G: GRIEF

    Embrace your grief. For there your soul will grow

 Carl Jung

 Grief circulates. Overwhelmed, we lose weight, we dream of the partner who died, we want and long for a former life, we stop, or we cover it all. The glow is gone. Grief levels us, we cannot focus, we’re without goals, unsure where to put our time, desire is dried up. The ground seems littered with decimation and we are just plain drained. And the question comes up regarding how we parse grief, manage it, be in tune with it. Grief is so often associated with aging and looped into the losses that seem to mount ever higher as we age.

 Grief registers in loss of hair color, or shape of body or more globally just feeling invisible and no longer needed. It circulates in loss of positions, opportunities and challenges. Is part of grief about losing something we never had and could never have and perhaps were not supposed to have? Is not the path we have taken, the right one? Or, should we deny our own value by saying it might have been other or different?

 Because it has to do with an emotional reaction to the past, present and future, grief has huge impact. Grief can cause us to re-evaluate where we are spending our time, the quality of relationships and what we need for our soul to flourish. Yet many people stay just to stay, for example, in partnerships. By doing this they avoid an anticipated grief and loss of one type only to be swallowed by grief of another type. In the process, they may be circumventing their own growth. Fear wins out or despair or grief in the present may seem better than anticipated aloneness . But what happens when we are pushed to the edge? Is it possible that really experiencing grief leads us deeper into our self? Grief occurs and our soul is in the line of being crushed. The pain of it can be so intense that it strips us of all pretense and makes us descend into who we are.

 For instance, a friend is now faced with the shreds of a relationship she feared to leave. The grief she accepted finally became too much. It loaded her down. She felt the weight of its burden and, after so many years of being together, she was questioning it all. Now in their 60’s and 70’s do they belong together? Grief and emotional loss pervades her life. An abortion, moves, loss of degrees, jobs, covering for him, denying her needs. Could the painful rough edges ever smooth? Can their mutual grief, disappointments and losses repair? They could try but both would have to feel the grief of what should/may have been and what needs to change. It is unclear if they could, would or should do so.

 Grief brings up all that was undone, unsatisfied and unacknowledged, but it also reminds of all that was, the riches, the tapestry of our lives, how much was filled into the cloth. And, then of course we see the patches that remain and the pieces hanging in tatters. All this is natural. Grief reminds us about the earth of our being. It makes us weep into the heart of what it is to be, to have lost and to see the path not taken, or not even see it.

 Grief is also strangely fitting with gratitude. Without loss would we know what we have? How perverse yet true. And how difficult it is to remain in the space of gratitude. This keeps us in the present moment and feeling the pains and beauties of that moment. Maybe aging, and because time seems vanished, puts us into these moments so that we feel more completely and value differently. This can be part of the gold of these older years.

How do you grieve the passing of time?

F: FEAR

And the day came

when the risk to remain tight in a bud

became more painful

than the risk it took to blossom

Anais Nin

 Is there any value in fear? Or is it paralyzing?

 Do we fear Aging? I suppose we never give too much thought to it when we are younger.

Suddenly we are 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or approaching our 90’s – even older maybe.

 It can be overwhelming to us to have ‘aging’ in our sights, and even threatening.

 We may have witnessed parents, siblings, and friends aging before our eyes. We note incapacitation in ourselves or friends and colleagues, from tripping over an insignificant blade of grass – and the struggle to retain equilibrium thereafter.

 We wonder about our seeming inability to concentrate and complete tasks – time just runs away, ever faster as we try to catch our tail doing tasks that have no real satisfying meaning. For me, I am fearful of that.

Surprisingly, there is value in fear.

 Whatever uneasy or anxious making or fearful feeling we may have, can be the actual spur that shakes us out of our languor or torpor about aging – or anything else for that matter.

 Fear brings us up short – yet can serve to focus.

