This blog is dedicated to opening the channels of communication between "woman of a certain age" in order to ease the transition and learn how others have handled and continue to handle it. There has been nothing in my life so important as having a role model, a model that allows me to open myself to another way of seeing things. My hope is that women will come to "Over the Fence" and by sharing their experiences and their opinions, become models for one another.
I'm walking across the lawn now, coffee in hand, the day is bright with a slight breeze and I'm ready to talk... and listen over the fence. Please join me.
Christina
I am not of "certain age" but because of the journey, I am slowly heading to it. It is inevitable. I can see and feel the changes but the knowing of that energy that is with me since I am conscious is ever unfolding, as passionate and pregnant with creativity and desire as ever. I have read many times, "The Denial of Death," by Ernest Becker. I love the way he speaks about the equalizing force of death as the source of raise and downfall for all of us humans. So much we do not chose: not the family where we are born, not the genetics, not the time in history, nor the sex. The list is infinite. Then we do the best we can with the bundle of hurts and gifts and we found ourselves where we are. I am forty seven and although I know that the lines framing my mouth are there because they shared laugh and they recovered all the laughter that was stolen from me.... Yet, I look at the mirror and say... "Facelift at fifty?" My retirement and my many trips around the glove are gone because I have to keep up with the color of my hair, once reddish chestnut. Now the silver is finely woven, even in my eyelashes!
ReplyDeleteI love my life as it is; I feel so free and every minute for me is meaningful and real. I have a full life, and, like all of us, many lives in it too. Yet, I would be a full if I did not contemplate the reality: the changes... the ones in those powers we value so much: looks, energy... certain kind of sharpness. And we keep on going, no choice, The denial is grace.
So, from all these choices we could not make, there are a few that we can own. The challenge is immense and heavy and sometimes we feel that we are so alone. We can chose to keep that youthful heart , that positive way of looking at life and changes. We can chose to look at the part of our body we like and embrace it and we can reframe those parts that fill us with shame. So much written about this! Plenty of gurus who profit on our change. Workshops, new age literature... The journey then feels less scary and lonely.... still, we will are surprised by the feelings more than ones.
I long for role models on how to look at change too. I miss that vibrant goddess energies of my thirties but I found the wise-woman-energies as passionate and transforming.... It takes work at the deepest levels! Being alive is not small thing, regardless the age. But leaving your life, walking the path and choosing to hide behind the fence or to take the risk of going over it or just getting it out of the way stone by stone, is hard, giant but worthy job.... I think that every time we call upon that core of love and courage inside of us, that every time we share the weight with others, connecting with those loves we have and with those powers that are slowly transforming us... we get the help we need to dance bare footed with elegance and rhythm. I think that it is only then when we can connect with our true self and the profound beauty inside of us and outside in the world of people and things. That beauty that is ageless, totally of our own making; that beauty that no one can take away from us. Endings and beginnings wherever we dare to find them are complex and full of meaning.
Such rich thoughts, worthy of contemplation.
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