Lynne M. Spreen's Blog, page 31

Disillusioned, and Grateful for It

I first wrote this post for Heather Black Wood’s blog From Shadow to Seen. Per Heather, FSTS is “a project created by two women who were inspired to develop a venue that would encourage other women to share their short memoirs, poetry or original artwork with the world, thereby emerging from the shadows to be seen.” There’s more about FSTS at the end of the post. 

By the time you get old, you will have been disillusioned many times. This can be a good thing. To illustrate from my own experience:

Disillusionment #1

In my twenties, I was proud to call myself a perfectionist. One day my boss, smiling sadly, told me perfectionists fear criticism. The words rang true and he knew it. Humiliated, I slunk back to my desk.

But there were bigger lessons ahead.

Disillusionment #2

I could always work with difficult people. They saw something in me, and nobody else would put up with them. Sure, it took a lot of time, so I had to bring work home because I fell behind at the office, but I felt good about myself. I felt special. Important. Years later, a therapist said I tolerated those people because I was trying to replicate my unsatisfactory relationship with my tyrannical and violent father. Normal people, said the shrink, wouldn’t put up with that treatment because they have good boundaries. They value their time. You don’t.

Oops.

Disillusionment #3

In my late thirties, I married a guy who was underemployed but I figured things would improve. Wrong. He was jobless for years, always with some excuse. He placated me by doing the laundry and making dinner, and telling me I was pretty and talented. Later I found out he was selling drugs and screwing other women during the day while I was at the office. When we had our last fight, he said he’d married me because he deserved not to have to work. “I earned you,” he said.

Filled with grief and feeling like a complete failure (and idiot), I divorced him. I still didn’t understand what I missed. Then I read the book The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. She said sociopaths target people who are mindlessly, hopelessly helpful. The ones who do it without thinking about it much.

Okay. That helped.

Finally, I see the light

Then I married a man who showed me you could be a good person without being a doormat. I realized part of the reason I had always rescued everybody was because it fed my ego to do so. I never asked myself if people were as good to me as I was to them, or why I was sacrificing myself for others without any reciprocity. I realized helping people gave me a sense of importance.

So in my mid-forties, I finally rejected the self-serving role of hero. Now, at fifty-nine, I’m an average Jane and that’s okay. Although my history is a bit grim, there may be parallels for your life.

If you often feel drained by other people, here’s a tip: when you’re asked to help or sacrifice, take a little chance, not an irrevocable commitment. Then look for reciprocity – time, effort, career help, etc. The next time they ask, respond accordingly.

I understand there’s a bit of risk in this approach. Not everything comes out evenly, and compassion is good. Also, the plan gets a little wobbly when you’re dealing with children or young people because they’re not fully formed. I cut them more slack than mature adults. Bottom line? Know why you’re doing something; dig deep.

You are every bit as precious as the next human. Treasure yourself.

That is what disillusionment taught me.

From Shadow To Seen seeks to engage and encourage participation in ways that inspire and promote artistic expression, understanding, and empathy. As we allow ourselves to participate and share our stories or works, it may move us forward—building a platform for exchange, enlightenment and hope. We hope the exchange will provide a quiet place where women may release a shadow and find themselves moving toward a more accepting light—emerging with a new found energy.

Quick Question from Lynne – Answered, Thanks!

UPDATE: Hi all, I think I have my answer, so please ignore this post. Thanks!

Here was the original question if you’re interested:

My traffic monitoring service tells me my blog is waaayyyyy sloooooowwwwwww. (They mean the loading speed, smarty pants.) If true, I’ll convert it to WordPress.org, which is not how I want to spend my summer. But I’ll do it if it keeps you, my reader, from getting frustrated. So that’s my question: when you click on the link in your email inbox, does my blog load slowly? Either leave a comment, or send me an email or, if it’s loading just fine for you, click the LIKE button. Thanks so much. Happy Sunday.

A Bittersweet Ending and Blue Skies Ahead

Most of you know that Bill and I spent the last school year babysitting two of our grandchildren. Our “assignment” ended a week ago, and I’ve enjoyed time to reflect. This past year has been as fabulous as it has been draining, and now that it’s over, I feel a bit lost, as if the babies are leaving us behind.

