AUTHENTIC ADULT WOMAN

NO TIME FOR TEARS...

I don't cry much these days, except in movies.

So this morning, walking purposefully along the ocean path, listening to Al Green singing Time Just Slips Away, I suddenly paused*...

My body wanted to slow down, relax - just dawdle along, maybe even stop and breathe deeply. The air was so sweet and summery...and so I did. Stop. And breathe.

Then, surprisingly, out of nowhere, a wash of warm tears swam down my cheeks. And down through my cells...cleansing, healing, melting tension. I wept quietly, sweetly, not really understanding why.  I wept tenderly for my dear old aging body, my 'stiff upper lip', the sorrows of the world...

My tears felt precious.  They remind me to pause and let myself  BE... 

I feel refreshed now.  And my body is like a a child's ...natural, responsive, true to itself.

 

 

 

It was like a little revelation...I need to pause long enough to know how I'm really feeling...a need greater than the other 'necessary' things that crowd my days.  

 

*There is a 'should' - even about walking.

Walk faster to get that heart rate up, walk longer to get those pounds off, walk with waist back, ribs up, shoulders back and down!

I know discipline is great, but so is pausing to listen to my body.

It has deeper things to say.

 

Download 07 Funny How Time Slips Away

RECOGNITION BY ASSOCIATION

Fifty years ago I wrote a short magazine piece on the hidden agendas of conferences.  I argued that "for professional people personal satisfaction at conferences depends on the fulfillment, or movement toward fulfillment, of three familiar needs:

*Recognition - respect, status

*Affiliation - belonging, communication

*Audience - a platform, witnesses

I think this is still more or less true.  But in the area of recognition, I may have cheated a bit. Looking back on my career, I notice that I often hung out with presidents and deans and leaders of organizations. I was pleased and a bit surprized to be seen and sought out by them.  But I didn't risk running for high office or accepting terribly responsible positions myself. Unconciously I basked in prestige by association.

Lots of ambient glory, plenty of cocktails in penthouses, and without the blood, sweat and tears.

When people asked why I didn't try for any of those important jobs myself, I always said "I hate administration' or 'I wouldn't want that responsibility', or 'I hate marketing myself'.  And that was true. Or maybe I was not ambitious enough, or fearful of failure?  

                     

In any case I often satisfied my need for recognition, affiliation, and audience... by association. 

But over the years I've become  ENOUGH - all by MYSELF!  Its been nice to have something of my own to say, to make my own contribution - without adding the credentials of my accomplished friends.

Finding OURSELVES....what a concept.  And finding that we are quite ENOUGH...just as we are...with our own unique gifts and styles...and our own senses of humor !! ...NOT DEPENDENT on 'kings and queens' to anoint us with their blessing and their fame - by association! 

CREATING WITH LOVE

CREATING for me is like falling in love...

I am totally alive. Completely immersed. Time is irrelevant. Every cell buzzes.

Hands move intuitively. My heart sings. My mouth smiles. 

A warm glow fills me. I have endless patience and love.

I can't bear to leave my emerging creation and I can't wait to get back to it.

 

Memories of these past loves surround me in this house.  

 STICKS: for example -

 

 

I could sit for hours holding a piece of wood, waiting for it to tell me how it wants to be transformed by my sharp steel blade...sanding with quiet patience until the heartwood gleams soft as silk.

 

Sometimes its  a hand...sometimes a foot...

 

 

 

Who knows what will come of it...of all this patience and adoration and love?

It doesn't really matter. It is the precious moments of utter absorbtion, centered and curious.

 

 

And STONES:  

I collect stones from everywhere. The small striped stone from les Invalides in Paris, the round pearl-like stone from Rodin's garden. The wildly colored stones from Ebys landing on Whidbey Island. And these days I sit on my pebbled beach..sifting thru the tiny wet gleaming stones to find a bit of turquoise sea glass or a milky moonstone.

 

 

 

 

When you discover the treasures of nature...and create new homes for them...or see them through different lenses, it isn't really your creation.

I know that.  But it still feels deeply creative.

 

 

 

 

The carved tree branches, the bowls of stones, the sculpted clay, the painted gourds...

Each inspired me in their turn.

