Reflections Of An Aging Woman

Turning Over Stones

“Don’t look into mirrors, look into people’s eyes.  After a certain age, mirrors lie”.  “How?”  “They give the bare facts all right, but they leave out all the poetry.”

This dialogue was taken from a piece of fiction by May Sarton. 

Sooner or later the aging woman realizes that looks were part of her personal power in the world and begins an exploration in order to come to terms with this fact.  Self-reflection reveals qualities that have the potential of equal impact. This week Sage Magazine, a local periodical for women, is exploring the price we pay for our toxic cultural model - the impossible standard of physical perfection. I know I sound like a broken record – I do even to myself – but unless we recognize the expectations that exist in the culture, we think the angst is ours alone. This is step one. Sage editor, Carolyn Flynn, said it well,  “There is a power greater than beauty.”  This knowledge is step two.
Aging brings us face to face with these cultural messages and makes sure we begin the process of defining ourselves by what is on the inside.  An older woman (or any woman) who is self-possessed is luminous.  The poetry that is hers alone, her talents, grace and passion radiate from her being.

One stone that has been left unturned in my exploration of aging is the relationship to my sexuality. My partner and I are exploring the consequences and challenges that aging brings to a long-term relationship. Mysterious forces have upset all the known elements of our intimate life.  This area of my life has tutored me in an extraordinary way.  Where but in the bedroom are you more vulnerable?  Here I must find a new way to hold my body, to show myself compassion  - this is acceptance at its most courageous. 

I saw a television show this week where women were admitting that the biggest sexual turn on for them was to feel desired.  For many, this single aspect of sexuality was more important then whether they have an orgasm.   I have known for a long time that this element was central to my feminine sense of self.  I have always felt as a feminist I should question this feeling.  It is, after all, a passive wish to simply be wanted.  But the TV show went deep into scientific research as to the chemical nature of passion - the chemistry behind sexual desire that is based on testosterone and estrogen levels.  The dynamics that shape our sexual responses are thousands of years old and have developed to insure that our species continues.  So where does that leave the aging couple that still have the body memory of desires felt and fulfilled?  I know for sure the book must be rewritten on sex and the aging body.  I wish someone would write it!  Meanwhile, I am asking for your opinions, insights and experiences.

I will not be writing my blog again until after my ceremony/celebration.  I need the time to be with myself and see if there is any further work I need to do to prepare myself to cross to the other side – into my third phase of life.  I also need time to plan and write the ceremony itself.  When I return I will share the feelings evoked from honoring this life passage and myself.

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

Senescence

“You will never find the wisdom you seek as long as you insist on changing only what you know.  True wisdom comes only to those willing to change what they are.”
                                                                    Unknown

Psychologist James Hillman explores in “The Force Of Character” what is lost when artificial means are used to alter the age of one’s face.  If you imagine your face as a phenomenon…with its own destiny, then all that goes on there, after sixty especially, is a work in progress, building the image, preparing a face that has little to do with the faces that you meet.   A face is being made, often against your will, as witness to your character.

I found these words from Hillman this week and once again, down the rabbit hole I went, feeling my way along the tunnel intent on finding where it would lead me.  I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I’ve made.  To this end, I continue to peer into the mirror and check how I am doing accepting this face I am creating. 

I had an unplanned moment this week when by accident I was smiling at something my granddaughter was saying and saw my reflection in the car window and saw a stack of little wrinkles leading up my cheek to my eyes.   I was shocked but not in a way I would have expected.  I was shocked with delight at new evidence of my continued transformation!  Each day it seems I wake up to a new body with new demands and limitations.  These changes require me to adapt – to find resilience, “the body instructs the mind in patience and forbearance while the mind tutors the body in creativity and flexibility.”  At the moment of glimpsing these new wrinkles, I’m aware for an instant of how allowing the aging process to transform me is indeed at work and I feel connected to the mystical realms that surround all of life.

 Dr. Thomas in “What Are Old People For,” uses the word senescence to describe the period prior to old age when a new relationship with the self emerges. Botanists use the word senescence to describe the most fruitful events in a plant’s life cycle.  The senescent phase of plant growth follows the exuberance of early growth.  As the end of the growing season approaches, the metabolism of fruiting plants changes.  There is a loss of water weight in the stems and leaves.  The metabolism shifts away from growth and toward ripening.  Botanical senescence is what prepares grapes for the harvest.

Humans can be seen to ripen as well. Here are some definitions of ripe; fully developed, mature, fully prepared to do or undergo something; ready.

Instead of being marginalized (or marginalizing ourselves), those of us who sense we are in the throes of senescence can be aware of the sacred nature of the inner work we do.  We can be aware of the legacy this inner work will leave behind when life is over.

