “Expectations are the root of all heartache. – William Shakespeare”, and knowing that the saying, “This too shall pass”, is really, really the honest truth, and a hope to hang on to, going through any kind of negative ordeal. (All of us have just experienced this, first hand, with the pandemic, starting to finally be seen from the rearview mirror.)

It is interesting to be 50, and to still be learning a lot of life’s lessons. Life is one long learning process. The classroom never ends. I think a big paradox happens as you age. The very few things that I Know, the things that resonate in the deepest part of my soul, I Know (capital K is on purpose) with a more confident absoluteness, than I ever did before, but at the same time, I am in a constant state of “unlearning” so much that I thought I was so sure of before. I am sure there is a lot more of that “unlearning” lesson to come for me. And this “unraveling of truths” lesson seems to come at an advanced pace, the older that I get. Maybe if I reach a ripe old age, some more of my “I Knows” will turn into “Oops, looks like I was wrong about that one, too.”

My middle son is headed to his first year of medical school later this summer. At dinner the other night, he was telling my husband and I, that he’s been reflecting on the different personas which he has had, already, in his young life: Soccer Dude in high school, Frat Boy in college, now moving on to Budding Doctor Guy. During the conversation, I said that I don’t think it is so much that we change into different identities, as much as we integrate all of the experiences and wisdom that we’ve collected along the way, as we morph into new roles. At the same time, there comes to a stage in life (and I think it is primarily, in this second half of adulting) where we start shedding a lot of those “roles” or “titles” and we start peeling away at the onion of people and places and experiences and beliefs, which have created “us” and our lives, to go searching for what’s really there, in that simpler core. I think if we all stripped away all the layers, and all of the lessons, and all of the perceptions, and all of the experiences, and all of the calculations, and all of the complications, and all of the emotions, and all of the experiments, I think that we’d find the same thing at the core of all that is . . . love, just love. One day, I think that I will Know (with a capital K), that it’s only love that is at the core of everything. Simply, love.

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

New feature – THROWBACK THURSDAY

I’ve decided to highlight some of my older, more popular posts, since I have been writing this blog, daily, for almost three years now. Here’s today’s Throwback post:

Letting Myself Be Lived

Let’s Have Fun!

I’ve touched on this topic earlier this month in the blog, in a post entitled “Unstuck”, but I think the theme bears repeating. We need to have more fun. We need to allow ourselves to have fun, even before everything gets “done.” Because everything that needs to get “done” will never, ever be completely finished. I once read that we are all going to die with our inboxes full. Facts.

Last night, I was out to eat with some of my dearest friends (first time in long, long while) and we were all discussing this matter of allowing ourselves to have more lightness, and joy, and fun. Instead of resenting others for having their own fun, we have to take over the reins and make sure that we are putting enough leisure and relaxation into our own schedules. Unfortunately, around the time of this particular discussion, the evening got cut short, as one of my friends got an intense, scary and sudden case of indigestion. This put us all into a frantic tizzy. Fully realizing that we aren’t anywhere near our twenties anymore, we didn’t do the old, “roll her over on her side, kiss her on the cheek, tell her that she’ll be fine, and head back out for a nightcap” routine. Instead, we all camped out at her house, stared at her frantically, questioning her about her symptoms every six seconds, reassuring each other that we didn’t need to head to the ER, because at our ages, indigestion can sometimes mimic heart issues. (I am sure that my friend was more than ready for us to leave her alone, when we all finally felt reassured that she was fine, and bid her adieu for the evening. Thankfully, my friend feels much better this morning, kindly answering all of our frantic, thinly veiled “good morning” texts.)

It struck me that this incident actually put an exclamation point on our discussion which we had been having about allowing ourselves to have more fun. Lately, my aging has come into much more acute focus for me. I turned fifty in December. In these last few years, I have witnessed some of my more elderly relatives and friends, suffer some very serious health issues. If I am lucky, and I take good care of myself, I may have about 30-40 more years to really experience the free, exciting fullness of life. I don’t have any time to waste. Do I really want 90-95% of that time left in my life to be spent making sure all of the solemn chores, duties, and responsibilities are “done”? Does perhaps merrymaking and entertainment deserve a little bit more than a mere 5-10 percent of my daily life?