 It is not easy sitting with fearful feelings. Yet, sitting and being in that fearful place and going into it may bring another kind of awareness to bear. It is like a meditation sitting with the fear and, taking time and being in the present time is conscious experiencing in the moment. Something else may emerge, by virtue of sitting with fear and not jumping away from it, trying to escape it.

 Fear can be a mobilizing or motivating influence in that it forces us to re-member what we want and need. Being aware of fear gives a pause, a place to consider the destruction against us.

 Can we use these fears as a way to remind ourselves that we have too often lived our lives being waylaid, or have forbidden in some way our true natures to come forth? Have we forgotten?

 Are we fearful of living?

 Can we confront our fears no matter how awful they are? Can we sit in the midst of them, being in the moment of them, knowing that we are fertile no matter our age, and use that fear promoting fullness?

Are you fearful of ‘aging’?

                                The Cave that you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek.                             Joseph Campbell

E: ENERGY

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.            

Rainer Maria Rilke

Some days it is just too too much to amass energy. The day stretches with emptiness and existence is heavy, laden with too much effort to even tackle the smallest things, ennui, inertia. Exhausted from seemingly nothing. Too many extenuating events eclipse. Why trudge on? Fatigue and exhaustion, the losses and disappointments of life pile up. There is a feeling of wanting to escape into when time seemed carefree, when there was desire and the engine of living held promise and hope.

These emotions create energy drains. They can also foster a holding place for energy–holding the lost dreams and the desires that lie in the soul. These emotions are the ones that also give energy back. The paradox is that the more we drag ourselves through the muck of the tiredness and the daily grind, the more we amass the energy for movement.

This is why a question in aging is energy. It can compromise us, it can help us, it can be our way through to find more – or less – about life.

Along with energy comes enthusiasm. To live fully we need all these e words. And, we can add essential and essence as in revealing the core of our being.

These are the days when there is the expectation/anticipation of something exceptional, even in its smallness and insignificance. The enjoyment of life shines through. Expression of self flows out to embrace the moments. The emotions and emotional reactions are extant. Our sparks go out to others and the energy ignites.

Energy is for planting the garden, thinking, caring and for loving. It is the spark that keeps us involved and activated. It is part of passion. Energy gives us direction. It has a physical expression but is very much driven emotionally. We find we have more energy when we are filled with deep emotion. This activates us inter alia to care about saving the rhinoceros, preserving the water, and helping the less fortunate.

As we age we can use our energy to write a life script expanded from the one we’ve formerly subscribed to. We know our inclinations; we know that sometimes they do not serve us well. By using our energy we can traverse other roads less travelled, whether a new interest or inclination, by listening to the voice within. It comes to have an even more imperative sound, calling us to live fuller, in a more integrated and healthier, honest way. There is no time for indifference any more. No time for outer influences holding sway.

Time to use our energy as we wish.

Do you use your energy for self-examination?

D – DEATH

‘I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, 

And somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.’

* Adrienne Rich

 Death, like money, sex, bad breath is not a particularly comfortable topic of conversation. It’s depressing in the conventional sense of the word. There is something ominous about it and its finality. It has a sense of taboo and is consequently repressed. We deny death.

 But perhaps it is no bad thing to allow some ‘depress’ and depth as we briefly delve into this reality and bring it out of its darkness.

  There are depths in the soul that come to the fore as one is aging or dying, un-influenced by the ego. There are forgotten archetypal myths, or images, that are re-assuring to us.

 They’re at least a 1000 questions about death, maybe 10,000. Maybe 7.2 billion – as many questions as there are individuals on this planet as we journey, destination unknown –

 Are we ever prepared for death? We need to go ‘down’ while living in order to prepare. Thinking of death brings a focus to one’s life.

 What of the nights and dreamtime? Dreams prepare the aging individual for death as we pay attention to them. They help our personal myth and image to emerge; they enlarge our quality of life.

 This ‘witness to death’ makes us go down deeper and wonder about own death whenever and however it may be.

