I have been thinking a lot about honesty lately. Not the kind of honesty that has to do with lying on my taxes. That is “cash register honesty”. It is hard to deny when you are caught red-handed in those situations.
I am drawn to consider the more subtle, and I am embarrassed to say, manipulative honesty issues.
Issues like being vulnerable and real and speaking your truth. Issues like convincing yourself that not speaking up is justified because the truth would hurt someone else. I am finding in my mature years the courage to admit that hiding my truth has never really helped anyone.
I say that I am drawn to this topic of honesty but that is not really honest. This topic has pitched its tent on my front doorstep and I cannot go anywhere or do anything without having to confront it or at least walk around it on tippy toes.
OK, I give up. I have invited the honesty issue in for tea. “What is it you want to say to me?” Or more to the point, “what is it I have to say about you”
I have lived a very dishonest life. This is a frightening admission. Does this make me a liar, perhaps, but it does certainly make me a fake and a good one at that. I have been honest in my business relationships. I am a coach and a consultant. I get paid to be ruthlessly or gently honest, it depends on the situation and I have not found it difficult to be honest in my work. But in my personal relationships I have come to realize I have hidden my honest voice one too many times.
I have honed the fine skill of hiding how I feel about many things and acting out a script which is as disassociated from my heart as an actor’s live on the big screen is from her home reality. Sure there are moments of courage and truth but too often I default to that old operating system- hide and perform.
I repeatedly answer, “fine, thank you” to the question,” how are things going with you?” I can say fine thanks while the world tumbles about me. Those words would probably be my last as a great white shark swallows me. This is not a technique to keep a keep a chipper attitude…in my opinion this is dishonesty.
I learned to do this a long time ago but I do not lay the blame for my lack of character at the feet of my parents. I really dislike it when people do this and I certainly don’t want to encourage my kids to bring their issues to my feet, though if they feel the need I recommend they do it while I am still here to listen. I do know that we all do our best and in families we often layer the habits of one generation on top of the next and on and on, not knowing there is a better way until we see the flaw or the crack in the veneer.
I have not meant to be less than truthful. I have not had an agenda to keep to myself. In fact I would say my agenda is the opposite but it is very difficult to overcome a lifetime of practiced behavior. But now the crack has snaked across the surface of my life story. I am hopeful that my favorite poet, Leonard Cohen, got it right when he said “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
We are forever in the hands of life. In this case it has lined up a fine array of helpers in the form of people and events. These helpers urge and push and they stand in my face until I look them in the eye and finally acknowledge what is here. I have come to sense through these prodding helpers’ hands that there are many separate compartments to my life, each deep and carefully maintained but each closed one from the other. I know now that the time for segmentation has passed. I want to knock down the walls and move the pieces of the puzzle into one integrated picture. I want to be whole before my time here is up. I am only 59 and not lining up for the departure lounge yet but I know this integration will take some time… so I best start today.
In “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” Carl Jung urges us to give serious attention to ourselves as we age. He states that “the afternoon of life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.” So perhaps this project of vulnerability, truth and honesty will be the significance of the afternoon of my life. I am scared some days when I think about living out there honestly, with a new afternoon program, but more than fear I feel excited and relieved to know that this is possible and that I can make my way in this next half of my life differently. I have come to know this process as my spiritual path and I embrace it as a daily practice which may not visibly enrich my outer life but will begin the change within, growing each day until the internal and the external are one.
“It seems that finding our way home begins with finally accepting first our self and then the world around us.”
You are in luck…there are spaces left in the two upcoming events!
A Fifty+ Fabulation* Event
Jaki Scarcello, internationally acclaimed author of Fifty & Fabulous! The Best Years of a Woman’s Life, offers women 50+ an opportunity to experience fearless aging and to explore the potential of the next stage of their lives.
Life in the senior years is a unique and fulfilling stage of human development. The sooner you educate yourself about what this stage of life offers the better prepared you will be to embrace its gifts.
