Take The Plunge

 

As many of you may know, when covid hit and the pools closed, much to my own shock, I became a cold water swimmer. My very dear friend CYNTHIA BRENNEN has written this great post on her experience and the benefits of cold water:

"I’ve discovered something new and exciting in my life. After many years of resistance, I finally dipped my toe (well, my whole body actually), and experienced the most exhilarating feeling I’ve had in a very long time. It’s hard to describe that “hurts so good” feeling but I will do my best to portray the paradoxical exchange of emotions mixed with the physical effects. But first, a little background..

I practically grew up in the water. Being born a Pisces I suppose I was destined to at least test the fluidity in my life and see if it aligned with one of the many reasons I showed up here. I quite liked swimming and especially attached to the camaraderie and excitement of swimming competitively, but the one thing I absolutely abhorred was that first plunge into the pool. The shock of cold water against every cell of my body sent me swimming as fast as I could just to warm up. Early morning swims were always the worst, still feeling half asleep and wanting to crawl back into bed with my warm blankets encasing me. I sometimes struggled with the reason I chose to take this path, and then I would see my teammates and feel the connection between us as we journeyed those waves side by side. The physical pain we endured to reach the thrill was worth every stroke.

It was during this journey I met my swim sister, Louise. We met in the pool in fifth grade and developed a bond not only through swimming, but through the twists and turns of life. We’ve encouraged and listened, cried and sang with joy, felt the agony of defeat and celebrated our wins, all while testing the waters of life. Louise has been such an inspiration in so many ways, but when it comes to H2O inspiration we become totally synchronized. If it wasn’t for Louise, I likely wouldn’t have plunged back into Masters swimming after 30 years, and I certainly would never have even entertained my latest plunge.

It’s been a few years now that Louise has talked about her year-round cold water swims in Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. I’ve always admired her bravery in doing so, but in my mind, it was the worst torture anyone could experience. She would then express how it’s the best natural high she’s ever experienced, and I would smile politely and say, “That’s great, Lou, I’m so happy for you, but that’s something I could never do.” Remember my trauma of jumping into cold pools my whole life? Well that little mini trauma swam around in my head and never left. And then, Louise sent me an article on stimulating your vagus nerve for better mental health, and lo and behold, the very first thing on the list was cold exposure. It talked about researchers finding that exposing yourself to cold on a regular basis can lower your sympathetic “fight or flight” response and increase your parasympathetic “rest and digest” activity through the vagus nerve. Now it was starting to sink in. This was something that could not only benefit my physical health but my mental health as well. I decided to dig a little deeper and read many articles on Cold Water Immersion Therapy. The benefits of taking cold dips were eye opening; decreases depression and anxiety, decreases inflammation, boosts immune system, manages pain, increases energy, soothes muscle soreness, to name a few. That was enough for me. I called Louise and told her I was filling my bath tub with cold water and ice and taking the plunge! She was ecstatic for me. My first try, the temperature was 72 degrees and I lasted about three minutes, and it was challenging! It’s been two months now and I’ve moved down to 59 degrees for six minutes. It sure is cold when I first get in but I’ve learned to accept the pain to enjoy the gain. The funny thing is, it’s still the first few seconds getting in that hurts, but then a calm sets in and I feel as though I’m enveloped in polar bear skin. It is the most peaceful feeling as I focus on my breathing and move into a meditative mode. And then, I can’t even express the exhilaration I feel when I emerge from the water! My endorphins are so happy afterward that I actually caught myself giggling yesterday as I was drying off. Now I get it, Lou. You’ve got a swim sister on another level now, and I can’t thank you enough for lightly nudging me when my ice wall was up. Your patience and warmth always turns it into a pool of peace.

Over the past two months, I must say that my inflammation has decreased and my mood has elevated to a more positive level. Of course, it is only one piece of the balance wheel. Diet, exercise, meditation/relaxation, and adequate sleep are all pieces of the health puzzle. For me, if I don’t pay attention to the amount of sugar I put into my body my cells scream inflammation, and it won’t matter how many plunges I take. Balance in everything we do is the key of life. I’m just grateful I found another healthy opening for that key to fit into.