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

What Is Wisdom?

Wisdom – Ability to discern inner qualities and relationships.

                                          Webster’s Dictionary

Having the audacity to claim wisdom as my destination, I went on a search this week for the essence of what I am embracing.  Shouldn’t wisdom be the one quality that elders should be able to claim?  Isn’t it happening everywhere, spontaneously?  Don’t we want to grow wiser to make good use of life’s final years?   A Chasidic idiom asserts that, “for the ignorant, old age is winter, for the learned, it is a harvest.” 

As far as I can tell, the one quality that brings us wisdom is our ability to reflect on our life and examine experience.  We cannot help but become wise if we use life to grasp the way of the world and our place in it.  How do we do this?  We do it through hard knocks, depression, pleasure, boredom, anxiety, tears and laughter to name a few.  Wisdom is what life gives us with every passing moment.  All we need to do is PAY ATTENTION.  When you find yourself going back over things that have happened, things you might have done or said differently, deciding how you will act in the future, you are developing wisdom. Well I can claim this definition.  I adore reflection!

Jung believed that aging people “should know that their lives are not mounting and expanding, but that there are inexorable inner processes that enforce the contraction of life.”  This contraction can bring on a period of depression.  When it arrived in my life I realized very soon that the distress was a call to reflection and change.  I chose not to ignore or repress my discomfort.  The real physical and social losses are being mourned and digested and I have come to know a new set of strengths to value and desire. 

Theodore Roszak in America The Wise says, “wisdom needs to be midwifed and given the courage to speak of what it knows.”  Some of the wisdom that is gained through life flies in the face of our youth obsessed, narcissistic culture.  My capacity to “discern inner qualities and relationships” is growing.  The bigger picture reveals that accumulating possessions and needing to have control limits the depth of meaning and satisfaction to be experienced in life.  The questions that are now being held in my heart are how do I reflect this learning (wisdom) back into the culture I am part of?  I am aware of the social impact that so many conscious older women will be having as our numbers grow.  What an exciting time to be alive.

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.

Wise Woman Ceremony

“The wisdom that we need to solve our problems lies encoded in the depths of our unconscious minds, but it must be evoked by elders who evoke our potential.  Without realized models to evoke our archetypal depths we are literally lost in the world.  Throughout history, elders have served as beloved pathfinders, beckoning us to enter the province of old age in anticipation of growing strength and usefulness to society.”

                                                                    Joan Halifax, Anthropologist

Thanks to Kori for the quote.  I like that, “realized models”.  My mind has been in a whirl this week.  I have a foot in both the past that I am bidding farewell to and the future, which beckons.  My awareness of my potential as an elder is deepening as I get closer to the ceremony I am planning for myself at the end of April.  When I first started thinking about a ceremony for myself I was hoping it would help me accept the changes that were happening to me.  Now, I can see that I have been in the process for two years of building a bridge to that new me and I am ready to cross over.

Traditionally, this ceremony is called a croning ceremony but I find myself still reluctant, after two years of thinking about it, to use a word that carries such negative connotations in our society. I could try to educate those around me as to the historical value of the term, however, I am already outside of my comfort zone by declaring I have arrived at a new and developing sense of self embodied as elder/sage/wisewoman/crone.  I want a word that I and other women will want to embrace and that encourages us to move forward into the profound transformation that aging can offer.  The word I choose is wise woman.  When I turned 40, I created a collage for myself with these words at the center.

“A Wise Woman, moving into her maturity, her ripeness, will see that movement as an achievement.  The mature woman is one whose inner self radiates joy, beauty, appreciation and kindness – her mind probes for the meaning behind her experience and each passing year brings her that much closer to the essence of God and Life.  Every year brings more to her – more life, more wonder, more experience.”

I had the courage to claim the words wise woman as a destination I wished to reach way back then.  It feels arrogant to claim the possible achievement of being wise but if I don’t proclaim it as my path and goal then how could I possibly arrive there?

 Not every woman will choose this path.  Not every woman will be prepared or interested in the challenges of the journey.  But for those, like me, who do enter the transformational cocoon, willing to be delivered as a new form of self,  you may find yourself thinking about what word best captures this essence.  I have even gone so far as  to envision this person I am becoming – I see what she looks like and she has told me her name.  I can call on her whenever I stumble and she whispers in my ear that life isn’t fully lived until I complete the third phase.  I trust her as she  leads me backward to some primitive archetypal depth as described in the quote, as well as forward into the mystery.

Stephen and I included in our wedding vows this phrase.  “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be – the last of life for which the first is made.”