The Beverly Hills Country Club
Los Angeles
Sunday, September 26, 2010
9:30-4:30
or
The Elmwood Spa
18 Elm St, Toronto
Thursday October 7, 2010
9:30-4:30
Please note prices for both events have recently been reduced
The Objectives of the Day:
• To answer the questions that haunt women coming to terms with the changes that result from aging:
” What is this aging thing about, anyway?”
“How has the girl in me grown up?”
“How do I want to live at this age?”
“What is my role/ purpose in life now?”
• To present a perspective on aging that will bring you fearlessly, fabulously and comfortably into your own skin, no matter what its make or model
• To embrace your current age and to gain the ability to welcome life as a continuously evolving and changing journey
Former Participants Say This:
“This was a life affirming experience. It will help me greatly with taking the next steps in my life.”
Dianalyn 58
“A thoughtful, provocative experience that encourages women to face their futures fearlessly.”
Judy 55
Details and Registration: at www.fiftyfab.com
Questions? jaki@fiftyfab.com
A fun and worthwhile day out with a girl friend or as a treat for yourself!
*Fabulation means to engage in the creation of fables or magical stories…in this case the story of the rest of your life.
A supportive network of family and friends may have an impact on longevity according to new research just out from Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.(LA Times 9/13/10)
Betty Friedan also quoted similar research findings in 1993 in her book “The Fountain of Age”
So the experts are telling us…friends are good for us as we age.
However these “golden friendships” may differ from the ones you had when you were younger.
Friendship issues was an unexpected topic,which came up in my interviews with vibrant women 50+ while researching for my last book. It took me by surprise when my interviewees identified that their friendship patterns had changed in two significant ways as they had aged.
First of all, women 50+ report that they may have more time but few friends to spend it with. In the preceding years they have had their heads down and focused on all the essential roles they have to play in life and they have failed to nurture the friendship role. This is a quantity issue.
This quote from a women’s blog may explain why, “Women give themselves away to functions, husbands, children, and work.”
I think there is a lot of truth to this. Women work very hard balancing multiple tasks for much of their adult lives. This predisposition to multi tasking and multi care giving has many positive consequences for the women themselves and for those around them but there are also negative consequences. The busy task jugglers are left with little or no time for themselves or for some of life’s basic, indulged comforts, like friendship.
Secondly, women 50+ may have been able to maintain friendships through the busy years but when they raise their heads at 50 and look around they find they are not satisfied with the sort of friendships they have maintained. This is a quality issue.
Women 50 + have lost their tolerance for superficial friendships or friendships which “must be maintained out of social responsibility. If friendships, which began earlier in life have not ripened into a deep connection they will often be set aside at this point. And here is the really good news ladies….as we age we are able to make these friendship changes without heart piercing guilt.
So where do these new friendships come from? They often come from our past. I call these old friendships recycled into new friendships, retro relationships. Women 50 + will often reconnect with friends they had in school either as children or in university or at a first job. The internet and social networking makes such re connections much easier than they used to be. But what is the attraction to these people we have not seen in years?
“….as the pressure of adult roles eases, women feel a natural urge to spend time with people who knew them before they were consumed by those roles. To be known again as Sue, May, or Karen, not as CFO, Mrs. Smith, or even Mom”
The wise women I interviewed approached their search for new friendships with the same wisdom and experience they applied to other issues in their lives. “Now, just as we have earned the good taste to know cheap shoes from Italian-designed and great wine from boxed, we have higher standards for friendship as well.” Women 50+ are not in a rush to find the new friends. They know that these are important decisions and they make them with improved, or at least different, criteria than they would have when they were younger.
As women enter the age of gerotranscendence, the stage of human development which comes after 50 and which is a great open field of exploration, they want to be sure they have the appropriate companions for the journey. The more intimate camaraderie of new 50+ acquaintances or the revitalized friendships of youth may turn out to be the perfect support network for this next stage of live.
Introvert or extrovert we all need friends and friendship fills a place in our relationship network that no other person, not spouse or partner, sibling, child or parent is able to fill.
According to Dr Lars Tornstam, a Swedish sociologist, featured recently in the NY Times, “Our values and interests don’t remain static from…20 years old until the time we’re 45, so why …expect that sort of consistency in later decades.” The nature of our friendships continues to grow as we do and the changes which begin at 50 evolve as we age. An elderly woman may display a healthy need for “increased solitude, and for the company of only a few intimates…she isn’t deteriorating, necessarily- she’s evolving.”