*If you’re considering taking the plunge please do your own research and talk to a health care professional you trust to be sure this endeavor is for you.

If you give yourself the green light, welcome to the world of exciting exhilaration and hop aboard the Polar Bear Express!"

For further reading on my own experience of cold water click HERE.

And have a nice holiday season!

xo, 

Louise

The Garden

I am mid-way though a year long certification with COACH TRAINING INSTITUTE to be a health & wellness coach. I am loving the program, all the learning & relearning and the great people I have met. I don't want it to end. I love how coaching is really about getting down underneath and processing deeper emotions. The feelings that frequently leave us stuck and keep us from having a more alive and fulfilling life.

Prior to starting school, throughout the craziness of the past few years, I received a lot of advice of course, but one piece in particular rang especially true for me.

It was:

"Don't eat off someone else's plate. For instance, don't pick up someone else's knitting project and start knitting, as if their project is your own." 

So good.

So I was especially delighted when my sister forwarded me a post written by Betsy Burris, who is a coach for teachers and has a coaching practice, called TEACHING THROUGH EMOTIONS. I connected with her search for deeper emotions in her practice, as well as how her piece below, titled The Garden, resonates with the concept of not eating off someone else's plate.

I dig her analogy about people being gardens! 

Kind of like, don't poke around in my garden or start knitting on my knitting project and I won't do it to you.

I bring you Betsy:

"OK this is going to seem really simplistic, but many teachers I’ve worked with have found it helpful. 

Here goes: 

When I think of people, when I think of individuals, I think of gardens. I think of each of us as standing in the center of a circle- a garden wall- filled with flowerbeds.

The garden wall is a boundary, a personal boundary, a membrane that defines where we end and others begin.

The garden is ourselves: our needs, our safety, our identities, our happiness, our interests, our power, our reality. 

We cultivate our own gardens. We choose what flowers we plant and where and when we plant them. Ideally, we make our gardens beautiful and safe for ourselves. We range freely in our gardens and value them. 

And we decide if and when anybody else gets to come into our gardens. We build up our gardens walls, lower them, open the garden gate, close the garden gate. We invite people in when we want to and, when we don’t want them in our gardens, we have the right to tell them to get out. Ideally.

I told you it would be simplistic!

But the metaphor is also really useful.

Because, if my garden is my reality and your garden is your reality, then I don’t get to trash your garden. I don’t even get to enter your garden without your permission. I get to talk to you over our garden walls about our gardens, try to understand why you planted deadly nightshade right next to your garden gate, admire your hollyhocks, think about planting some of my own.

I get to wonder about your garden, your reality, from the safety of my own garden, my own reality.

I don’t have to take on your problems or energy or emotions. I don’t have to convince you to make your garden look like mine. I might think your garden desperately needs tending, but when I remind myself that it is yours, I’m clear that the weeds in your garden are not my responsibility. I might wonder about them; I might express concern about them; I might itch to pull them; but I don’t need to fight you about them. They’re yours.

Conflict happens, I believe, when I charge into your garden and start planting or fixing or weeding or judging or-UGH-defining your garden for you. Or when you do this to me. Engagement happens when I can be curious about you and your garden without co-opting or colonizing it. And, importantly,

when I am confident that I can prevent you from co-opting or colonizing my garden.

I’m here in my garden. You’re there in yours. Let’s be clear about that."

With love from my garden to yours,

Louise

Driving an Hour to Return a Ballpoint Pen

ROBYN'S MOM

About this time last year, my mom was in the last week of her life. 

Tucked into those days, were some of the sweetest moments I ever had with her. The time had come to help lead her to the other side. I sang with her & to her, stroked her hands & forehead and fed her the vanilla ice cream, that she had requested in her final days, many years before.

 I miss her so dearly.

