Repost from 2/9/2016
My home has changed with my new life. I have always lived in older homes and mostly I have had plenty of room. Not that our houses were fancy, just houses with lots of room. A bedroom for each child growing up and a playroom. My husband and I each had our own dressing rooms (we had plenty of rooms, just no closets). Bathroom space was ample. And, I always had an office at home. As my children left the nest we continued to keep their bedrooms intact; however, my oldest son had to contend with his room becoming my craft and sewing room when he was away. He got over it.
A little background…when I was about 15 my parents split. We had to sell our house, and my Mom and I moved into an apartment. I hated it. I wanted to be an ordinary family and live in a regular house with two regular, married-to-each-other, parents. I was devastated by all of it. I loved my family and my house and my room, and now it was gone. I loved my home. Our new apartment was very cool and probably looked super glamorous to some of my friends. I hated it. Hate hate hated it. Have I made myself clear?
Now fast forward about forty-five years…my husband wanted to keep our house; the man who could not have been less engaged in any part of our home life now wished to maintain the house on the golf course. Shocking. So, my challenge was to find a place that would work for me and allow the kids to stay at my place some of the time when they are home. Of course, I want them all of the time, but we can’t always get what we want. I started looking for an apartment that could accommodate my dog and me, visiting twenty-somethings and my office. What I found was that I would be able to have all of those things if I stacked the children in the office when they visit. Interesting concept: air mattress, son, air mattress, son, air mattress, daughter. I kept looking. It was depressing, and it felt like I was going backward rather than moving forward.
I looked for a new place in the trendiest area of my city, but there was just too much vomit on the sidewalks after Friday and Saturday nights. I love being around young people but not at 2 a.m. when the bars close.
Then the clouds opened up, and a sunbeam was shining on a small brick building in downtown. The ad said it was a loft, but I had my doubts. My search had taught me that loft is a very loose term. I walked into a unit that would be open in a few months and … I … was … home. Brick walls, exposed beams and a concrete floor…it all screamed Paula. My kind of place.
Here is how I can best describe my apartment: one of my favorite TV shows of all time is Everybody Loves Raymond. I am sure I have seen every episode numerous times and can recite many of them line for line. Ray Barone refers to the “cafegymatorium” when talking about an area of the school building. Can’t you just picture it. The long tables, with bench seating and wheels that fold up and move to the side for volleyball, then the room is reworked again that day, for the Girl Scout Talent Show that evening. That’s what my new apartment is. The all-purpose living space. I am trying to come up with a one-word description. All I have is “offlibeddin” (think Armageddon). If you have any suggestions, let me know.
Read MoreThink about the beginning of the year. January 1st. It’s a time when we make plans for the next 12 months. We promise ourselves that we will do all the things we didn’t do last year. Then we don’t, and so the cycle goes.
Well, I would like to suggest that we treat September like January and see how much we can accomplish in the next few months. Here’s my thinking: the lazy days of summer are behind us and we have a while before the holidays kick us into high gear. Why not make this time a productive and exciting way to say goodbye 2019!
Remember last January when you made big promises to yourself, only to fall short on the follow-through a little? Now, it’s easy to say to ourselves, “Well, I’ll just wait until the beginning of the year to (fill-in the blank). It might be to lose weight, get in shape, become more organized, learn Spanish. Whatever you didn’t get to this year, you can just push it off until after the holidays. No no no, not good enough!
What better time could there be to become more organized than the end of the year, rather than waiting until you have your head in a vice trying to pull together your 2019 records. Or, if you want to get into better shape, why not get started before the holidays so you have some wiggle room going in? Want to learn a new skill? How proud will you be of yourself when you are already on your way by 2020?
As women over 50, 60 and 70, we should be keenly aware of time flying by: we all experience the feeling. I get mad at myself when I do, don’t you? So make a plan to accomplish just one extra thing before the end of Q4. Just one. Whatever it is. I feel happier just thinking about being able to play Silent Night on the piano for my family. And, I can if I make the call to start lessons in the next week or so. I am going to do it. And, I hope you will, too. Don’t let October, November and December slip through your fingers without making the best of them. Your accomplishments will be mood lifters for sure!
What are you going to do to make good use of the last few months of the year? If you want to go deeper into this topic, join us on the Starting Over at Sixty Sisters Program private Facebook page for weekly videos and to-dos to help you propel yourself forward. And, it’s all free in September.
Read MoreRepost from 1/20/2016
Sometimes you are freed from something that you didn’t know was holding you back. That’s me. And it’s not just the age thing. I’ve never been one to worry about my age that much. My Mother died at 49 (cancer) and my Father died at 55 (stroke). So I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have the opportunity to turn sixty. To be here with my kids at sixty. To get to see them as young adults and beyond. I am a grateful girl at this point. I love sixty!
It is a great time to be unhitching my self from my husband. I had no idea how beat down I had felt for years (not physically, let me make that clear). I was oppressed by the lack of trust in my marriage and that darkened everything in my life. Waiting for him to come home, maybe, and not knowing what that was going to look like was torture. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it always dropped eventually. I built a fortress around myself for protection. I had no idea the enormity of the weight of that fortress and it is gone. Read…my…lips……..gone!
And, while I was living with that, my business was oppressive because I really just didn’t like it and wasn’t good at it. I did it to impress him. It did not. I have been carrying too much weight because there had to be some “place” of happiness and ice cream was that place. I was drinking too much, well, you know why. I was living in a big house on a golf course because I thought that if we moved there maybe my husband would like me better. He just likes golf better now.
