SAYING WHAT I MEAN

“Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not sooner, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea


Gloria Steinem once said, “Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.” and Lynne Zielinski tells us in Chocolate for a Woman’s Spirit that “...Like autumn fruit, I’ve mellowed and thrown off inhibition to say what I mean...” So has my sister, Marilyn Houston, who wrote this poem:

Cookie Cutters

Aaaah, the scene opens . . . .
whether you like it or not
rain punctuates puddles marking cadence
for a spotty spring ballet of fools
it’s a goose-step two-step,
so very tiring especially if you do it right

I’m a sun-dancer with a tie-dye mind
running from clones in Cadillacs
drones in cathedrals, perpetually
harping we’ve fallen from grace
they’re expecting the worst
and it never disappoints . . . .
so many blank faces, so little time
how can anyone deny God’s sense of humor
while under the sublime influence of Heaven
or is it advertising?

I declare war on snobbish university poets
their self-proclaimed perfectionism incensed
that we don’t follow their rules,
their pentameters, particulars and perpendiculars
ha, you can’t stop me now with your parameters,
there’s a lot more where that came from
and I’m not about to do it your way
even if your power trip
IS bigger than I am

‘cause I gotta voice

Listening to your inner voice makes it possible to start living more authentically---to speak with a true voice and from your own system of values and beliefs. Women at any age, but especially as they grow older, get to go beyond the superficial injunctions of the culture---prentending to be pleasant or acting invisible. As we age it is even more important to assert our full power in relationships and work. It’s a time when we can be more direct and more outspoken.

As writer Maxine Myers once said, “I no longer consider silence a virtue. Speaking up is OK, and speaking up louder is even better in some cases.” How do you feel about this? You gotta voice!!!

AN ATTITUDE OF SOLITUDE

“There have been times...when I have longed for solitude, and it took some hard lessons for me to learn that I needed to be what I had thought was selfish; that I need to take time to myself to write, to go to the brook, to be.” Madeleine L’engle, The Irrational Season

I remember my petite 89-year old Swedish grandmother sitting in her chair doing absolutely nothing---her arthritic hands folded gracefully on her lap, her face tranquil. She didn’t look depressed or lonely but I asked if she was okay. A smile crossed her face as she told me that she was reliving an exciting, fun-filled time in her younger years. Although Grandma was mostly blind from an earlier stroke, she still lead a busy life---visiting friends, going to her senior’s club, listening to books on tape and caring for her grandchildren. Yet, she knew how to be still. She was comfortable with solitude.

I was once afraid of solitude, afraid of my internal sounds and of being by myself. At 61, I’ve found our extroverted, noisy society and its pull to constantly communicate in some way, a bit too much. I’ve come to realize that my need to pull away from the noise and the chatter is as universal at this age as the urge to connect. As I age, I find I need time to be in touch with me. Cell phones, texting, email, and twitter give us the ability to be in constant touch with each other. It’s not that these technologies are is so bad, it’s just that I need quiet time to know myself and my needs better, to sort things out, to regroup. I want to understand how I think and feel and where I want to go with my life and that’s hard to do when you let the world push in on you.

It’s okay to take a break from it all now and then. Taking time alone will serve to restore your integrity, allow you to think about your beliefs and what you value most. A self-imposed quiet can fertilize your creative side as ideas emerge long buried by the daily rush. Alone time replenishes energy so when you resume interacting with others, you do so with renewed insight and strength.

Try not to wait until you have a whole day or week free to incorporate a bit of solitude and reflection into your day . To begin with try some simple pleasures---a walk in the park on your own, sit by yourself and listen to music, sink into a warm bath, meditate for 10 minutes, pet your cat with your eyes closed. If you aren’t used to being alone, you might feel a little bored at first. Stay with it. After a few minutes you may like it! How can you create more solitude in your life?

AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

“It is in our later years that we are often able to give our most meaningful consideration to values, to refocusing our priorities, shifting our outlook and developing a sense of gratitude for the richness of life.”
Connie Goldman & Richard Mahler, Secrets of Becoming a Late Bloomer, Hazelden Foundation (c) 1995

Self-help gurus have lectured to us about gratitude for years now. How much more harping are we willing to endure before we take their advice to heart? They’re right, you know. Gratitude for even the smallest of things can magically shift a tough day from gray to sunny bright just like that!