A few days ago I saw the post (below) on my friend Robyn Ivy's Instagram about her mom. Robyn and I are what I call soul friends. We haven't seen each other in ages but her wonderful posts and photos always resonate with me. She is a fabulous photographer and coach, who has photographed me twice. Once for THE REVELATION PROJECT and another time for the marketing of a food product that I was trying to launch that failed miserably. Both times I felt instantly comfortable in Robyn's presence as she snapped away behind the lens. She is creative, spirited, very talented and knows how to connect, on a deep level, immediately with people. More on Robyn HERE.

Robyn's post about her mom:

"Happy happy birthday to my beautiful mama who is 82 today! Does she not look amazing? My mom is the OG on how to age impeccably. She’s also in perfect health, quick as a whip and whooping the competition at mah-jongg. The first to help anyone she meets; she would quite literally give you the shirt off her back… and you’d quickly be horrified… Honest to a fault-one summer she drove over an hour in insane downtown Newport traffic to return a ball point pen to a shop she’d purchased something just before and had accidentally walked away with. A true Vermonter, she can bake a pie like few others, is more capable than anyone I know and knows how to get a stain out of ANYTHING. She rose up through the ranks as a leader in nursing in a male-dominated system and paved a path for many women to follow. She spoke her mind when it was unpopular to do so. She also raised me to be a strong, independent, smart, kind and generous woman. She let me try and fail and never said no to any of my wild ideas... like going to Africa alone at 20 to work with baby chimpanzees… or jump off the high dive at 2 years and swim to the side. She taught me to say yes to things, that things will always work out, never abandon your faith and always be kind to people. I’m so grateful for all you’ve done, taught and role modeled mom. Love you dearly!Happy, happy birthday!"💜🎂💜 

I hope y'all have a lovely weekend!
Louise

Surrendering Our Worries

Sometimes changing our life situation isn’t possible – or simply not possible soon enough.

This week's post is a snippet from the fabulous Marc and Angel Hack Life:

Realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace. Because inner peace does not depend on external conditions; it’s what remains when you’ve surrendered your ego and worries.

Peace can be found within you at any place and at any time. It’s always there, patiently waiting for you to turn your attention toward it. Peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with what’s on your mind. It happens when you let go of the need to be anywhere but where you are, physically and emotionally.

This acceptance of the way things are creates the foundation for inner harmony. The need for something to be different in this moment is nothing more than a worry, and worries simply lead you in circles. Remember, the same part of you that longs for peace is the part of you that experiences peace.

It is not complicated to achieve and is as close as your next thought.

7 Simple Ways

Yee-haw! The bullshit work is done, my neck issue is so much better and it's back to doing what I like to do again. This week's post from Marc and Angel was titled "16 Simple Ways to Love Yourself Again". They have solid advice about getting over our humps, expanding outside our comfort zone and finding self-love. I don't always have time to read them but I will say this- they are always good when I do. 

*  Start telling ourselves what we love about ourselves.

*  Start being one with what is.

*  Start focusing less on winning the approval of others.

*  Start distancing ourselves from those who bring us down ( this is huge).

* Start forgiving our past selves.

* Start making the changes we know we need to make ( another big one).

* Start embracing the mistakes we haven’t even made yet...

For more insight on these click here. 

And have yourself a merry little Christmas....I mean Easter :-)

I'm hosting and it's time to get the ball rolling. 

xo

Two Words

 

Whatever it is that we are yearning for in life, it is almost always ourselves that get in the way of what we are after. One possible road block is when we allow our short term choices and impulses to derail our long term desires. This is normal, we just need to get back on the horse. 

And the faster we get back on, the less we will fall off. 

Years ago I heard about the concept of "baby time", which are those moments when we worry that our needs aren't going to be met. Imagine a baby, totally dependent on someone else to meet its needs. For instance- think of hungry babies that need to be fed. They have no idea if this need is going to be met- so what do they do? They freak out and scream to let their mother know their needs. As we mature this is rarely the case, but we can so easily slip back into "baby time" and make poor, snap decisions because of it.

When in "baby time", impatience can make us grasp for things to appease our short term, rather than our long term, needs.

The key is to step back, take a breath, and trust ourselves to stay in alignment with achieving what we really desire. It's partly about learning how to better mother ourselves.