Here once again is proof that life after 50 is a stage of human development which offers us growth and change in many aspects of our life.
If you are lucky enough to have some fantastic current friendships which have bolstered you along your way…keep them and cherish them. If you are seeking new friendships I hope these insights will help you to live long and nurtured in the circle of your friends.
This morning on Twitter Hugh Hefner reminded me that today is the anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe. I remember that day so clearly.
We,my family and I,were in the car on our way to our weekly Sunday picnic. I loved those Sundays but that is another story.
If you are old enough you can imagine the scene…two adults and one child in the front, four more bodies packed in the back, no seat belts and no air conditioning, the radio screeching over the wind blasting in through the open windows.
Suddenly a news bulletin, “This just in from Los Angeles California… Marilyn Monroe found dead today in her home…”
I remember the shock in the car. It is not like any of us knew her,maybe it was the loss of beauty to this world which left a sad cloud over our family outing.
I did not realize at that moment that many years later the impression of this woman would remain and I would be moved to honour Ms. Monroe in my own writing. I offer this today to say thank you to Marilyn for the wonderful light she brought to our lives if only for a short while.
What kind of 50-year-old woman would Marilyn Monroe have been?
If Wikipedia had an entry for the light in a woman’s eyes, the accompanying picture would definitely be Marilyn. But Marilyn did not make it to 50. What could she have learned along the way that would have helped her find her wisdom harvest?
(Okay, this is pure speculation. I never met the woman. But if you are going to write about the light in a woman’s eyes, you have to include Marilyn.)
Men loved Marilyn’s light—her smile, her sparkle—but my guess is that for Marilyn it was unconscious competence so it was not available to her as a resource in her private struggle for survival.
Perhaps not entirely unconscious—perhaps she knew that when she “sold” this light, things went well, she could get what she wanted, and other people were pleased, at least in the moment. But selling the light drained her because it was all an outflow. In the end she was quoted as saying that she was just too tired to keep going.
For the Women of the Harvest,even as their light engages those around them,it also turns back 180 degrees. It shines back inside,where it nurtures their confidence and sense of self;it re energizes them until finally it consumes the body and the light is all there is. If you have had the privilege of sharing the last days and hours of a Woman of the Harvest you will have seen this phenomenon for yourself.You reach out to hold a hand,unsure if you will actually feel its weight in your own. It is the lightness of being free.
I speculate that what Marilyn never got a chance to understand was that her beauty was not her body—not the shell,but what the shell held.
What is it that draws the light back inside for some and not for others? What I heard in my interviews suggests that for some it takes courage—the courage to fail and to find something of yourself that is worthy in the humility of failure.
For others,it takes passion and the powerful drive to survive so that the passion may be realized. For a few it seems to be a sense of mischief and humor about life that buoys them through the tough times and keeps everything in perspective. And let us not eliminate unexplainable luck, good fortune, grace.
I don’t think Marilyn lived long enough to find any of those gifts within herself. It is a great loss. She would certainly have classed up the harvest festival.
Excerpted from Fifty & Fabulous; The Best Years of a Woman’s Life, Watkins 2010
When I decided to stop dying my graying hair 15 years ago I had no idea I would be distinguishing myself as a woman of courage in the eyes of my peers.
I am surprised and somewhat amused by other people’s reactions to my gray hair. At least once a week a perfect stranger walks up to me on the street and congratulates me on my hair color. They say things like:
“it is so beautiful”
“you are so brave”
“it looks gorgeous”
“I am so inspired”
“Was it difficult to do?”
One woman even asked if I “dyed it”
Jaki with Silver hair
Do I accept all the physical changes of ageing? Well, I have to be honest …in case any of my friends are reading this blog.
Some days, the good days, I am quite accepting but others I moan at the cellulite and flinch when I see the bags under my eyes. But when it comes to hair I have come to a place of acceptance assisted by some very heavy practical issues:
• I save approximately $1000 a year which would be spent on salon coloring. I will not go to a hairdresser who suggests dying my hair. I have a lot of other things I can do with that $1000.