Case in point: I wake up mopey, eyes crusty, hair sticking up at right angles the result of a crummy nights sleep (post-menopausal night sweats, husband snoring cat jumping on my feet, etc.). Groaning, I slither out of bed. Bare-footed and bone stiff I slog across the icy kitchen floor, reach for the coffee pot realizing as I lift it that I’d forgotten to set it up the night before. Now I must endure the noisy coffee bean grinder, put the coffee into the filter, water up to the line. Eyes glued to the machine I am waiting three weeks for the damn java to trickle down too slowly. The day is about to begin and I desperately need my sanity, my caffeine. There is no joy in my life at this moment.

Just then I remember the self-help gurus and decide to “do gratitude” while I wait. I decide, to focus on the positive like author Ruth Turk who wrote “To my amazement, I continue to find each decade of my lifetime more rewarding and exciting than the preceding ones.” (The Second Flowering, page 47, New Win Publishing, Clinton, NJ 1993) So let’s see---I’m grateful I have a husband (snoring and all), I’m grateful I have a house and warm bed to sleep in, I’m grateful for my sticky kitchen floor and I’m grateful the floor is cold because it reminds me that I’ve forgotten my slippers (which I go back to the bedroom to retrieve and which I’m very grateful I have!). I’m grateful for my coffee maker and the aroma of fresh beans. I’m thankful for the nose that enables me to smell the coffee brewing. And I am ever so grateful for the cup of coffee I am now putting to my lips as my brain begins to fill the empty space in my skull.

Got the idea? You can spend the day grousing because you forgot why you walked into the livingroom or you can be grateful for the legs that got you there.

AGING IS ANOTHER COUNTRY

“Actually, aging, after fifty, is an exciting new period; it IS another country.” Gloria Steinem

Never before in human history have we had the real possibility of living beyond one hundred years. To be truthful, there are days when that prospect excites me and days when it scares me silly. On the positive side, is it really possible that I may have so much more time to realize a few of my dreams, finish reading all the books I bought, make new friends, have new adventures, repair screwed up relationships, and organize (once and for all) my front hall closet.

Then there are the days when the thought of 100 (or even 90) gives me the “willies”. I imagine all that sagging skin, all those dearly beloved dead friends, all those lost umbrellas and gloves, pills to take, and young know-it-all doctors to undress for, not to mention insurance forms to fill out.

I’m in a nearly constant debate with myself---do I prefer to age into decrepitude or will I give up and call the cosmic taxi for a fast ride to the other side while I still have gray matter that functions, and while I still look and feel pretty good!

Horace B. Deets, one time AARP Executive Director, tells us that it’s time we “learn how to deal with the longevity bonus productively---The new reality of aging is that we must all plan and prepare to live long, healthy and productive lives.” So perhaps we should keep our hearts and minds open to ways we can debunk the myths, fight the worn-out stereotypes---become warriors of a kind. I think about being a warrior and I want to take a nap. Then I shift to a burning curiosity that begs for an answer to the question---what will that “other country” have in store for me? And for heaven’s sake, what will my passport picture look like!?

How do you feel about this?What would you like to accomplish if you live to be 100?

AGES AND STAGES

“For me, there’s something so liberating about this stage of life. It’s not that you know more, necessarily; it’s that you accept not knowing and experience a different kind of ease.” Susan Sarandon, More Magazine, February 2002

People are staying healthy and living longer and the old stages of life no longer hold. According to some scientists, a woman who reaches age 52 today and remains free of cancer can expect to live to age 92. Best-selling author Gail Sheehy tells us, “People now have three adult lives to plan for; a provisional adulthood from 18 to 30; a first adulthood from about 30 to the mid-40s and a second adulthood from about 45 into the 80s.” She says that the key to mastering this passage is to do something people generally haven’t done before which is to plan for this second adulthood.