This week, my friend Brenda Stanton, who is a lifestyle and business coach ( Claim Your Worth), made the distinction between the words "choose" and "want, which I think is very helpful:

________________________________________________________________________

"Last week I had a very interesting conversation with a mentor of mine. He helped me, by giving me a visual example, of what it looks and feels like to be steeped in our younger parts - and how-to make the shift into your True, Higher Self to make forward progress. 

What sparked the conversation was when I said – “I want”. He said, “How about you change that want to the word CHOOSE – I choose.”

He went on to explain that using “I want” is like a kid in the cereal isle who wants the cocoa puffs and is having a temper tantrum because Mom or Dad is saying no – you can’t have them.

This is often how we feel when we want something but feel like there is a power outside of ourselves telling us we can’t have it. It makes us feel very small, helpless, and powerless.

My mentor explained that this inner child needs our love, attention and nurturing for sure – but we don’t want to stay steeped in this drama-filled place too long.

This is when we want to elicit our Higher, True Self – and where the word CHOOSE comes in. Rather than say “I want” and believe what you desire is outside of you, simply say I CHOOSE. I choose health. I choose loving relationships. I choose abundance. 

Can you feel the shift within yourself when you use the word Choose vs. Want?

The key is to realize that we are human. We have younger parts that are afraid and need our attention. Yet, we also are Divine, whole, powerful and bigger than anything that comes our way. The goal is to balance – not perfectly – but to balance the interaction and integration with these two parts and allow your Higher Self to have more air-play in your mind – even if its only 51% vs. 49% of your younger self – your Higher Self still wins out.

This week your soulwork is to witness how powerful you feel when you change “I want” to “I choose”."

Thank you Brenda!

Mom Was No Poet: A Daughter Remembers Her Mother

"Sarge"

Happy Mother's Day. This week's post is written by my dear old friend Chris Radant, who wrote the original short story for the movie Home For the Holidays.
.........................................................................

We called her “Sarge.”

My brothers and I knew her unflappable love for us, as well as the part that was highly flappable. Her jaw would set, her mouth would pucker and rise up a half inch closer to her nose and her voice….ho boy, that voice. And words only sailors used. Hazel Kay Radant in the house!

Heels would click, children would salute and scurry, apologize and know full well that the love didn't go away.

She used to pull me up onto her lap, show me the “learn to draw ad” in the back of a magazine, put a pencil in my hand and things got really quiet. “Let’s draw pretty girls, honey,” she said each time.

I had a bedroom in the attic where I assumed the pitched ceiling over my bed to have been built expressly for me. I could rest my chin on the windowsill between my chenille-covered twin beds. With a pillow under my knees, I knelt there like I was taking communion and watched the drive-in theater’s movies.
In the summer, I could even hear them.
That’s how I learned about the big world outside our housing plan in Columbus, Ohio.

She’d call me down into reality, to wash the dishes, watch my little brother. I hated her cooking…food from cans and boxes, ‘50s style. “Set the table, punkin’ and get the box of mashed potatoes out for me and the squirt cheese.” We ate what was squirted in front of us… or so Mom thought.

All the quirks made life interesting and taught my brothers and me to be ready for anything. And thanks to Sarge, I can draw now. Today, I’m an artist and writer living on Martha's Vineyard.

Drawing by Chris Radant

Special thanks to the Martha's Vineyard Times.

Choices That Serve Us Better

Choice, not chance, determines our destiny.  ~Aristotle

This week's post is written by gum surgeon Dr. Cheryl Townsend Winter, who was featured on Lines of Beauty a few years ago, when she was in the middle of writing her book. The book is now complete and chock full of very helpful guidance for the journey of aging.:

I like to think of life as a piece of art of which we are the artist. That life is a composition piece; a unique woven tapestry of the choices we make.  Dorothy Sander said: “We are all artists. We just create on our own unique kind of canvas.” I say, we are all artists and we create our own lives. 

One choice we make is attitude: we can see ourselves aging gracefully, and beautifully, with longevity. Not at all surprisingly, having a positive attitude contributes to longevity. Research by Becky Levy proves that having a positive outlook on aging can add seven and a half years to one's life.

