I say this to myself all the time, and now I want to put it in print, so I can see it. “Dear Mom, now I get it. I’m sorry.”
My mother died at 49, 15 years younger than I am now. That fact is hard to believe on its own. That my mother has been gone from this world for nearly 40 years is just unbelievable to me.
My parents divorced when I was 15. My father had become an alcoholic and left my mom for the woman who worked at the bar next to his office. It could not have been more cliche. My mom was of course, heartbroken. And, I can honestly say that for the rest of her life, I know that what she missed was our little family, the three of us together. She hated sharing me for the holidays. She hated that I had relationships with the women in my father’s life ( I honestly didn’t know what to do). She loved the life she had built with my dad and how it was gone.
I was, of course, not one bit sympathetic. I was a teenager. I was about myself. I was annoyed and I was trying to be cool and aloof and not care about any of it: obviously I was dealing with my own feelings. I was now a child of divorced parents (that was not the norm back then for sure). I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes at my mother.
Fast forward to my life now. I am her. So many times over the past five years I have wished I could say to my mom, “Sorry, mom. I was a bratty daughter who was so uninterested in your feelings about being divorced from my dad. But, now I get it, all of it. And, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for not being more understanding and for not being a shoulder for you. I apologize.”
I am so lucky to get the opportunity to have a second chance at happiness. I hope I always make my mom proud and I hope, at the end of the day, I can show her and everyone, what a great second chance looks like.
What would you tell your mother if you had the chance? And, if she is still here, what would you like to say to her? Do it!
Read MoreDo you trust yourself? Really trust yourself and your thoughts and intuitions? I thought I did. I sure did when I was young. I knew everything about myself, and everything else for that matter!
After I became single at sixty, I was able to step back and look at my adult life and see where I went wrong, how my marriage had changed me, figure out what made me make some really bad decisions, and how I got where I am today. You know, the rundown of my life that goes around and around in my head at night when I can’t sleep. Please tell me I’m not the only one!
Last night was no exception: I tossed and turned for hours, ruminating about a couple of areas of my life. While I turn over from my right side to my left I am saying to myself, “What is wrong with you? What are you so worried about ALL THE TIME?”
And, here it is: I don’t trust myself. Crazy but true. I don’t trust myself after years of making terrible life choices, I just feel I can’t depend on myself. I hate it, but it’s true. Where did that come from, for the girl who thought she had the world by the tail once upon a time? The following seem to be common themes in my worried world:
Lack of Time
Time, or the lack of it, seems to hang over my head always. I feel a fear that I just don’t have enough time to still make some of my dreams come true. But, there is very little rationality to that thinking. Yes, I am not young and my new biological clock is ticking (the one that is counting down the total days, not the baby-making ones). Guess what? It was always ticking, it was just much less likely that it would stop when I was young! I now feel this nagging urgency that I have written about several times. The urgency feels so strong that I have butterflies in my stomach when I wake up. But, is it worth losing sleep over?
I have no illnesses that I know of, I am in fairly good shape and there is no reason for me to fear that the end is near, but I do and I want to stop right now! I would much rather lose sleep over something I can control, or over something that is actually real!
Lack of Funds
I can’t be alone in worrying about money in my mid-sixties, but that doesn’t make it any better. I think I have enough, and I am not retired by any means, but that constant fear about money haunts me night and day. I put money away every month like a good girl, I watch my spending, all the things that I am supposed to do but it still doesn’t make me feel calm and secure. Even my financial advisor told me to lighten up (not her exact words).
I have always had confidence in myself and my ability to earn a living, and it’s not that I have changed my mind on that, but I do feel like I can’t see a clear path to living the life that I want to live. Someone tell me the direction I should go and I’ll just do it (maybe that’s the problem)!
Love
This is a big one for me. I am finding that I don’t quite trust myself when it comes to picking a partner (as if I have a swarm of men at my door and I just need to point to one). Clearly, I didn’t make a great decision when I picked the man I was going to marry and spend the rest of my life with. And my relationship after that had a sad ending. What now? Don’t know, but I can tell you I don’t sleep at all when I have met someone who I kind of like and who likes me because it activates the worry wagon in my head. I put a lot of pressure when it comes to matters of the heart and I’m not sure that’s necessary. Rats!
I do know that every woman I know that I talk with in my age group feels unsettled. It is an unsettling age, for sure, and I had no idea that it would be. But I want to find a way to reduce the anguish in my brain at night and enjoy all of the great things in my life, while I have them. Maybe that’s the angst.
Do my Starting Over at Sixty Sisters have the same feelings? Any ideas for a more calm, settled Paula?
Read MoreAbout six months ago I found myself at a low point. Things weren’t going well and something just had to give. I planned a little trip to get away from things for a few days and threw my bike in my car. Nothing fancy, just had t get out fo town. I had no idea at the time, but I had actually figured out a strategy for making change in my own life and you can do the same: create your own disruptor.
While I was on that long weekend away I saw things so clearly. I was able to make a plan. Just the simple act of physically leaving my troubles behind had created a situation that disrupted my thinking and opened up a path to make changes to fix what was broken.
Fast forward and I have been feeling the same way that I did several months ago: certain aspects of my life just haven’t been working well. I have been stuck in a bad situation that felt like it had no end in sight and has been bringing me down for a year. It hit a low point this week and I knew I had to do something.
Coincidently, I hopped on a plane this week to visit my son and when I was on the plane, I mean just a few hours after we departed, I became so clear about how I was going to move forward on this issue. Crazy, right? And just like that, the weight of the world seemed to lift right off my shoulders. It was magic.