• My father turned white in his twenties. I got those genes. My first gray rogue hairs showed up at 21 so I have had a long time to get used to this changing palette on my head.
• Silver hair has forced me into a whole new color theme for my closet and new makeup. OK I am shallow but now I have an excuse to shop and to give away some great clothes to Urban Possibilities
• It’s popular to “go gray” now, why not join the crowd. Bring on the silver foxes! Check out Going Gray Looking Great
I am proud to be “a little old gray haired lady” I like to think that I can I role model what life 50+ can be by wearing my natural color so if you want to join me here are my tips for the journey to the silver crown.
Use Good Shampoo and Conditioner
I have not found a change in texture though I know some people say gray hair can be more course. To keep my hair soft I use a good quality conditioner and don’t do what I do , do what I say…deep condition with a home product or at the salon every few months
Work through the Stages to Silver.
You can go “cold turkey” I did not have the guts for that and my mother was really on my case about my premature graying so here is what I did to make the transition a little easier:
1. I started out dirty blond with a few grays tucked in but mostly unseen
2. Then went streaked blond to blend in the gray when it was more abundant.
3. As the gray increased I went to the salon and had my hair backlit. I had at least 4 colors going in my hair at the same time. But it worked, it looked very natural and all the while the gray was growing.
4. When my temples went white I took the leap and stopped dying.
That was 15 years ago. I forgot to mark it on the calendar. If I had only known it would be the day my courage began…I would have marked it.
How to Keep the Silver from Tarnishing
This does not involve wearing plastic bag on your head.
The secret is blue shampoo that keeps the gray silvery and protects from the brassiness that sun can cause. E.g. Blue Malva by Aveda or Clairol Shimmer Lights.
These shampoos are specially made for gray / white hair and you leave them on for 1 minute or so…not too long or you end up looking like a blue haired granny (not that there is anything wrong with that) .
I also use a sun screen for hair called Miss Oops Block Your Locks to give extra sun protection.
Now What about the Brows?
I get mine dyed. I resisted this for a long time and then I did it once and I was hooked. No, I am not a hypocrite I just need to have a facial expression and penciled in brows make me shutter. It only costs $10. and you just get it done when you get your hair trimmed every 6-8 weeks.
Other body hair areas? You are on your own ladies… do what you need to do.
Dress for Silver Success
I have a whole new wardrobe in gray tones. I have found that gray looks great with gray also blue but that may be an eye color issue. Short skirts and high fashion look great with gray hair. When you are gray haired and keep on top of the styles and/ or boldly display your own style it becomes a very interesting look. I think people look and go “oh she is old but wow she looks great’ …Now that is my favorite message to send.
I think natural hair color can help women look better.
For the record I do not equate younger and better. Yes, gray hair may signal a “certain age” but what is attractive about a woman who is obviously fighting her age e.g. dyed hair which is unnatural looking, drastic face lifts, lip plumbs or brow lifts which result in a permanent pout or shocked affect. I think there is nothing more beautiful than an older woman, gray at the temples ,wrinkled and maybe even a little bent but clearly confident and comfortable in her own skin. Have you ever noticed the radiance in the eyes of such a woman shining under her platinum crown?
I will miss the compliments on the street but I look forward to a time when gray hair is as natural as blonde on a beach in Santa Monica in August!
To Fabulousness Ladies!
Recently in my travels to promote my book and to support my campaign for fearless and fabulous aging I have met a number of women who are worried about the affect of aging on their sex drive.
I understand this concern because I think our sex drive does change post our 50th birthday.
I think it has changed many times as we have aged but like all the other changes this one because it is associated with age is treated with much greater gravity and I must say a fair amount of pessimism.
I sent one woman who expressed such a concern the excerpt below which is from my book Fifty & Fabulous: The Best Years of a Woman’s Life. She wrote back and said, “ this is gorgeous…you must share it with more people.”