But there is more to this story than just attitude. Genetics accounts for 1/3 of the factors that lead to a long life so there is the other 2/3 which is the composition of all of the choices we make each moment of every day: what we eat or drink; what we do or don't do; whether we smoke or not; what time we go to bed and get up, etc. We can decide to live healthier and enjoy feeling good as we move along the longevity pathway. To give you a few ideas of choices that serve us well, here are some examples from my book, The Aging Gracefully Pathway: A Toolkit for the Journey. Some of them may surprise or intrigue you:

Longevity Quick Tips: 

 -Drink water to be healthy, think clearly, and even lose weight. 

    -Play in the dirt a little (gardening is so good for us in so many ways) to help win the aging battle (strengthens immunity).

    -Prevent gum disease: Floss your teeth - adds six years to your life.

    -From RealAge.com: Two 20 minute walks per day can take five years off your biologic age.

    -Shedding pounds can add 3-4 years to your life. 

    -Appreciate the magnificent equipment the body is, listening to what it has to say, and acting as its steward.

  Thank you Doctor.  

  Dr. Cheryl Townsend Winter's book is available at Amazon. 

Freer

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. 

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.

©Marcia Barhydt, 2011

Thoughts on Newtown

Today's post is written by my niece, Tana Becker, who is a teacher in the Boston school system. As a blogger I realize that I am veering off course but I also know that what happened this past Friday has permeated our thoughts and effected us all on a very deep level.

I bring you Tana:

"There seems to be a debate right now about whether to focus on gun control or mental health. Why is it one or the other? Both are so important and relevant to this situation. Both are issues that we need to act on.

I don’t understand the need to own a gun or to defend oneself with weapons, but I know that so many Americans feel strongly about this, so I can respect it to a certain extent. Growing up an animal and nature-loving vegetarian, I also don’t understand hunting. But I grew up in a rural area where on the first day of hunting season school was empty, and it wasn’t uncommon to come home and see a deer hanging from my neighbor’s tree—so I can respect that too. But let’s be real—all you need for hunting is a rifle. And as for defense, there is nothing “defensive” about owning automatic weapons that can kill 27 people in a matter of minutes. There is no place for that in our society. ABSOLUTELY NONE. No reason why that should be legal. No good that can come of it. And no reason why anyone should own more than one gun. So when people say, “I have the right to defend myself, that’s why I own all these guns,” or “that’s why I own these automatic weapons,” they’re really saying something else—something about power, about fascination with the ability to destruct, about the potential to be very offensive, and not defensive at all.

As far as mental health goes, I am a high school teacher in an under-resourced district, where most students fall under the poverty line, and where many have experienced violence, the instability of moving several times per year, and homelessness. In a school of almost 600 students where these are the kinds of experiences many of them have, how many social workers do you think we would have? One, two, twenty? Well, we have none. Not a single full time school social worker or counselor. No drug intervention program, no trauma recovery program, no resources for homeless youth. We do have partnerships with community organizations in which counselors come into school 1-2 days per week—but with absenteeism such a huge issue, especially for the students in greatest need, students are often not present the day the counselor comes in. There are no resources to follow up on these students with home visits or the interventions they need.

In addition to all the “regular” problems that many have, there are some, as there are in all schools, with more serious mental health problems. What can we do to protect ourselves from the potential actions of these students or others in the community? I don’t know. My principal, in the past, has asked for alarmed doors and other security measures. The district has turned her down. This type of request would never be turned down in a suburban school district.

This brings me to another point. I am tired of hearing about what a quaint, affluent, “safe” community Newtown is. The tragedy here is that 27 people were killed, and that 20 of them were innocent, beautiful children—not that they were wealthy, suburban children. This would have been equally tragic had it happened in an urban neighborhood, or a poor rural community—and the news media is responsible for conveying that message—that this was the senseless death of children, period.

And now to the important point—the children. I find it easier to go on about gun control and mental health than to write about the immediacy of the tragedy, which is the horrific, violent end to 6 and 7 year old lives. I find it easier to distract myself by staying plastered to the news than to turn off the TV and just sit in silence and feel how I really feel.