I love to photograph nature's beauty.  Like these bits of vari-colored sea flora. Believe it or not the vivid images here were just lying on the shore...waiting for me to gather them and marvel at their intricate mystery.

                                                                 

What gifts...the creative moments...purity, innocence, quiet, concentration, patience, radiance, joy!

I am in love.

 

MODELS, MAPS & METAPHORS!

I love models, maps, and metaphors! I enjoy visualizing life's journey in different ways. As a PATH - thru the woods, by the river, into the cave - on the way 'home'.  Or as a STAIRCASE taking one step at a time - or leaping up 3 steps and perhaps falling down :(  

Or as a SPIRAL with opportunities to learn and re-learn at different curves on it, but generally moving (plus slipping/sliding) onward and upward.  

I forgot about 'the spiral' the other day when I had that brief illumination about taking the next step into Eccentric Cronedom. 

I speculated that I could/should find inner peace by stepping away from the fray of worldly chaos - away from the predictable agonies of being human.  Fat chance!  It is quite clear that I STILL have to choose which people and problems I will give energy to...which will feed my soul and fulfill my destiny. And some of those choices will be stressful and difficult...not peaceful. So much for my retiring into serene nunhood.

And I know better than to imagine that life is an orderly (if invisible) progression of steps into authentic adulthood or wise Cronedom!  It seems, rather, to be a series of opposites: knowing and not-knowing, thinking and not-thinking...living the outer life, living the inner life, embracing the ambiguity of living both.

Maybe being an eccentric crone is a crazy multi-leveled state...that one could experience with considerable amusement. 

I still rather like the spiral model. You slide up into some new stage of consciousness...feel enlightened and wiser but before you know it you 'go back to sleep'...and months or years later you have to learn the same old thing again. Each time you may 'get it' more clearly...until that knowledge is in your bones.

But none of those models fits me today.  Right now I see myself as just BEING in the center of a CIRCLE..aware of all the somewhat cyclical milestones of my journey, and revisiting them or reflecting on them as necessary...but staying quiet in the center...not consciously traveling anywhere...being there...where part of me always was!

I'm not a Buddhist, but I love what Buddhist nun Pema Chodron said about retreating from outward distractions: "You quickly learn that distractions are not just phone calls and emails and outer phenomena. Our own mind, and our longings, and our cravings, and our fantasies and everything are also major distractions. And, as time goes on, and you're feeding it less ... You begin to sink deeper into the undistracted state. And then you begin to realize that life is always pulling you away from being fully present." 

 Download PEMA CHODRON & BILL MOYERS

ECCENTRIC CRONISHNESS!

                     

 

Hard to believe, but I'll be 80 in a couple of years.  I just realized today, over a steaming cup of lemon ginger tea, that I no longer have to hang around with people and problems that focus on phases of life I've already climbed through! 

Apparently I have a whole new life assignment with it's own rigorous tasks and curcuitous routes.  

It seems natural to get caught up in the troubled lives of our children, or the crazyness of the current world.  I empathize.  But I'm not there.  

Maybe I'm supposed to excuse myself from the fray?  I need to step up to the well-earned spot where I can look back at my wounds and struggles with compassion. And put my energies into taking the next step...into eccentric cronishnes.

TV seems banal these days; inane, silly, chaotic and superficial.  Politics is as usual.  I just read a fabulous history of Cleopatra; queen, brilliant strategist, ruler of the intellectual center of the known world in the century before Christ. Alexandrian society was highly sophisticated, full of scholars, philosophers, libraries, artisans, warriors, lavish celebrations, intrigue, chaos and wars.  So there is NOTHING IS NEW UNDER THE SUN.  Empires come and go.  Human nature is predictable. 

What if my next lesson is to finally allow myself inner peace? to stay centerd and keep calm...to aim for Eccentric Cronedom...which seems to be another whole level of detachment from past psychological and societal prisons.  

We all have to make the long trek to become ourselves. We each come to the starting gate with unique genes, personalities, families, environs...etc.  But the tasks are similar.  Others are at different places on the path...and I'm in no posiition to judge them.

I would be very nervy to call myself a realized authentic adult woman or a wise crone.  But I'm working on it - and delving deep to find a map for this next part of the journey.