At the time this sounded so romantic to us.  I now see that the purpose of growing old is to come to a completion.  And so, with my soon to be experienced ceremony, I welcome the completion phase of life.

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.

Soul Making

“Aging is for soul making.  Aging is for becoming the magnificent human spirit.  It is a spiritual enterprise, a godly thing.”

I have been pondering Kori’s comments all week and reflecting on the direction I want to take the conversation.  First of all, I absolutely agree we are a product of a culture that is dominated by the white patriarchy and that we have all bought into the “mass culture’s standards”.  It is indeed the reason for the our discussions which, when approached with curiosity and a willingness to learn from our experience, can lead directly to the authenticity that Kori has discovered.  Where I take issue, I guess, is the importance I place on being willing to perceive the slights and resulting wounds that have been visited on us by virtue of being raised in this culture.

I expect to fully embrace the third phase but not without consciously recognizing what is lost to me and the excess baggage I carry because of the hurdles the larger society has erected to honoring myself in this new place.

Here are some comforting thoughts I pulled from Marian Van Eyk McCain’s book, Elderwoman.  “The sense of self worth a woman feels has been driven for so many years by how she looks that when the aging process demands that she scrutinize her value, she begins to see the power the outer shell has had in her life.  The fading of our beauty, as it is defined by our popular culture, can be a very large issue for many of us.  Though we may have grumbled at times about being “just a sex object,” there is an ancient, instinctual part of us that enjoys the mating dance and feels a sense of desolation when we notice men not responding to us in the ways we are used to.  Within us all, at forty, fifty (and even at 60), still lives that little girl who wants to enjoy her reflection in the mirror and longs to be told she is pretty.  This is a little death – one of many that pulls us away from our ego identification.” 

It is my observation that in our culture we often run away from our pain rather than meet it with an attitude of inquiry into its message.  All through this process I have known that simply allowing each new piece of awareness to shape me, would lead to the deep and profound transformation I am seeking.  I need not rush the process and, in fact, sense it is detrimental to do so.  I am giving this shift from adult to elder a lot of my time, energy and attention, ferreting out all inner and outer messages that will not serve me as I move into this new dimension.

I am including here a picture and a promise.  A promise of undiscovered beauty in our next developmental life phase - just like we see all around us in the cycles of life reflected in nature.  Take some time today to recognizes the invisible beauty around us and in us.  Thank you Marlene for the image.

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.

Magical, Mystical Change

“The transformation to Wise Woman is not attained through the mind – it’s attained through surrender, authenticity, forgiveness, faith, honesty, acceptance, vulnerability, humility, willingness and non-judgment.”

                                                          Marianne Williamson

Every once in a while I see I’ve taken a great leap in my knowledge of who I am and I have a clear and precise sense of that “grand design” I spoke of in the recent post “Story of Acceptance”. 

This week I’ve had a deep understanding come over me regarding a personal change I knew I had to make.  It started four years ago when I quit my clothing design business.  I was psychologically, spiritually and artistically DONE!  It created great havoc as we didn’t have a way to support ourselves so we started exploring different business avenues and made it through quite a few failures before we landed on a working model that could sustain our lives.

The guiding principle in this exploration was my inner need to change. I didn’t know exactly why or how.  All I knew for sure was I desperately wanted a change.  I just kept moving forward in surrender and trusted that what I needed to know would be revealed.  In “Wise Woman’s Way” Berta Parrish reminds me “for any transition to be a psychological and spiritual passage, one must consciously choose the adventure, not merely endure it.”  I chose the adventure.

Balancing our masculine and feminine aspects is considered a task of eldering.  This is one of the ways we find and reclaim our authentic selves.   I had identified with masculine attributes after my divorce at 30 in order to make my way in the world.  These masculine energies served me well in the outer world where I struggled for success, money, possessions and power.  But then came the disillusionment and a sense of something missing. 

What I see now was my souls longing to embrace my feminine side and, in order to do that, I needed to put down the mantle of “the woman who makes things happen”.  I needed to enter the flow and quit trying to push life around.  It was hard to quit doing this as I was quite good at it but I was also exhausted!  I had relegated my softer side to the dungeon as I used my middle years to make a mark and it was now time to descend the stairs and reclaim that part of myself.

This realization has made me more able and willing to trust the unfolding that is happening.  How could I have known 4 years ago that listening to the inner urging for change would help prepare me for the aging journey? 

Have you thought of the two sides of yourself and how they operate in your psyche?  Are there any adjustments you sense are needed as you prepare for the third phase of life where owning your masculine and feminine attributes brings you closer to wholeness?

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.

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.