Which brings me to the question of prayer. I am not part of a formal religious faith. I grew up in a secular, half Christian half Jewish home. But I have respect for religion, and I believe in God in the sense that I believe in beauty, light, and healing, and the ability for people to come together in community.

As I lit the Chanukah lights last night, I asked myself, what place does “light” have on a day like today? I thought, I could remind myself that light and beauty still exist in the world even when tragedies like this happen—but although it’s important to remember light and beauty moving forward, it didn’t seem helpful to force myself to think that way when I wasn’t feeling it. Then I tried to think of the candles as a celebration of the children’s lives—and in the coming days and weeks it will be very important to celebrate them—but it seemed too soon. Then I thought about meditating, where the point is to “just be” with whatever thoughts and emotions come to pass. That also seemed pointless. I feel what I think a lot of us are feeling—powerless.  We can’t drive to Connecticut to volunteer, we can’t send a donation to the Red Cross. There is nothing we can do.

So when people say that they are praying for the children and the families, I am still trying to figure out how to do that. I think what they are doing is asking God to help the families heal from their grief, and help the victims’ souls be at peace. This seems like the best thing to do, and I’m trying to figure out how I can do it in a way that feels authentic to me. The thing I keep coming back to is that I just need to love them—love the families as if they were my brothers and sisters, and love the children who witnessed the violence, and the children who did not survive the violence, as if they were my own."

Beautifully said Tana. Thank you for your thoughts and for your contribution to Lines of Beauty. I join you in sending love to the victims, their families & friends, and to everyone at the Sandy Hook school, especially the young children who witnessed what no one should ever have to see.

Aging Gracefully in her Studio

This week's beauty is artist Liz Smith who is the creator of  Made in Lowell. Liz is a fellow lover of felted wool whom I met several years ago at the Sowa Holiday Market in Boston. Since then she has been featured on Martha Stewart with her polymer clay eggs and is creating  all sorts of things wonderful in her Etsy shop.

"I’m 42, turning 43 this year. My husband and I are both the youngest kids in our families with siblings much older than us. He’s the only other person I ever met with the same family structure as mine; 4 kids with 3 bunched together in age and one 7 or 8 years later. We were surprise babies for our parents. It was like being only children, with siblings. We grew up accustomed to being around older people. Our parents were often the age of our peers’ grandparents. I feel like this made me more attuned to the aging process, made older people less “other”.

Sometimes I feel alone in that I didn’t love being young, I think I exhaled when I reached 30. Not that I’m in a hurry to get through life, I cherish every moment. But I adore being an adult! I feel autonomous and in charge of my life, well, as much as anyone is. It’s such a contrast to the chaos I felt right through my childhood and into my twenties. I notice it every day and it feels like freedom.

I do notice that I have been inculcated with society’s youth obsession and sometimes find myself chagrined at the draping of my neck skin, the softening of my face. I am determined to fight these feelings as I believe they are false instincts, that I am brainwashed by advertising. No better proof of this is that I don’t have these thoughts about anyone else! Someone else's soft, wrinkled skin is a sweet indication of experience and wisdom.

I interact with the public a lot when I vend at craft shows. I make it a point to thoughtfully acknowledge and listen to anyone I think might have become invisible in society due to her age. It’s a small thing but I hope it helps.

If we are lucky, we grow old. I hope to be very, very lucky."

Thank you Liz for being this week's beauty. 

P.S.I love this picture of your adorable parents.

Aging Gracefully by Tapping In

This week's beauty is opera singer, massage therapist, poet, and home renovator Kathryn Feigal who is 63 years old.

"Most of my life I have had the unfortunate anxiety-producing combination of No Impulse Control and Caring Too Much What Other People Think. As you can imagine, this has created a perpetual cycle of regret. Now that I’m three months shy of 64, I’m somewhat dismayed to admit that I still struggle to preserve or maintain what's left of my imagined dignity. In confronting a society given over to a collective identification with frenzy, I’m less inclined to adapt to the illusions that society promotes. Maybe we all have a degree of Tourette's Syndrome with its accompanying rapping, hip-hopping bumbledom of multitasking to fulfill spurious requirements for living.