Each one of the benefits is worth the whole year to us:

We know the little ones almost as well as do their parents.
They act excited when they see us.
We were privileged to spend each morning with our son and DIL, getting the day off to a good start. I’ll never forget arriving before dawn, letting ourselves in, hearing the baby fussing as he awoke. Then a few minutes later, us four adults chattering in the kitchen as everybody rushed about. I’d get the toddler to the table for her breakfast while Bill gave the baby his bottle. Dan and Amy got organized, prepared lunches and did minor chores. We felt like the extended family of yore, when multiple generations worked together for a family’s success.
Dan and Amy appreciated our contribution to their family’s welfare.
We have a new understanding of and compassion for parents of small children.

The challenges have been significant:

The toll on our bodies, most of which is temporary. Not temporary are the surfer’s knots I acquired on my knees from crawling (happily in and out of large boxes turned into forts, for example. Or changing the baby on the floor, because he’s so wriggly and strong we don’t dare change him on an elevated surface.)
The time away from marketing Dakota Blues, and from the world of writing in general.
Finding time for doctor, dentist, and other appointments – just like working people!
Concern that, as parents, we shouldn’t be so intimately involved in the lives of our kids. Our son and DIL benefitted, for sure, but they gave up a ton of privacy for the duration.

In spite of it all, the babies came through okay. They are now 14 months and two-and-a-half years, bright, happy and healthy. Dan and Amy completed another year as elementary school teachers. Bill and I are already feeling like our old selves again, although we feel guilty for being so free, and we wonder almost every minute how the little ones are doing. We miss them! But fulltime parenting is for younger bodies than ours.

Professionally, I’ve managed to keep up with our Friday visits here at Any Shiny Thing; sales of Dakota Blues have been fantastic, thanks largely to good reviews and an award for women’s fiction from Next Generation Indie Book Awards.  I also found time for five public speaking gigs and three book signings during that period. I’ve drafted some short stories and put together a compendium of my best blog posts for an ebook, The New Country; Reflections on Middle-age and Beyond, that I hope to release next month.

I wrote this post today to celebrate a milestone – that Bill and I are returning to our normal life after taking a one-year detour for the good of our family. We feel so blessed, but we’re also sobered by having lived the life of young adults trying to balance career and child-rearing. As a result, our lives are fuller and we have much more appreciation for the younger generations. We are back to being retired and the skies are a brilliant blue.

How Do You Look for Books on Amazon?

Writers and readers everywhere will be interested in this survey. Drop by and add your 2 cents! Thanks.
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How Terribly Strange to be Seventy

V. Putin by Sculptor Sherry Cavan

After a career as a social science professor, Sherri Cavan became a sculptor post-retirement. Her Vladimir Putin trio above was meant to illustrate three kinds of power – the Fool, who gains power through his antics; the Predator, obvious; and the Beauty Queen, who seduces.

Sherri and I met last March on a cruise ship. She was doing Tai Chi, alone on the darkened dance floor on Deck 14. Unbeknownst to her, I was lurking in a corner of the bar, tapping away on my laptop. When she finished, I introduced myself and asked about Tai Chi. She said she’d started for the health benefits. Same with sculpting, to exercise her right brain. We talked for almost an hour. I was entranced by her energy.

Smiling an impish grin, she leaned toward me. “Do you want to know how old I am?”

I said, “Yes, but I’m too shy to ask.”

She was seventy-five, and I could tell she was proud of it, a model of confidence and joie de vivre in older age. I wanted what she was having.

As we began our goodbyes, she said she’d recently learned to play the ukulele. For a woman cruising alone this was a cool way to socialize, as uke players tend to bring their instruments on trips. She’d jammed with a group on the beach in Waikiki a few days earlier. After I got home I saw an article about how ukulele is hot right now.

I loved Sherri’s wit, humor and curiosity. If she wanted to know something, she went out and learned it. I felt drawn to her aliveness. Sherri is exceptional, but she represents a wave of change in regard to aging. My husband has made lots of friends on the tennis courts, men in their mid-seventies who are gourmet cooks, singers, world travelers, speakers, writers, and government activists. Remember how we used to see old people when we were young? Here’s a reminder: the lyrics to Old Friends by Simon and Garfunkel. They wrote it as young men in 1968.

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends

A newspaper blowin’ through the grass

Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends

 

Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

 

Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly

How terribly strange to be seventy…

I wonder if we’re aging more slowly these days. Not just older people; on the other end of the age scale, young people seem to take longer to mature. Maybe it’s all the preservatives in our food. Better living through chemistry.

