103 People Unfriended Her, How Many Would Do the Same to Me

Blog Woman!!! - Life Uncategorized

I came across a Huffington post about a woman who posted pictures of herself on her Facebook wall that caused a collapse in her social circle.  The headline said “When Beth Posted These Images on Facebook, 103 People Unfriended Her”.   

The headline effectively grabbed my attention, but what the story really did was zero in on the heart of one of my own deepest fears.  It cut to a deep vulnerability that even I don’t fully understand, but it’s one that has held me back from engaging as fully in life as I possibly could.  I can’t do that until I can somehow get to a place of true peace about it.

The pictures that Beth Whaanga, the woman in the Huffington piece, posted were semi-nude images of herself featuring her scars from a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy.  They were taken by a photographer leading a project called,

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Moving Through the Ages

On New Year’s Day I found myself in a hospital emergency room because of a severe and unexpected asthma attack. Couldn’t find my keys. Didn’t feed my cat. Didn’t even put on socks (and it was freezing) because I had not a minute to spare. I left my home in a hurry. I fled (as best I could, given the amount of oxygen available to me). I figured I’d return home in 4 or 5 hours. Wrong. It was more like 6 days.

I hadn’t been hospitalized for asthma since my very first attack 32 years ago, and on previous visits to the ER, I had been treated and released and back to normal in a day or two. During the first three days of this stint. I was concerned because I wasn’t recovering as quickly as I was used to. My lungs were slower to clear. My oxygen levels were unstable. There was conversation about living wills and the dreaded possibility of intubation, which, while life-saving, is associated with a mortality rate of 10 to 13 percent. I had nothing but my Reiki hands and Buddhist practice to get me through the crisis and back to my apartment.

And then I remembered: I was no longer 33 but 65, and at this age bouncing back takes longer, I’m learning.

30-something me.

I had been feeling 40 for the longest, but between 2008 and 2013, something changed. I shifted mentally and emotionally and the 40s-feeling became the 60s-feeling, leapfrogging over the 50s-feeling. Between those years I was an unemployed person, an older unemployed person whose credentials and qualifications and skills seemed to be side notes. One recruiter suggested that I dye my hair. Another sighed while reading my resume during an interview and said, “When did we get so old.” I was overwhelmed by articles about and advice for older workers. Age discrimination, which had been only a theory became a reality and with that came thoughts of social security, Medicare. Between those years I couldn’t say with certainty what was going to happen to me, how I would take care of myself. I took a day at a time and thought a lot about age and aging and struggled to arm myself against stereotypes and the seeds that society plants. I was determined to plant my own seeds and nurture my own garden.

60-something me.

Do I have any theories on or advice about aging? No. I have observations. I can say that aging is better than the alternative. I can say that living long brings the gift of experience and, yes to be cliché, wisdom. I can say that I have fewer inhibitions and self-consciousness. I can say that I know my place in the universe and my relationship to the planet and its inhabitants. I can say that health and good friends and humor are important. I can say that I trust my intuition as much as I trust my intellect. I can say that listening carefully brings its own education. I can say that making and resting on assumptions can be detrimental. I can say that 60+ is not the new 40+. It simply is what it is, and that varies from person to person. I believe that the perception of time is relative to, among several things, age. It’s true: Time is moving with greater speed and I seem to be sprinting through the months, the years. I don’t run for buses and trains – what’s the rush! I can say that stability is an illusion because nothing is unchanging — everything is in a state of flux. I’ve found my soul work and I’ve come to know the value of service to others. Thirty years ago I was all about service to myself. I have watched – at long distance – with wonder and nostalgia my niece and nephew move from infancy into teenage-hood. My sister is 14 younger than I am, and now we’ve arrived at a place where we can have open and honest conversations because the little sister-big sister dichotomy has faded. We are simply sisters of a certain age, looking good, meeting challenges, and with our brother (11 years younger than I am), laughing a lot and still looking forward to life with all its changes, surprises and gifts.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/weekly-writing-challenge-golden-years/

35 Quotes For Introverts

Writing Challenge: No Water on Hillsides For My Red Rubber Boots

Daily Prompt: Free Association

Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .

. . . home.

. . . soil.

. . . rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

Home = Water. Soil = Hillsides. Rain = Red Rubber Boots.

There hasn’t been water for days. No rain. No sweat.

Not even a single solitary salty teardrop.

The landscape is coughing. Wheezing.

The river a mile away — dust at its mouth.

Hillsides like old corpses. Rotting. Collapsing.

Victimized by winds and gales.

Last week they rose above the rooftops; today they are the height of my rubber boots.

My brand new red rubber boots. The ones I wear when I dance for rain.

I am tired now. Who will dance for water?

Writing Challenge: “Unfaith,” and Then Faith

The WordPress Daily Prompt/Post: Tell us about the role that faith plays in your life — or doesn’t.

Religious faith in my family was eclectic: My father, at the encouragement of his second wife, became a Pentecostal; my mother was Baptist/Methodist; my mother’s mother was Methodist; my mother’s father was Jehovah Witness who eventually remarried a Mennonite; my stepfather, as I remember, of no particular religion, occasionally read his big, blue Masonic Bible, which intrigued us kids. I had a chance to sample them all (with the exception of the Mennonite), though I was more or less raised with Baptist/Methodist teachings.

One evening during my thirteenth year on earth, I was sitting on the porch of our house watching the changing colors of the sky, changing in part because of the steel mills that were the source of jobs for our city. Suddenly, the sky, with its smears of purple and blue and gold, reminded me of the biblical pictures of the portal to Heaven. From there I went on to think about Christian dogma: the creation, the Garden of Eden, the Virgin Birth, Heaven and Hell. It was then that I lost, no, rejected faith in the Christianity that I’d been taught. It was then that the Bible stories took on a more mythical character, mythical as in Roman and Greek mythology. The Book of Revelations had symbolism that horrified me, though I found the teachings of Jesus and his disciples gentle. You could say that I “unfaithed” myself based on my own philosophical bent. And I became hostile to all organized, formalized religions and adopted the “religion is the opiate of the people” position. I felt that I had been misled, tricked.

Merry Christmas!

 

Life in the Boomer Lane

A favorite activity of celeb mags, when they aren’t detailing Taylor Swift’s boyfriend du jour or the imminent break up and/or marriage of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, is to haul out photos of older actresses and to shriek “More beautiful than ever!” “Never ages!” “What is her Secret?” “These Older Actresses Get Hotter Every Year!”

A favorite subject is Goldie Hawn.  In photo after photo, throughout the years, she flashes before our eyes.  An adorable and hot twenty-something.  An adorable and hot thirty-something.  An adorable and hot forty-something. An adorable and hot fifty-something.  An adorable and hot sixty-something (67, to be exact).

So it may come as a shock to some of us to have seen the latest photo of La Goldie in all her natural 67-year-old glory.  Sans personal make up artist.  Sans personal hair stylist.  And most of all, in the moment, as opposed to fixing her…

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Great advice for anyone who wants to get started and then continue.

I Am NOT My Books…or My Nook

I have been a voracious reader since — well, I don’t have a memory of not being able to read. I don’t even have a memory of learning to read Dick and Jane. I was, as my mother might say, a “reading fool.”

I remember reading my mother’s books:

(I used to have a Polaroid that my father had  taken of me: I’m about six month old. Someone has put me on a bench covered with newspaper.  I’m on my stomach and have managed to prop myself up on my forearms, but my face is downward. I look to be reading the paper. That photo used to make me laugh and think, Even then, even then. No wonder I’m so nearsighted!) Anyway, I read everything. I  cried for David Copperfield. I read my mother and stepfather’s sex textbook with the acetate overlays of the external and internal human body. Death Be Not Proud scared me.