It’s heartening to know that other women have inspiring philosophical thoughts about aging. From reading and from personal experience I’ve come to realize there is a broad range of expectation, capability, and emotional experience in aging---what is true for one woman may not be true for another. The words of the women quoted below will give you an idea of the diversity of experiences and represent some of my favorites from a variety of authors on the various ages and stages of a woman’s life.

50-60 Years Old
“Old folks today are doing more than anyone ever thought they could. Why, when we were children, folks were knocking on death’s door after turning fifty. Sixty was ancient...” Sarah L. Delany, On My Own at 107 , HarperCollins, 1997

60-70 Years Old
“Sixty years bring with them the privilege of discernment and vision: a capacity to behold, in the blink of an eye, the sweeping panorama of a life fully lived.” Cathleen Rountree, On Women Turning 60: Embracing the Age of Fulfillment, (c) 1997, Harmony Books, NY

70-80 Years Old
“...when I think that I’m seventy-eight, I think--how could that be? I just don’t feel like whatever I would have thought seventy-eight would feel like. I just feel like myself.” Betty Friedan, Life So Far, Touchstone, NY (c) 2000

80-90 Years Old
“I am more and more aware of how important the framework is, what holds life together in a workable whole as one enters real old age, as I am doing. A body without bones would be a impossible mess, so a day without a steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.” May Sarton, At Eighty: A Journal, W.W. Norton, (c) 1996

90-100+ Years Old
“I must tell you at once that I have become over ninety in the course of writing this book, and yes, being over ninety is different....I can say with all honesty, I’d rather be a very old woman than a very young one. ” Rebecca Latimer, You’re Not Old Until You’re Ninety, Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1997

“Somewhere along the line I made up my mind I’m going to live, Bessie. I guess I probably don’t have that much longer on this Earth, but I may as well make the best of it.” Sarah L. Delany, On My Own at 107, page 143, HarperCollins, 1997

Which quote do you relate to or like the best?

AGE GRIEF

“You know what surprises me most as I 
cycle through the fives stages of age grief?
How did I, a bonafide child of the 60’s,
end up sounding like my parents?”
J. Eva Nagel

Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance --- these are the identified emotional stages of grief. When it comes to applying this model to aging, I initially found that I was reluctant to believe the grief associated with aging was similar in its stages to the grief one feels around death and dying. Yet, I found myself grieving.

One day I woke up to find that my youth, reckless or not, had become middle age, that I was clearly and inevitably moving toward old age. Now that was a shock for me! Denial set in as I tried to stay up as late as I used to, and when I tried to work all day in the garden without a rest. Certainly I had always been able to push myself when it came to physical work---now I had to devote shorter blocks of time to the same activities. I didn’t stay in denial long because I was too busy being angry. Angry that it was different now. Angry that my back and legs hurt after stooping over the weed patch. Angry that I was now falling asleep during Letterman!

Bargaining? Not sure about that one. I still haven’t tried to bargain with the higher power to make me young again---or fit. No, I haven’t said, “God, if you give me the energy and looks of a 30 year old, I’ll pledge more money to charity.” I may at a later date. For now I’m working on acceptance. I am working on aging naturally, with grace and faith, with a nonattachment of sorts. I believe that reincarnation and heaven are possibilities so I'm not too concerned with death. I try to keep any negative thoughts about age to minimum. Bette Midler is one of my favorite role models so like her, I don’t take myself too seriously. My eyes are focused and wide open. I’m beyond the denial phase and on my way to full acceptance, yet still some days I still miss aspects of my younger years.

We will all mourn our youth to some degree, however if we identify where we are in the process, then allow ourselves to move through whatever phase we’re confronted with, we will undoubtedly come out the other side of age grief, energized and ready to face the future. I know I am!

A LITTLE MORE...

At age 93, poet Gladys Lawler wrote that with her years have come:

“...the fortitude that it often takes
To laugh at my own absurd mistakes.
A little more love from family and friends
And a feeling of joy that each day sends.
A little more pleasure from April sun,
More time to finish what I’ve begun.
A little more wonder at rising moon,
At morning freshness, at blazing noon.
A little more sleep and a time to dream,
To ponder on life and on things unseen.”