Reflections Of An Aging Woman

Forging a New Path

“Hell is identification with the outer self.”

                        Carolyn Myss

President Obama has invited a whole new conversation into our midst.  That, along with the total breakdown of the way we as a culture have conducted ourselves, has very much been on my mind.  I love some of the images he’s brought to the fore in another context but easily translated into a broader wisdom. 

The word transparency has become a new buzzword. Well, as it so often happens, I woke up in the middle of the night with this full-blown thought.  That is what’s happening to me - I am becoming more transparent!  My skin has been one of the biggest challenges in the acceptance game I’m playing and as I‘ve watched it thin, crepe and sag, voila  - transparency!  My psychic life has become more “transparent” as well.  Questions are bubbling to the surface like what is the “cost” to me of our cultural obsession with youth and beauty?

I’ve been reading the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of  “The Tipping Point”.  He says, “Cultural legacies are powerful forces.  They have deep roots and long lives.  They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic, social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.” 

As I explore the inner dimension and my feelings about aging, I must never lose sight of this outer force that informs my personal journey.  These attitudes toward aging must be perceived and identified.  Only then can I help to reshape the culture around a new set of values based on my own experience that values this third phase of life. 

There are very few high profile women to look to for guidance in aging gracefully and numerous examples of desperate, pathetic attempts to retain youth.  Suzanne Somers comes to mind.  She is a girl/woman eternally stuck in the maiden archetype.  She is exactly my age and each time they cut and pull her face skin back, her mouth gets wider and wider.  Her face is looking, for lack of a better word, weird.  Why is weird better than growing older?   The only thing I can think of is old is very close to dead and we all know how unacceptable death is in our culture!  I try not to judge women who are making this choice although I do struggle with it.  Agreeing with the dominant paradigm is like volunteering to be its victim.  I want to forge a new path.

So how do I include this inner elder woman waiting to greet me?  She is no longer waiting in the wings to inhabit me.  She is thinning my skin and pulling it toward the earth.  I am being shape shifted by her and the question is how do I welcome her sometimes very annoying presence?  I know I can't do it alone.  

How do we as women midwife each other into this new way of being? 

If you would like to read the comments of others or to add your comments, please click on the comment button in the footer.  I look forward to the conversation.

A Story of Acceptance

A Story Of Acceptance

“Real beauty is always marked by the passage of time: it dwells in time; its loveliness increases as the workings of age and the mysteries of continuing enhance it.”
                        David Deida

The above quote is from an unlikely source.  David Deida wrote “The Way Of The Superior Man”.  His book helped me formulate a sense of the radiance I desire to find within and to express.  He goes on to say, “A woman’s true radiance reveals the degree to which she is open, trusting, connected and loving.  Her capacity to love allows her body to be moved by the power of the life force.  Herein lies the true nature of feminine radiance and power, far beyond the sexiness of a naive young woman.”  His book is written to help men gain a better sense of who they might become and his notions of a complementary universe operating between men and women I found quite healing. 

Somehow those thoughts led me to wonder once again about what I give up even as I reach for this new level of expressing inner radiance.  I read somewhere that all suffering becomes bearable if it is seen as part of a story!

My story has a life of its own and sometimes I seem somewhat detached - like an investigative reporter!  Writing this story of my metamorphosis, I find, thankfully, that suffering gives way more and more often and my sense of curiosity and hopefulness grows. The story has been a long one and yes, I am near the end.  But doesn’t the element of intrigue grow stronger as the plot thickens? As I think about it, I have always adhered to a theory of some kind of Grand Design that is constantly unfolding in my life. This must be something like what an author feels as she watches the story take shape and take on a life of its own.  Here is something I wrote about “The Grand Design” in 1983 just prior to following my muse and consequently shattering life as I knew it.

“If you clear out of the way (through self-knowledge and acceptance), of your other “voices” the clarity is there inside.  The “Twist” is that in order to arrive at the Grand Design you must be willing to enjoy and appreciate the entire path – whether it goes up or down or round and round – it is the perfect path.  Explore the path and enjoy it for it is uniquely yours.  Release your resistance to its twisting and turning nature and suddenly you see – as if from above – the incredible design and elegance of its curves.  All lines, fits and starts, waves and troughs, take on a beauty that is indescribable from a different view.  Fall in love with your path and you naturally embrace your own life and truly use it for the vehicle that it is.  Harmony and peace will be the friends you walk with down your path.  With them along you will not notice the distance or the obstructions that will be encountered.  You will simply do what is necessary to keep on walking.  You can even walk off the path and lie down among the flowers near its edge when you are weary.  For this too is of the path!”

Ah, what a reminder to trust myself and trust my experience.  There IS an absolute integrity to the human experience!  I WILL be led out of the woods!

If you would like to read the comments of others or to add your comments, please click on the comment button in the footer.  I look forward to the conversation.

Is This A Revolution?