My friend, the one who is thankfully feeling better this morning, texted that the author, Glennon Doyle, was on Good Morning America today, promoting her podcasts. She said that her next podcast will be on the topic of “Fun.” Glennon Doyle said that so many of us are juggling so many different roles in our lives, trying to keep the machine of our lives fully functioning, that we are forgetting to add the element of “fun and enjoyment” to the equation, which really is what keeps the machine of our lives, all greased up.

Earlier this morning I was reading an article about “cave syndrome”, which is the name given to the new phenomenon of people being afraid to re-enter society and normalcy, after what we have gone through this past year with the pandemic, despite being fully vaccinated and well. “Cave Syndrome” seems to be a subset of agoraphobia, not based on rational thinking, but instead, it is a form of being stuck in our fears and our past trauma. And a fair amount of people seem to be suffering from it. Yikes. Cave Syndrome does not bode well for free-wheeling fun.

I read a quote this morning by Larry Eisenberg that says this: “For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the Universe.” I think a lot of us need this reminder, especially us women. A lot of us have the tendency to take on a lot of other people’s worries, duties, responsibilities, feelings, etc. to the detriment of ourselves, and to the detriment of others, and to the detriment of our relationships with ourselves and with others. We aren’t the general manager of the Universe. Some Being who is much more powerful and omniscient than us, has faithfully got the wheel. And that Some Being really enjoys experiencing, and seeing us at frolic and play, the most, out of all of everything that we do.

Don't forget that you always have choices in life-even the choice to have FUN and ENJOY LIFE! | Quotes about having fun, Time flies quotes, Best quotes

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

Monday Fun-Day

Image

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I was reflecting on one of those “coming into my age” moments. Last week, I was having a Zoom meeting with my mentee, who is in the 4th grade. She made a reference comparing me to her grandparents.

“Oh,” I said, trying to hide the horror and shock I was feeling, in my voice. “So, you think that I’m about the age of your grandparents?” I looked off to the side, trying to look casual and only mildly interested.

“Oh, no, no,” she said, not so convincingly.

But then I thought about it more. Her mother is in her twenties. I have a son who is 24 years old. If her grandmother also had her mother in her young twenties, there is even a chance that her grandparents are younger than I am. Things That Make You Go, Hmmmmm.

Never

I’m a deep person. I enjoy meaningful, interesting conversations. A lot of the time, small talk annoys me and bores me. I usually get off on intensity. But honestly, lately everything just feels way too intense. Lately, all the irons in the fire feel way too hot and I can’t find tough enough gloves to avoid the heat. I’m a little raw these days. I found this poem this morning, which was cut out and pasted in one of my journals. I’m sorry, I don’t know who to attribute it to, but I found it to be very helpful and I hope that you enjoy it, too.

Never

Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. – Proverb

Never look for something you do not need to do

Never put your trust in one on whom you can’t rely

Never try to be someone which, for you, would be a lie

Never try to control something that cannot be controlled

Never worry about aging, or the process of becoming old

Never try to run the lives of children you hold dear

Never try to live a life completely based on fear

Never try to make okay that which simply is not

Never try to cover up something you have just forgot

Never act if you are doing this life yourself

Remember you have to participate and there’s really lots of help

Never forget to remember that you can have some fun.

You don’t have to make trouble to do it, only let it come.

Soul Sunday

Fortune for the Day – “To change one’s life: do it flamboyantly. Start immediately. No exceptions.” – William James

Sundays are poetry workshop days here at Adulting Second Half. On Sundays I share a poem and I fully encourage you to share your poetry in the Comments section. It’s fun to play with words!! Please give it a try. I moderate all comments and I would never allow negativity in this sacred space, where we share what is on our hearts and minds – openly, freely, authentically. Here’s my poem for today:

invecchiamento

Sometimes I accept the inevitable,

I let it flow,

I’m at peace with it.

Sometimes the frustration builds,

And I try to dam it all up,

Trying to defy the laws of nature

And gravity.

Sometimes I laugh at my acts of futility.

Sometimes I marvel at them.

Sometimes I play the comparison game.

Who of us is doing it better? And in what way?

And does it matter? And do we really have a say?

Sometimes I stop paying attention to the things which I cannot change.

And I am at peace,

I am at peace with aging.

Aging.