 I sometimes fantasise and wonder about my ‘reaction’ and ‘being’ were I to be given a grave diagnosis. Would I go the traditional medical route? Would I seek alternative ways of healing? Would I run away and hide and not tell anyone? Would I rant and rave at that dreadful thief, the Grim Reaper? Would I reach out and be ‘secure’ in the person or persons to whom I turn? Would I spend time dusting the cobwebs in my mind, heart and soul as I live out my last days?

 How can I know how I will be until it happens? But pondering death makes me look at my life as it is now, and yet becoming –

 Do you ever wonder about death?

*Adrienne Rich; (1929-2012) Twenty One Love Poems

B Body

 Our own body is the best health system we have – if we knew how to listen to it.

Christiane Northrup

 What do we make of the aging of our bodies? Now that the aging years are upon us, and visible, we cannot deny them. We look in the mirror and see those wrinkles on our faces – around our eyes, our mouths, a neck less defined. Arms less taut, legs less firm. We see a body that is very different to the one we had when we were in our 20’s or 30’s or 40’s.

‘Body’ is an issue not properly addressed or understood for its psychological significance. We all have different emotions when we contemplate our changing bodies. If we see with eyes wide open and are graceful, even grateful, in accepting the wear and tear when we see the evidence in the mirror, we are fortunate. We are especially fortunate if we are healthy. But It is one of those subjects we would rather not talk or think about too much, perhaps in part because we do not want to accept the reality of aging, of itself, and especially because of how our bodies age. It’s what we see – and what everyone else also sees.

 There may be a sense of loss of youth and all that it stands for. Our energy may be diminished and we cannot accomplish what we did all those years ago.

 What of it? We may have climbed mountains or dived into deep seas in our younger years. Does this mean that we have come to the end of the road? Can we journey no longer?

Not at all – as our bodies shift and re-shape, so do our energies, in ways different to before.

 What do I make of this? I am different, I am older, I am within the radar of ‘old-age’. It looms; and if not large, it is still there.

Who am I now? This is the essential question. My psyche inhabits my body. I honour them both as they interact with each other. I ask the question: can I inhabit the moment, and accept the oscillation between sorrow, loss, joy and movement. Body language is both body and psyche, conscious and unconscious, and reveals how carefully we listen and attend to the whole scenario.

 Of course our bodies have changed over the years. And they will continue undergoing change as we move into becoming older. The slings and arrows that life throws at us may incapacitate us in physical and psychological ways. We do regenerate but at a slower pace …

 Can we make use of this opportunity as we age and turn our ever-present energies to a more depthful attitude towards this issue of aging? Can we see aging as yet another stage of growth? Will we take pride in our bodies we inhabit? Can we let go of the myth that continues being perpetuated i.e. older bodies are distasteful?

What do you think of your body as you age?

A – ATTITUDE

Virginia Woolf: I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

                    Aging is something we do every day. It is necessary to life and something we cannot avoid.

Yet, when we get older, whatever that means, we begin to feel worse and worse. We get less notice, less attention and less of anything. Shame, upset, ignored, and this is insulting. Yet all these words describe the attitudes towards aging that we all hold individually and culturally. In fact, too few cultures revere the aged.

Have you ever had the experience of walking through an airport and all eyes were on the woman ahead? She was younger, not young, but younger. All eyes on her. It is an awful feeling, a sense of non-being that slams into awareness. It seems that the older we become the more this occurs.

Why? This is what we want to explore as we look into the attitudes on aging. We want to heighten awareness. Aging happens to us all. The question is not when, as it is there daily, but how we will cope and use age to encourage and develop. We are not only on a descent but on an ascent into a more complete rounding out of our personality.

After all, if not now when?

We ask what attitudes do we carry that want to deny, dishonor, disrespect. We want, in general, to make aging an advantage rather than a disadvantage. The wisdom of age, the experience, the ability to love and learn are all aspects we cannot forget.

