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Eleanor Roosevelt |
This
week I would like to introduce you to author
Marcia Barhydt, who is delighted
to be 69 years old. A retired flight attendant who is now self-employed as a
writer, Marcia is embracing this time of her life, especially the whimsy of
writing.
Marcia
is dedicated to challenging ageism, the inequality and invisibility for older
women, and is equally dedicated to addressing issues that affect women of
any age as we pursue our life choices.
I bring you Marcia:
Eleanor Roosevelt
said, "Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the time it is
impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met
it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you
were before."
For some people,
this is not news. Some women know that to work through a challenge and come out
the other side is a distinct possibility in many parts of their lives.
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Marcia's first book |
For other women,
this is a brand new thought. Some of us didn't know we had a choice and by the
time we had worked through it, our resources were so drained that it didn't
seem like freedom afterward.
By the time we
become "women of a certain age", we've experienced a multitude of
character building challenges - marriage, divorce, house buying and selling,
caring for parents, dealing with teenagers, menopause.
So, have these
challenges changed who we are? Changed our character, changed our coping
skills? Have they directed or redirected our paths, our journey? Have they
changed our lives?
|
Marcia's second book |
Of course they have.
Eleanor Roosevelt was no slouch when it came to wisdom or when it came to life
changing events. She was the first lady of the United States when her husband
contracted polio which would confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his
life. Even though Franklin D Roosevelt continued his term as one of the most
loved and dedicated presidents in history, I'm certain that Eleanor, herself an
woman actively seeking change, I'm certain that her life included that voyage
of the damned and I'm equally certain that she lived through it and came out
the other side much freer than she was before.
And so, we each must
do the same, don't you think? If we're now women of a certain age, we're now
seeing some monumental changes in our lives that test us and change us
repeatedly.
Our choice is to do
nothing, become mired in self pity, become overwhelmed and become weighed down
with the burden of our own challenges,
OR
We can choose to
fight; we can choose to sit quietly in a dark room to better speak with
ourselves, we can choose to pull ourselves out of the quicksand.
My mother, who lived
to be over 100 and remained feisty for most of her years, used to say, "I
hurt so much today that I baked a batch of cookies." That's what a
positive mind set does. It challenges the bad moments in our lives and turns
them into the good moments instead. It erases the bad with some sugar and flour
and chocolate chips.
With each batch of
cookies, my mom freed herself from her pain, by lending her mind and her hands
to another task, by forcing her pain out the door and leaving her free to bake
those cookies.
We all have our
tortures and I suspect we'll have some more of them in our lives, so we need to
decide right now how we're going to deal with our tortures. Are we going to let them torture us or are
we going to use them to make us, as Eleanor Roosevelt suggested, freer than we
were before?
I'm a woman of a
certain age, and I'm certain that my choices will leave me freer than I was before.
Marcia's first book, Celebrate Age, and her second book, One Small Voice, are available
here.
Thank you Marcia for your contribution to
Lines of Beauty.