Well I thought I had shared it when I put this finding in my book…
So here it is in a bite sized format…enjoy ladies… this too can be your 50+ reality
More Than Skin Deep
I did not discuss sex with every woman I interviewed. I let the topic come up naturally rather than leading the women to it. (I thought that in itself could be interesting to observe.) But the Women of the Harvest, my mentors, answered all my questions—some in their words and some between the lines of their stories. They taught me that if you do not own your sexuality by the time its biological purpose is outlived, you will be left trying desperately to play in today’s game using yesterday’s equipment—which, by the way, seems to have changed only for you. Do you think you could score with a primitive club in a modern baseball game? You can swing that baby but you are not going to knock one out of the park.
We cannot help the fact that our sexuality, at some level, is part of every interaction we have. It is part of what we are. But when it becomes tied to our self-esteem it starts to show up in places that it really just should not be, and as we age things will get even more difficult.
Do not despair; remember the perfect design of aging? Like the light in a woman’s eyes, as you age, your sex drive also turns 180 degrees and begins to pull you inward to a place where you are able to receive in a way you never dreamed you could.
You become a taker, not a pseudo-giver, and in this honesty you find ecstasy again. What’s more, in this honest vulnerability you are quite likely more capable than you ever have been of giving pleasure to your partner and engaging deeply with others without the static interference of sexual energy.
Desire arises, but it does not go “out there” to seek its validation; instead, somewhere deep inside you it stokes its own flame. The questions that arose before as your sexuality began to change now turn to knowing. It may be an unconscious knowing at the start, but in retrospect you will realize that you have answers from somewhere. You know you didn’t ask anyone, not even yourself, “Am I sexy with this tummy, am I sexy with these thighs?” But your tummy, your thighs, and even your jiggly upper arms now scream out in joy, “Yes, I am sexy in this body”!
If it seems that the sparkle in a Women of the Harvest deepens with age, perhaps it’s because her fire is fed in part by the internalization of sexual energy. This beauty is truly no longer skin deep. Instead, it radiates from some knowing place inside a woman who has ceased to need the outer world to know herself.
Excerpt from Fifty & Fabulous: The Best Years of a Woman’s Life by Jaki Scarcello, Watkins 2010
A few months back on my campaign for fabulous and fearless aging I met Deborah Williams the founder of Grace, a Toronto based business which helps women “feel good when they look in the mirror and age with grace.”
Deborah and I immediately hit it off because we have the same goals. To help women feel great no matter what their make or model year.
As we age our faces are changing and of course we still want to put out our best look so maybe we just need to change some of our old habits.
I asked Deborah to provide me with some tips I could share with my blog readers. I was surprised at some of the things she had to say…who would have thought? This is why it is often wise to consult the experts… like Deborah
SOMETIMES IT TAKES A LITTLE MORE
DOING IT WITH GRACE
“When I give my workshops and presentations to midlife women,” says Deborah Williams,
founder of GRACE, “the question they all want answers to is can they turn the clock back? My
answer is always almost. Time marches on, but there’s a lot you can do with the colors you wear
and makeup choices and application to make you look as good as you ever did. Some clients tell
me they’ve never looked better! The way to do this is with color and care, and by forgetting
what used to work for you at 18 or even 28 and learning what will work for you now.”
Five tips to give you a head start on aging (gracefully) with GRACE:
1. Know your colors. For this you may need to consult an expert (Deborah at
www.gracemakeup.com) or a book and determine whether you’re winter, summer, spring,
or fall. You may remember when this was the hot thing to do and it still should be. Wearing
the colors that suit you make you look brighter, fresher, younger, and bring out your best.
Your season is one of the factors that determines the colors you should use on your face,
particularly for your eyes and your lips. However, note that as you age your colors may
change. If you were a winter when you were 18, you might be a fall now depending on skin
tone and hair shade!
2. Go softer. Don’t use the heavy streak of Cleopatra black eyeliner that may have worked in
the past. Ninety percent of the time, the color used in your brows should be the color used
as the first contour to shape your eye.
3. Roots, please. You want eyelashes to frame your eye, not spider webs. To achieve this,
apply mascara to the roots only to give a lustrous look and pull the brush up and out of the
eye to open it up, don’t ‘ski’ down over the top of the lashes.
