I've just got to share this really funny you tube video with you. It is of my daughter Emily's friend, Kerry and her baby. Kerry is truly one of the funniest people I know. They were housemates at the University of Maryland and spent (all 7 of them) senior spring break with us in Florida (near Miami). My sides ached from the uproarious monologues Kerry would instantaneously come up with. She is trying to win a Mother's Day contest with Ellen Degeneres. The more hits her video gets, the more likely she will win. She really should win - it's a "Mother's Day Dance Dare" - check it out.
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| This is a photo of the back of a Reclining Buddha - hand behind the head Qi gong classes started this a.m. It's great sharing this form of movement with others. I'm heading back to Santa Cruz on June 16th to begin the second week of intensive training with Lee Holden. My goal is to be certified for Level I at the end of that intensive. Then I'm heading back later in the year for Level II and III. It's not too late to join our class - email me at donnaraesmith@yahoo.com **************************************************************** |
#47 is interesting. It's rather long but worth reading - for you women who are about my age, for you young readers to know what you might experience and for you men so you can also gain a little insight.
by Gloria Steinem - Gloria Steinem is a writer, feminist, and social reformer. After graduating from Smith College, she went to New York City as a freelance writer, first attracting attention with her article, "I Was a Playboy Bunny", an exose' based on her own undercover work in a New york City Playboy Club. Among her many lifetime achievements, Steinem is the founder and original publisher of Ms. magazine.
Rediscover Yourself at 60 - Aging is a journey toward self-discovery and perhaps a revolution of sorts.
Age is supposed to create more serenity, calm, and detachment from the world, right? Well, I'm finding just the reverse. The older I get, the more intensely I feel about the world around me, including things I once thought too small for concern; the more connected I feel to nature, though I used to prefer human invention; the more poignancy I find not only the very old people, who always got to me, but also in children; the more likely I am to feel rage when people are rendered invisible, and also to claim my own place, the more I can risk saying"no" even if "yes" means approval; and most of all, the more able I am to use my own voice, to know what I feel and say what I think; in short, to express without also having to persuade (and for me, Donna Rae, the more able I am at times to not feel the need to say how I feel about something-or-other).
I know my journey's form is a common one. I'm exploring the other half of the circle --- something that is especially hard in this either/or culture that tries to make us into one thing for life, and treats change as if it were a rejection of the past. Nonetheless, I see more and more people going on to a future that builds on the past but is very different from it. Isee many women who spent the central years of their lives in solitary creative work or nurturing husbands and children -- and some men who work or temperament turned them inward too --- who are discovering the external world of activism, politics, and tangible causes with all the same excitement that I find in understanding less tangible ones. I see many men who spent most of their lives working for external rewards, often missing their own growth as well as their children's, who are now nurturing second families, their internal lives, or both --- and a few women who are following this pattern too, because they needed to do the unexpected before they could feel less than trapped by the expected.
I'm also finding a new perspective that comes from leaving the central plateau of life, and seeing more clearly the tyrannies of social expectation I've left behind. For women especially --- and for men too, if they've been limited to stereotypes --- we've traveled past the point when society cares very much about who we are and what we do. Most of our social value ended at fifty or so, when our youth-related posers of sexuality, childbearing, and hard work came to an end --- at least, by the standards of a culture that assigns such roles --- and the few powerful positions reserved for the old and wise are rarely ours anyway. Though the growing neglect and invisibility may shock and grieve us greatly at first and feel like "a period of free fall" to use Germaine Greer's phrase, it also creates a new freedom to be ourselves -- without explanation. As Greer concludes in The Change, her book about women and aging:
"The climacteric marks the end of apologizing. The chrysalis of conditioning has once and for all to break and the female woman finally emerge."
From this new vantage point, I see that my notion of age bringing detachment was probably just one more bias designed to move some groups out of the way. If so, it's even more self-defeating than most biases --- and on a much grander scale --- for sooner or later, this one will catch up with all of us. Yet we've allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy --- all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics --- may people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and dependency. This incomplete social map makes the last third of life an unknown county and leaves men stranded after their work lives are over, but it ends up so much earlier for women that only a wave of noisy feminists has made us aware of its limits by going public with experiences that were once beyond its edge, from menopause as a rite of passage into what Margaret Mead called "postmenopausal zest," to the news that raised life expectancies and lowered birth rates are making older people, especially older women, a bigger share of many nations, from Europe to Japan, than ever before in history. I hope to live to the year 2030, and see what this county will be like when one in four women is 65 or over -- as is one in five of the whole population. Perhaps we will be perennial flowers who "re-pot" ourselves and bloom in many times.
Aging is so fascinating to me. There are many pre-conceived ideas that can stand in the way of staying youthful. In my Qi gong readings - the idea of aging = growing old and weak is completely contrary to what the masters believe is the truth about aging. The Qi gong movements and meditations maintain youth and strength and vitality in the organs and muscles and spirt for many, many years.
What are your pre-conceived ideas about aging?
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Time to rock and make dinner. I think we'll have tempeh sandwiches -
really good toasted rye bread with seeds
spread a generous mixture of horseradish, ketchup and mustard on both pieces
layer - spinach, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, sauerkraut, tempeh browned a little, 2 fake bacon strips, avocado and anything else you want
oh, and really good, cold beer
Pickles and chips on the side and there you go, prep time 15 minutes
Much love,
Donna Rae
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