Are You Downsizing?

At our age, some of us are beginning to feel material possessions are a burden. Maybe we’re returning to our sixties roots, or maybe we’re tired of the family-sized house, the multiple sets of dishes, the appliances. We’ve had it with closets full of clothes, linens, and seasonal decorations that now feel like a job to take out, set up, pack up and put away. With our kids grown and careers not so much of a consideration, it’s easier to lighten your footprint.

When the local storage unit raised our rates, Bill and I shipped the footlocker full of baseball cards back to our 30-something son, donated the extra set of golf clubs, recycled what we could and merged the rest into our garage.

My personal challenge was the fake Christmas tree. It looked good for many years and we enjoyed it. Now it’s getting raggedy and I’d been playing around with the idea of replacing it with a table-top model. I’d still have the wreath to hang on the fireplace, and the seasonal tablecloths and candle holders. I told Bill about it, and we realized that day was recycling day. So we broke it down and stuck it in the bin with giving ourselves any more time to think about it. If in a couple years we start feeling deprived, we’ll buy a new one.

But that’s just me. My friend down the street has twenty boxes of Christmas decorations in her garage. It would kill her to get rid of one bulb.

I have a cousin who dreams of renting a quiet two-bedroom apartment in a community with a pool, clubhouse, ready-made friends and no yard. Some of us are tired of  home maintenance. Much easier to call the landlord with your problems. Some Boomers sold their homes and went to live fulltime in RVs or even on boats. I Googled “tiny houses” and you wouldn’t believe how many websites came up.

I’ve often thought it would be cool to live in a city apartment where I could take the elevator downstairs and walk everywhere; to get coffee, groceries, whatever.

And if it were just me, I wouldn’t mind living in this. I’d want patios and porches all around, a few trees, and a community to keep me from turning into a hermit.

Tumbleweed Z-Glass House

What about you? Are you downsizing and if so, how and why?

Say Hello to the F.U. Fifties

Suzanne Braun Levine thinks turning fifty is the “beginning of the beginning.” In this empowering video, she talks about why she believes “Second Adulthood” can be almost more interesting and enjoyable than our first.

Suzanne points out that at around age fifty, we enter a life transition as profound and far-reaching as adolescence. “We are the first generation to contemplate the fact that at fifty, we have as many years of adult life ahead of us as behind us,” she says. This requires some serious thought, and some serious letting go. She quotes Gloria Steinem, who said the new Golden Rule is this:

Do unto yourselves as you have been doing for others.

I’ll keep this short so you have time to watch the video. Believe me, it’s inspiring and entertaining, and it will make you laugh, too. Enjoy!

Great News for Dakota Blues!

I’m thrilled to tell you that Dakota Blues just won the Next Generation Indie Book Finalist award! And it’s a triumph for all of us, because it’s affirmation that a midlife coming-of-age story is compelling in the modern marketplace. It’s also proof that we’re never too old to chase after our dreams.

As I think of all the writing classes I took, all the writing conferences I attended, and all the advice I got, the thing that stands out in my mind is one literary agent telling me that nobody wanted to read about “old people.” Ha, ha! Apparently they do, because sales are brisk!

Further, my new Midlife Fiction page on Facebook (you don’t have to be a member of FB to access the page) already has almost fifty book titles. The only two criteria: that the main character be at least forty, and that the story illuminate the experience of living in the second half of life.

Good thing there’s no age restriction on the writers, because thirty-year-old Christopher Hooks just contacted me about his debut novel, Henry, the a collection of day-in-the-life vignettes concerning an eighty-year-old man. I downloaded it on Kindle and the opening paragraphs look promising. I can’t wait to read it and I wish Christopher massive book sales.

On the other end of the author age scale is Monica Agnew-Kinnaman, who at age 95 just published So This is Heaven, a memoir of saving dogs throughout her life. That’s yet another cool thing about a writing career: you can still do it in your very later years if you’ve got all your marbles. For more about Monica, check out my friend Sheila’s blog post here.

I’d write more, but I need to practice being interviewed because a North Dakota TV station wants to feature me next week! And after that I’m going to break out a bottle of bubbly. Have a great weekend. I know I will. And Happy Mother’s Day to all my mother-friends.

We Look Old? Big Deal.