In these writings we will bring forth the areas of aging that assist and those that do not. During this A to Z challenge we explore aging from all perspectives. This is a challenge of awareness, keeping conscious, and bringing forth our attitudes to aging that assist and enable.

We are reminded of Virginia Woolf’s saying: ‘Nothing is real until it is written’. We have given aging form and substance from our different perspectives. We’ve picked it apart and put it back together again and we’re putting it ‘out there’.

We’re aware more than ever of the inexorable passage of time, always in motion, the movement of it measured in part by the moon and the seasons. We face changing circumstances, whether through illness or death, accidents, unplanned for and unexpected events that come out of left field. We wonder whether it is because we fall well within the radar of aging that we realise people of all ages think about aging.

More than ever, we wonder how many years we have left on this earth to experience it. We wonder how to best shape these experiences and put things into place so that we do what we actually wish to do. Or feel or think we want to do. Or that we need to do – for psychological health and inner and outer well being.

The big responsibility is aging gracefully, fully, knowingly, consciously and using this as a time of personality expansion. Aging means being more, not only less; able, not just disabled; complete rather than not.

                     Do you ever wonder where your attitudes about aging came from?

 APRIL A-Z Blog Challenge

Hard to believe that 1st April is almost upon us! It’s early next week so help me!

Are Susan and I ready? I arrived here at Phoenix on Wednesday (after several days in New Jersey) and up until now there has been insufficient time for the two of us to focus on editing the posts and scheduling them. We plan to look at them later today – we’ll reread,  refresh and recheck, on a one on one basis as contrasted with how Susan and I constructed our posts on opposite ends of the planet! …

Our posts are specifically on ‘aging & becoming’. By bringing this topic into the open we hope to break preconceived ideas of women who reach a certain age being past it and having no creativity or use. This is self-limiting and implies lack of growth and development and is stultifying of creativity. It is a challenging time to be sure – aging stretches one’s personality; there is more to contend with, more than imagined.

I was unable to take part in the Theme Reveal; I had difficulty in connecting with the linky link while in Johannesburg South Africa, and when I landed in NJ  on 21st March (the equinox) there simply wasn’t the time or occasion to ‘ask for help’.

I’ve been spending time going through the people who will be blogging from 1st April on this amazing April A-Z blog challenge and commenting on their posts. There are no prizes for ‘best’ or ‘most original’. It is simply a way of saying whatever that person wants to get out into the blogosphere.

A few weeks back I hit a problem with regard to my previous post regarding subscribing to new posts by email, but with the help of my son Mike we got it back on track. The subscription widget wasn’t too robust but there is now a more robust email subscription option that displays the new post in the email, and it is easy to manage. However, it requires a two-step verification process, so if you were already subscribed you would have received an email asking you to verify your new subscription. May I ask that if you had subscribed that you confirm this new subscription, or if you are new to these posts that you can please consider subscribing in the email subscription box on the right – it’s just your email address and you may opt out at any time. Thank you.

So, good luck to us all who are partaking and to those of you who read our posts we hope that you find something of value in them. Please feel free to comment – always much appreciated!

The count down begins!

3 weeks to go!

Next week I leave South Africa to travel to the US on my own. I can hardly believe it! First the east coast (NJ), then Phoenix, then San Francisco – then back home again. I’ll be in Phoenix some days before the 1st April, when Susan Schwartz and I will revise our posts and hopefully push a button and UP will appear our posts on the accompanying day of the letter. I’ve been saving our posts in the draft folder of the A-Z – a mission.

 I did not have a theme for last year’s A-Z blog challenge, my first time. This time the theme is very much on ‘Aging & Becoming’. As mentioned before, Dr. Susan Schwartz and I are collaborating on this and each post will alternate between the 2 Susans.  I am not sure having a theme has made it any easier – it is challenging nevertheless, as was last year.