One of my favorite movie moments was the department store scene in The Women where Annette Bening, when assaulted by a department store cosmetic hawker said, "This is my face. Deal with it." Like Annette’s character, I think if I can avoid the temptations of the eternal youth marketers, the sellers of unnatural thinness and cosmetic surgery, I may be able to tap into who I really am.

Kathryn in flight

At this stage in life, this sentence keeps running through my head, “How do I want to live the rest of my life?” There’s an urgency that wasn’t there before. Joan Baez said, “You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.”

In taking care of my mother the last years of her life, I witnessed her inability to confront her fear of dying. She truly raged against the dying of the light. I know that I want to die consciously. I want to be fully alive when I die. I want to have lived my dreams.

I feel more propelled to condensed action since 3 close friends have died in the last couple of months. One of them lived a big portion of her life trying to please other people – doing things she really didn’t want to be doing. I now get it at a level that I never have before that I need to live my own life.  To punctuate this vow, I took a running, jumping, flying leap off a mountain last summer. 

I’m viewing my own personal process of aging as a series of leaps into future possibilities that I’m igniting with gusto. I’m realistic about the fantasies I recognize as unattainable and I’m able to release them. Lately I’ve been going through my house throwing away items that don’t fit in with my goal of producing and performing my One Woman Show.  It’s symbolic of the balancing force behind the things I’ve given up by aging. I don't need to fill the spaces I've cleared in my house. Now I have room in my head and heart for laser-beam clarity into my future artistic expressions.

Here's wishing you the same,

Kass"

Thank you m'dear.

You can enjoy Kathryn's poetry here as well as her neat site Redoing The Undone.

Aging Gracefully with Writing

This week's beauty is Kathryn Magendie who is 54 years old. Aside from being an author, and Publishing Editor of Rose & Thorn Journal, Kathryn has written four books, with her fifth due out this spring.

Kathryn also has a great blog where I found this wonderful piece of hers on aging:


"I flip through a magazine and realize it’s no longer strange to see clever ads for Botox and plastic surgery, the ones that make the decision seem a smart and savvy one for the up and coming woman of distinction. Why are we so hooked on “Beauty” and who started all this madness?

Well, let’s see. In ancient Babylon, not only the women but also the men wore eye shadow and eyeliner, darkened their lashes, curled their hair, and used henna for nail color. Ancient Grecian woman used crushed berries for blush on their cheeks, and wore fake eyebrows made of ox’s hair. The Egyptians slathered blue paint to show off their veins. Those girly Roman women made facial masks out of flowers, honey, wheat, and eggs; hey, that’s not so bad! But Medieval women applied bat’s blood to their faces (good god), while both men and women used pumice stones to rub their teeth (ouch). Beginning with the sixteenth century, women applied white lead to their faces so they could look “pale” (lord help them) and used lye to lighten their hair, which then fell out so that wigs had to be worn to cover the patchy hair/scalp results.



I study my image in the mirror and try not to be so demanding of my face and body—and yes, I’ll apply a little make-up, some moisturizers, zap a little razz-a-ma-taz to the face and hair, work out with weights and do yoga and aerobic activity, watch what I eat. But really, I’m not so bad, am I? A 54 year-old woman who takes care of herself and does not want scalpels or needles plunged into her skin in the name of what some may call Beauty and “Ever-lasting” Youth. I do see the wonders of medical/dermatological sciences so that we can feel better about ourselves, but where does it all end? How far are we willing to go to Deny what is inevitable? We are going to age. Things will happen. When we Over-Youth-a-fy, we lose something of Ourselves, don’t we? The character of ourselves? That which sets us apart and makes us uniquely us? That which makes us interesting. When I look at your faces, I am excited, for I respectfully and happily write about you, the parts of you that show me who you are and where you have been, and the life you have lived. I celebrate you and all your Self.