Lauren Hutton looks great, doesn’t she? She’s featured on the cover of April’s Elle, where the words translate to “Women Who Make You Want to Grow Old.” Hutton is around seventy. She looks fantastic. Sharp jawline, great hair, etc. Doesn’t it make you feel like you should be doing something more with your sad old self?

Before you make an appointment with Dr. Plastic, you should consider that Ms. Hutton really looks like this:

For the first photo, Elle airbrushed her to within an inch of her life because they’re selling stuff inside the magazine, which you’re not going to buy unless you feel uncomfortable. Advertisers cut you down for a reason. They use smoke and mirrors to undermine your confidence so you will give them cash. Of course, you know this.

It’s hard to resist, though. Recently I was getting my hair cut and colored. For all the niceness of the salon, the lighting is a bit harsh. There I sat with my silvery roots, jowls, and turkey neck staring back at me in the mirror. To complete the look, I had a broken blood vessel in my left eye.

I looked old. Is that a problem?

I’m serious. Is it wrong to look old? Is that some kind of crime for which we must castigate ourselves, writhe in shame, and vow to try harder?

Appearances are very important to humans. Animals have other means for judging who’s strong, who’s sick, or who’s to be feared, but we can only go on looks. Somebody told me recently that I look tired. I asked why she said that. She stammered, “You have bags.”

I am tired. That’s what happens when you run after a couple of toddlers for eight months. But maybe the bags are there naturally, and won’t go away after I get rested up. Will the world now assume I’m tired? If I go for a job interview, will I be seen as slow, unmotivated, or unproductive?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. You may be awesome in every way, but still have a face that’s got a hundred thousand miles on the odometer. Society will then assume you are pointless, ineffectual, and stupid.

Until society grows up and gets a life, you’ll have to be ready for this. If you can’t fix the externals, or don’t choose to, work on the internals. We People of the Second Half must practice finding reasons to hold ourselves in high regard. We can celebrate triumphs other than looks, like the fact that we wowed everybody at a recent public speaking engagement, or we’re finally accomplishing our dreams, or we’re an amazing resource for our family or community.

The more unhappy we are with our aging looks, the more we deny ourselves the joy we deserve. Let’s aspire to be at peace with our looks. Let’s aspire to be free.

The One Thing About Aging That You Can Control

As we get older, we face a lot of challenges. Our looks change, our strength wanes, we lose loved ones, and we’re minimized by society. We try to celebrate the good and stay positive, but so much about getting older is difficult, and there’s not a darned thing you can do about it.

Except this:

“The one thing that is up to you is whether you will see getting old as a tragedy, or embark upon it as another of life’s great adventures.”

What an empowering statement. I borrowed it from Dr. Carol Orsborn’s new book, Fierce with Age: Chasing God and Squirrels in Brooklyn. For a more complete review, see the lower right margin of your screen. I first learned about Carol Orsborn’s point of view when I read this wonderful post. In it, she says, “What a waste of the human potential it is to define successful aging — or life, for that matter — in youth-centric terms of productivity, activity and vigor.” She goes on.

…those of us who can grow large enough to embrace the dark side of aging can organically have what the Eastern traditions call an “awakening.” We don’t need books to help us understand the transitory nature of life. We’re living it.

I love her idea that we’re on a path to enlightenment as we age. It’s such a positive way of looking at things.

Contrast that with the discouraging tone in Susan Jacoby’s Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age. I wrote about it here. Yes, there’s some truth to what Jacoby says, like why would you become wise in old age if you’ve been average-to-stupid all your life.

The two authors view old age through different perspectives. If I were dealing with grief, ill health, or other horrific negatives, for example, that could change my perspective. I regret to say that, around the time she wrote her book, Susan Jacoby was caring for a loved one during a lingering illness.

In exercising choice, I decided to stop playing the youth game. Oh, sure, I tried it. I got Botox a few times, and once I even did filler in my lip area to try to combat the deepening purse-string effect. But I felt like a fraud. Plus those needles hurt. Did you know before they give you filler the doctor comes at you with one of those painkiller needles they use at the dentist? The ones that look like they are meant for horses? But I digress.

Back to the idea of choice in older age: it’s a rich new phase we’re in, Second-Halfers. You can change your perspective and decide how you want to see things. Look closely: the lock on your jail cell is rusting. If you give the door a push, you might be able to break free, scamper down the hall and out the door into the sunlight.