The only way I can describe this new tactic is that I created my own disruptor: for me, just the act of getting myself out of my routine and putting a little distance between me and my worries gave me such clarity that I feel like a new woman. It’s not that the problems are gone, but by disrupting my daily life pattern, I am able to see them in a different light.
I promise you that these difficulties are not over, but the load is dramatically decreased and it is because I changed my thoughts by disrupting my surroundings and feelings about them.
I know that disruptor is kind of a buzz word, but it’s the only way I can think to describe what is working for me. It is a pivot. A turning on your heels. And I feel like I might need to do something like this about every six months to clear my head for the next challenges.
For you, create your own disruptor if you need some clarity; if you need to make some change when things aren’t going at all the way you thought they would. You know what to do now. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Your disruption can be whatever you want it to be, but it should get you away from your daily life and surroundings, kind of like your own private retreat.
Read MoreRepost from 2/18/2016
If you know what “a TV dinner for Valentine’s Day,” is, then you are my age or older!
I was in a bad mood just thinking about it…Valentine’s Day. It has probably been forty years since I had no Valentine in my life. I was ready for a meltdown. Ready to cry myself to sleep on the night before and after. Ready to break out the Gin. But much to my surprise, nothing happened. I survived Valentine’s Day alone.
Now, I have plenty of sadness about my thirty-year marriage coming to an end. And as I watched loving couples walk hand-in-hand into the restaurants nearby I was envious. But my reality is and was very different. My marriage was very much about how things looked from the outside. It was all a big pile of going-through-the-motions.
Who knew how great Valentine’s Day could be. It was below zero outside, so I settled in for the weekend. Saturday night I watched The Devil Wears Prada, only one of the finest motion pictures ever made. I watched SNL with Melissa McCarthy. Sunday, I decided to start watching Empire by recommendation of my son, Ryan. I plopped myself down in front of the TV, grabbed my computer for some tax work and got down to business. I got to episode 5! The taxes still need work. Did some homework for my accounting class and cleaned out my emails. I then moved on to RHOA, Downton Abbey, and KUWTK. To lighten things up I binge watched The Mindy Project and Veep. So productive and so pop culture all at the same time. My eyes are a little dry but I powered through!
I had no idea Valentine’s Day could be so fun and I can’t wait until next year when I plan on adding in some hot chocolate!
Read MoreYou might remember that in the early fall I wrote about setting goals for the last quarter of 2019, rather than just coasting until it was time to make New Year’s resolutions. I hope many of you did just that and that you found yourself feeling great about not cruising through the last few months of the year getting nowhere.
Well, I did that, but I came up short in one area: I had a weight goal that I promised myself I would hit by the end of 2019 and I didn’t get there. I’m not really dieting, just slowly getting back down to the woman I used to be. OK, a little more than the woman I used to be, but closer than I have been in many years. I didn’t stick to watching what I was eating during the holidays, so I didn’t make the goal.
Now, here’s what I did differently than I have in the past: I kept going. Rather than my usual, “Oh well, I guess I will have to start over later when the weather gets better,” I got back on track and kept the goal in mind. Well, guess what, I got there. I may be about six weeks late on my goal, but I am there. I am proud of myself and ready for the next five pounds.
A few pounds wasn’t the only goal on my list and I got there on most everything. I am continuing to work on those goals that still need to be checked off and actually I have another goal that I will finish up this week, I hope. If not, what will I say to myself?
NEVER GIVE UP and JUST KEEP GOING!
Was it the weight that mattered or the goal achievement that matters more? Both are important to me right now, but honestly, I think reaching and surpassing a goal is the most fulfilling piece of the puzzle. I needed that, for sure. The few pounds is great, don’t get me wrong, but those little buggers are secondary to being proud of myself for doing it and not giving up. for taking control of an area of my life that always gives me
Now what, five more of course.
Do this: set some small goals. Not so small that they count, but small like flossing every night for a month. That’s all it takes. Why, first, because it will establish a pattern for you to continue. For me, right now, I have hit upon a way of eating that works for me consistently. When I get away from it, I start to go south, so, I get back to it and within a few days I’m bac on track. It works for me. If it’s flossing, and you do it for a month, you will know that you can do it and you should do it and you are feeling guilty when you aren’t doing it. Same for exercise, or getting enough sleep, being on-time, writing thank you notes and going to chu
Read MoreAre you getting a little down in the dumps after a couple of months of gray skies? Or is it the time of year that has you a little blue? I think for me, it’s both, but over the past couple of weeks, I have been feeling droopy. And then it hit me: I haven’t been doing many of the things that bring me joy. So what brings you joy? Are you spending time doing those things?
I take piano lessons, and that usually does it. But over the weekend I spent time with longtime friends in my home town and I realized that being with them brings me joy. It might be a combination of being with those friends and being in my home town where I have good memories: I think it’s both. It lightened my mood.
And, I am going to visit my son who lives far from home and that always cheers me up: I feel such comfort when I am with him. Just very peaceful. And, he lives in California so I will be re-introduced to the sun! This son, though, is the one who brings me peace, he makes me feel calm and settled and he brings me joy. All of my children bring me joy and sometimes after the holidays and when we settle in for winter I need to schedule a visit to get myself pumped up again.
Plan Something Right Now!
Listen to me: if you are feeling somewhat draggy, think about what brings you joy. Has it been missing lately? Could that be a factor in your mood? Of course, it is. So change that. Make a plan right now to get some joy into your life immediately, even for a day, and see how your mood lightens, how you become a little smilier (yes, that’s a word). It will make a world of difference as you finish out these winter months.
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