So when you see me, you’ll see a woman who is her age. Who takes care of herself. But what you won’t see is a woman who is ashamed of who she is at the age she is, for I’m rather tired of being told I should be ashamed and to Do Something About It"

Thank you Kathryn for being this week's beauty.

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Aging Gracefully with Abundance

This week's beauty is the wonderful author Dorothy Hoffman Sander who is 60-years-old. Aside from having written two books, Dorothy also has a lovely blog called Aging Abundantly, where writes about making the very most out of the second half of life.

Dorothy has this to share about growing older:

Being Older and Wiser is the Icing on the Cake of Life

I know I am not the only one who has said repeatedly in recent years, “Gosh, I wish I knew that twenty years ago!”…or ten years ago, or five, or even yesterday! As we move into our later years it’s easy to bemoan not only our aging body, but that everything we learned getting to this point would have served us better in our youth…or so we believe.


Living all these years has also given us a wonderful opportunity. Our many years of  making mistakes, wrong choices, wrong actions, wrong thinking has allowed us to amass a whole lot of learning and experience.  In fact, we know so much now that we might even be considered “wise”.  One can only be truly be wise by having tried and failed, loved and lost  many, many times and consequently, be old! So, we should put aside our regrets and grab hold of the gift of wisdom and get busy living our todays.

Being older and wiser is the icing on the cake of life. It is our comfort food to savor and enjoy and it will be our companion for the remainder of our days. It is, in fact, a gift that will keep on giving and growing as long as we choose to live life to the fullest.

We get to know a thing or two about life…to have a few answers, to have a better idea of what it takes to be happy and fulfilled. I just think that awareness might just be worth a few wrinkles, sagging boobs and gray hair. Besides, creases around the eyes enhance our eyes, our soft bodies delight and comfort our grand babies, and our gray hair makes us look like queens. We’ve graduated from our jobs as princesses. Now, we not only have beauty, we have the power of wisdom.

Thank you Dorothy!

You can find Aging Abundantly on Facebook.

Aging Gracefully With The Truth

This week's beauty is Connie Banford who is 61-years-old. Connie and I grew up in the same neck of the woods along the lower end of the Niagara River in New York. She is a certified internet marketing consultant and heads-up her own company Banford Enterprises. They provide an all-in one marketing platform that combines Video Email, Webinar/Webcasts, Mobile Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Capture, and Social Media into one easy to use system that allows companies to dramatically enhance their bottom-line sales all while personalizing their approach to clients.

Banford Enterprises also offers Customized Mobil Apps.

Connie has a blog called Now What If and has this to share about growing older: 

As each year approaches more quickly than the last, I have come to realize that there are certain things that simply keep one young in mind and in spirit. First is mindset and attitude. Each new decade can bring exciting adventures if you look at them as being exciting.  Two people can look at the same gray hair, for example, and have totally different perspectives. One person might think “old” yet the other thinks “beauty,”  and you have a choice in that thinking! Positive thoughts and a positive attitude certainly can be the key to mental, spiritual and physical health.

It’s crucial to exercise and to eat a proper diet, I’ve found. There is still a lot of world yet to explore so you want to be healthy! Whatever the age, people just need to remember not to “sweat that small stuff” because that just contributes to ill-health and stress.

Interestingly, I used to be somewhat reticent to change, but as years pass, I have totally reversed that reluctance. Change can be very difficult, but to embrace it can be invigorating and exciting. Being open to learning new things, learning technology, and keeping up with the world keeps your mind young and alive.  Reading , and continuation of personal development should be continued activities! 

Babies, little people and young adults will keep you in awe of your surroundings. You forget how beautiful a simple flower or butterfly can be but young people show you that beauty once again. They help you remember those exciting “firsts” – the excitement of tying one’s shoes for the first time, riding a bike “with” and then “without” training wheels, and driving a car! Young adults keep your mind and ideas fresh. 

A huge advantage to becoming older is that it has become progressively more apparent that it makes no difference what others think as long as I am true to myself   Life is great and keeps getting better! 

Thank you Connie for joining us on Lines of Beauty. I love what you said about being true to yourself. If there was only one life lesson to be learned, I think this one might be very close to the top of the list.