4. Outside only. Don’t use mascara on the inner eye eyelashes (closest to your nose!). This
tends to draw attention to the heaviness in the eye bag.
5. Glow with blush. Don’t use blush to shape your face as you may have done in the past. Just
dust lightly on the apple of the cheeks to give a healthy glow.
ABOUT DEBORAH:
Deborah Williams works in film and TV to make celebrities and on-screen personalities look
good and she does the same with her clients. Deborah founded GRACE to help women look
good with makeup as they age and gives workshops and seminars on request. A book is in the
works. Please check the website to keep up to date.www.gracemakeup.com
To schedule a workshop or personal (or group) consultation, contact GRACE.
Produced by www.kathleendavies.ca
Remember when a chick flick was a cute romantic movie about a girl looking for, finding and living happily ever after with, a guy
OK some of those were fun
They still make lots of those movies. But it seems my 50+ film tastes have changed. I wonder if this has anything to do with hormones…everything else seems to. Well whatever the cause…I am on the hunt for something more than sweet romance on the big screen.
As I lean back on the couch and dive into the home popped corn in the big red bowl that I bought my for my husband because I wanted it, I have matured expectations for what will roll out before me.
I want to see my sisters portrayed on the screen as
Older
Wiser
Stronger
Funnier
Smarter
…because that is what we are at this age. I want to see women just like me and my friends working their way through story lines which are stunningly entertaining…so not at all like my life!
Below is my list of favs.
Cheri
Out of Africa
Shirley Valentine
Its Complicated
Calendar Girls
Private Lives of Pippa Lee
What are your favorites?
This weekend is Mum’s Day and many of us will celebrate those special women in our life who flipped our French toast, zipped up our coats, pressed our best outfit and was the ear to which we poured out our story over and over again.
We know that woman, the Mum woman but what about the woman inside the Mum? Do we know her?
Yes there is someone in there; not someone else but someone more. She is the woman who existed before you did. Who that person is may surprise you.
Check out My Parents Were Awsome at http://myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com/
A fun website which will remind you that parents are people too.
My Mum passed on 7 years ago, just one week past her 92nd birthday.
Now as I approach my sixtieth birthday I realize that I never really got to know my Mum as a woman and I wonder if I had made that connection would be wiser for it now in my own aging time.
I would love to know her opinions on so many things. What would she have said about her aging? Did she feel her confidence grow as her wisdom deepened or did she miss her youth every day? What were her dreams when she was twenty and where did they settle by the time she was ninety? What about her 70 year marriage to my Dad…what was the taste of love so long matured?
I have opinions about who my Mum was as a person based on what I observed but I wonder what I could have learned from the right conversation. Maybe just a few girlfriend-like conversations would have given me the insights I now crave and maybe my Mum would have cherished those conversations too. Think about it… do we not love to talk about our lives and what we have learned along the way?
Of course your Mum is always going to be your Mum. The roles–motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood and any other hood you want to add–continue most of our lives but it is a woman’s relationship to the roles that changes. While pre-50 role playing was intentional after 50 it is more spontaneous. The actions begin to flow more naturally and without tension. Women begin to describe themselves as comfortable in their roles in a way they never were before. They are more comfortable with the unknown and unplanned aspects of life and the opportunities they bring. They are more comfortable because they are unburdened by codes of right and wrong or the incessant need to please others that drove them before 50. Maybe in that new spontaneous space there is room for you as a daughter to enter as a confidant and to share the journey of womanhood that this person you trust so much has experienced.
Your Mum might tell you, if you are lucky and if you listen well, what life looks like to her now, seven or eight decades into life. She might talk about the gratitude she has for the experiences of her youth–even the painful ones. She might tell you about the clarity she has about what is important and what is not. We spend so much time with our heads down to the grindstone of living we need such reminders–and what better source than Mummy?
She might tell you also about the fears that still haunt her. Maybe some are for you and the life she so wants you to have. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could put some of those fears to rest for her?
This Mother’s Day I will be with my daughter and son and I will think of my Mum, her mothering and her womanhood and the stories I never thought to ask about.
Happy Mother’s Day to us all. Even if we have no children, we are all daughters so we all deserve to celebrate this day!