I sincerely and deeply thank many co-hosts e.g. Guilie, Damyanti, and many others who have gone beyond kindness in helping me create a link to my comments on other blogs. And for all the co-hosts’ ongoing, helpful posts as to to A-Z guidelines. Their encouragement is contagious!

 I know only too well how irritating it is to jump hoops to comment back to the person who  commented on yours. I know this has been the case with mine. Many of you use Bloggers or blog.com as your host. Mine is WordPress and this has caused difficulties in the past, now resolved.

I’ve been jumping around on the list which is growing steadily and leaving comments and I’m amazed at the number of posts that do not yet have the A-Z badge displayed. Those who have not yet put up your badge please do so! And those who have captchas really need to remove them – please!

Please use the sign up on the right hand side if you wish to automatically receive my blog posts. I would so appreciate this. Usually I email many friends to say I have just put up a post, but I don’t think I will do this any longer after this one. It feels to me that I am putting pressure on the receiver and it is time consuming on my side.

Re: images to use on blog posts – a tip. On Google, there is an images button and these are free unless they have a watermark! I’ve been checking them out for suitability and use for mine and there are some great ones.

I know that many if not most of the A-Z bloggers are from the US and that the weather is improving with signs of Spring! So great! Here in SA the weather is really cold and damp and we’ve had tons of rain up here on the highveld. It’s enough already…I’m so looking forward to coming to the States … it’s been too long since my last time.

All best as the count down begins!

Aging & Becoming

Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage: Anais Nin.

The 2 Susans, one in Phoenix Az., and I in Johannesburg, South Africa, are preparing our posts for the April A-Z blog challenge 2014. We’re hoping to be able to schedule them so that come the day, come the hour, we can just press a button and voila! UP they appear!

In the April A-Z blog challenge we’ll be posting on topics on the theme: ‘Aging & Becoming’. 

We’ve done several so far over the airwaves, all still to be edited and fashioned according to the A-Z script – (not too long for one thing). And still more letters of the alphabet to do. I’ll be with Susan in Phoenix towards the end of March. I can only imagine two non-techie non savvy individuals trying to get this all sorted … press a button and UP they go? Pictures, quotes and body of post?

We’re enjoying doing them though it has been tough putting into 500 words or so what we want to say for that particular letter. We do not know whether this is a topic that will garner interest on the April A-Z blog challenge. Naturally, we hope that our psychological posts are of interest irrespective of age and across all ‘fields’. Naturally, we hope that our blog posts receive attention and comments – whether in agreement or not. (No attachment to outcome I keep telling myself …)

For the last several months Susan and I have been working on a collaborative effort i.e. a book on ‘Aging & Becoming’. It is very psychological – from the psyche – the only way.

We’ll be posting blogs on topics covered in our book.

In our book we combine our diverse experiences of life and share our perspectives and cogitations. We note how ‘aging’ is applicable to us and we wonder how this process is shaping our lives. We’re both in a different place emotionally than several years ago. We wonder about yet ‘becoming’ as we step into this particular stage of our lives – one with its own challenges, peaks and valleys. Still able, and yet feeling tremendous shifts.

We comment in our book – and will do so in the A-Z blog posts as well – about, inter alia, the conscious and unconscious restraint against the older woman in Western oriented cultures. Because we feel the restrictions around ‘age’ we decided to write about it. We felt that something needed to be said.

We continue to work on our book ‘Aging & Becoming’ on a shared document over the continents. Sometimes we lose several pages of the document which is very upsetting. Somehow we find them again. It’s a bit like aging – lost and found. Losing and finding – and not just documents.

I’ve been popping into the A-Z blog challenge list and making brief comments here and there. The list will no doubt grow as 1st April looms ..

Your comments are always welcome. And so is sharing on various social media – thank you.

Please subscribe in the box made available if you wish to receive posts leading up to the 1st April and the actual challenge itself.