 

“The art of life isn’t controlling what happens, which is impossible; it’s using what happens.”
                                                                      Gloria Steinem

A note on the comment left by Helen.  For me, staring directly into the losses that come with aging is the same as staring into the abyss that death represents.  Each informs me of the preciousness of the here and now once I quit being so afraid of allowing them to transform me.  It sounds like you too are consciously appreciating these gifts – the phoenix rising from the ashes!

Last week about this time I saw a picture of Gloria Steinem in the paper.  She is coming to town to speak and I was immediately sidetracked into rereading her book “Moving Beyond Words.” Once again, I was struck by all the ways women have been, and are, diminished in our culture.  She reminds me, “The most important thing about a female body is not what it does but how it looks.  The power lies not within us but in the gaze of the observer.”  This cultural message is in the air we breathe.

Her face is almost as familiar to me as my own.  Her story has informed mine as I’ve moved through the phases of my life.  Let me just say, upon gazing at her face, it was immediately beautiful to me.  I saw her radiance before I saw her aging.  I saw the gifts of time that come along with its ravages.  I saw a powerful presence, fully intelligent as well as fully compassionate.  She is strong yet yielding and soft – a perfect balance of masculine and feminine essence.  I suddenly realized how hungry I was for an image of an older woman completely inhabiting her body and face.

Ms. Steinem obviously hasn’t cut, pulled or injected poisons into various parts of her body in order to make herself more acceptable. We live in a society that is desperate to hold onto youth to the point where we surgically alter our selves to be acceptable, not only to others, but also to ourselves. Here is a revolution:  The Politics of Refusing to Rearrange Our Faces!  I’m pretty sure that aging as it is practiced in America (read non-aging) is a feminist issue. Thinking about Gloria Steinem reminds me that the personal challenges of aging cannot be segregated from the social pressures.

In the year 2030 ¼ of women will be over 65.  Once again, we are the pioneers and how we define this phase will be a beacon for those who come after us.  As a generation of women, we decided when or if we would marry, when or if we would have children and/or work.  It is now time to decide how we will age and how we will inspire the generations that follow us.  We as a group must re-vision our contribution. It is our turn to step to the head of the line and decide what it means to be old.

As you have aged have you ever dealt with being trivialized?  It seems to be a common theme among women of my age.  If we do nothing, we WILL be trivialized because that is what has been the lot of aging women in the past.  We must know that we are moving against a very strong current and we must do it consciously.  The dignity and esteem with which we hold ourselves sets the tone for how we are treated.   Oddly, one of the first places I experienced feeling trivialized was with my grown children!  Incidents in my family have motivated me to ask myself how do I create respect for who I am?  We women must speak of it between ourselves and scour our souls with questions like how do I unconsciously comply with who I’m told I am? Am I apologetic in my demeanor?  Just what is my demeanor? Am I congruent in presenting myself to the world as the strong and capable person I have come to be and do I bring this fully realized self to all I encounter? What is needed is a level of self-possession that transcends trying to squeeze myself into the cultural box of old woman.

This road I am traveling WILL excavate my soul of all that is NOT my inner radiance.  This is the paradigm shift I am seeking.

We Are In This Together

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart”

                                                                            Kahlil Gilbran

Thank you all so much for your comments.  Thank you Helen for reminding me of a central concept – that of allowing!  Isn’t that key here?  We are choosing even when we choose denial! 

I am beginning to feel the intimacy of sharing an important part of life with many new friends.  It feels like a soul connection as I don’t know many of you in the personal sense.

Have you every heard the Gaelic term Anam Cara?  Here is the definition:

Understanding each other without mask or pretension, the superficiality of social acquaintance falls away and I can be as I really am.  When I am understood, I am home, and I feel free to release myself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul.

This is why I belong to a women’s group. We are all women in our late 50’s to mid 60’s.  Our challenges resonate as we each tell where we are and what we are “chewing on” - working to make sense of it all.  It is a place I bring my heavy heart, my inquiring mind, my reaching soul, and my laughter.

We open each meeting with this invocation:

"We are sisters gathering in a sacred circle for the purpose of being awake and reaching for deeper meaning.  As spiritual partners, we honor each other by holding a space for each of us to grow.  We do this in an atmosphere of inquiry into the nature of ourselves, and the world around us, in the ever-changing movement and flow of life.  We commit to looking through a spiritual lens.  Setting our intentions, we speak our truth and listen with wisdom and compassion."

The topic this week was “What are my greatest contradictions?”  Do my outer and inner selves match?  In what ways do I contradict myself in my thoughts, attitudes and behaviors? 

Regarding my aging process and feeling congruent, it’s two steps forward and one step back.  The two steps forward tell me where I want to go, who I want to become and how will I complete my life cycle?.  The one step back tells me where I need to empty myself.  Each day I empty out a little bit more of my resistance to what is happening to me without my approval!

Thanks to the aging of my body and face, (can’t believe I said that) it is very hard to deny the preciousness of the time left and to take on the question of how I want to use it.  Do I really want to recapture my youth or do I want to “allow” and experience the gifts of the time of life I find myself in?