I sold the restaurants, I moved to a one room, 1000 sq. foot loft apartment: my husband wanted to keep the house because living on the golf course makes him feel like a big man: you’re welcome. I probably drink less but Have fun more. I am never going to like working out, but I am doing so for way better reasons than to try to make my husband like me again. Funny, I seem to have lost about 195 lbs. (you get my drift I’m sure).
Hooray for me! Happy Birthday!
Read MoreI have written about this topic ad nauseum, but here it comes again: Labor Day weekend is coming up next week and it is my least favorite holiday of the year. Yuck! It signals the end of the summer, the beginning of the busy fall season and worse, it’s usually not a weekend for which I make plans. But that changed a couple of years ago.
I had nothing happening for the long weekend and had no worries about it either. I thought I would just relax and hang around my place. Well, I live downtown and downtown is a ghost town on a holiday weekend like Labor Day. So, stopping into my neighborhood pizza and beer joint was just plain sad. There no one on the street. There was no one in the hallway. There was no one, period!
I could not wait for that weekend to be over and I vowed to myself that I would never spend that weekend with no plans again. And, I’ve kept my word. I didn’t have anything going on this year so I made a plan, and that’s what I want to pass on to you; if you don’t make plans for a time when you know you may be lonely, you are not doing yourself any favors.
I went from dreading the first Monday in September to now looking forward to it and here’s what it will look like for me: I am heading to visit one of my best friends in my hometown, Cincinnati. I haven’t seen her for a while and I can’t wait to have some regular time with her, without any events to bring us together. Maybe we will go to a movie, maybe some pool time, but whatever we do, it will be fun and away from ordinary life.
So what I want to tell you is that if you have a time coming up that starts to bring you down in your thinking, then make your own plan. I am not spending much money to get away, but the feelings of anticipation are so much better than the feelings of dread the week before a weekend in which the highlight is walking my dog.
Please please please, listen to this: you have the ability to change your thinking about what’s ahead by planning it for yourself. Try it and I promise you will be glad you did.
Read MoreWould you want to spend time with… you? That’s a strange question, isn’t it? But I’m serious. The way you present yourself when you sit down for coffee at the local coffee shop or the way you introduce yourself to a possible love interest; would you look forward to hearing what you had to say? Let’s look at this.
I spend time with lots of single women over sixty and one thing I can tell you about us women, single or married, is that as we age, we get a little grouchy (the same goes for men but I don’t care about them right now). Let tell you the things we gripe about immediately when we sit down to a table of, well, anyone who will listen: the weather, the heat, the sore ankle (knee, hip, elbow, foot, shoulder, wrist, neck), what’s on the menu that causes gas, bloating, heartburn, acid reflux, diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammation of anything, swelling of anything, insomnia, and general pain. And, we can’t stay too late because we have to get home before dark because we can’t see to drive in the dark. The humidity makes my hair frizzy. The humidity makes my hair flat. The humidity makes my feel swell. I can’t sit here at this high top because it hearts my knees. The air conditioning is blowing on my neck. It’s too cold. It’s too hot in here.
This is all before the first glass of water has been served! You think I’m kidding: I am not. I have heard every one of these complaints when women have just arrived at the table to sit down. Who wouldn’t to spend time with that? I wouldn’t. I don’t. I don’t want to spend time with that woman and I don’t want to invite her to another opportunity to waste my time with her moaning! I just don’t.
Here’s the thing, most women who hit the ground running with this dialogue don’t even know they are doing it. They just moan on and on and wonder why their phones aren’t ringing off the hook (that’s an old fashioned expression, isn’t it?) with invitations to more get togethers. Well, wonder no more, it’s because that’s not fun to be around. That isn’t happy one bit. And, why would I want to be around that again?
Guess what, everything we just said as we strolled up to the table is true. Everything does hurt and it is hot outside and our hair is a collective mess, but, no one wants to hear that. No one cares, at least no one cares right off the bat.
I don’t want to talk to that woman and neither do you and neither do any men who she is considering for a relationship. And, I am not saying we have to be fake. That’s not the message either. Here is the message: if you want to continue to be social and active, if you want people to invite you to join them for various outings, if you want to be asked on a date, you need to present yourself in a way that makes them want you around.
I am working in my Sisters Program on this very topic and I am working with a couple of clients in the WingWoman program on the same. I think it is making a difference in how these woman are being perceived and will continue to make a difference as they work on creating m ore and more relationships.
In order to remain socially active, we must each put our best foot forward. We must be women who others enjoy spending time with and with whom others want to engage.
So, for the rest of the month and into September I am going to be focusing on how we want to present ourselves to others and what we can do, how we can reframe our conversation, to make others want to spend more and more time with us. So, I go back to my original question: would you want to spend time with…you?
Read MoreI had a conversation last week with one of my closest friends about our work life, home life and what they look like moving forward. She is married, I am not. After we parted I realized something that had escaped me to this point: we honestly have many of the same issues in our 60+ lives. I truly thought that my issues were particular to single women about 60-70, and some may be, but we have many of the same thoughts rolling around in our heads.
My friend said to me, “This is a hard time of life. Everybody I know is grappling with whether or not they should make a career change or ride it out or retire or get a new job all together. She’s right. This is a complicated time in our lives and it is unexpected for me.
When I was first divorced, I guess I thought I would ride my life out as planned, creating content for single women over fifty and working with women to help them make their lives look like their visions. I love doing this and I hope I get to do it forever. But, I pay my own health insurance and maybe I should be thinking of adding another “gig” to my schedule in order to have that covered. And, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t enjoy more interaction with live human beings, since much of my “socializing” is actually online through social media.
My friend was communicating that she might like a job that was a little more fulfilling for her. Or would she? She carries the health insurance for her whole family, and wondered if that is worth sticking it out for a while. Add to that the fact that she isn’t ready to hang up her working shoes when she turns 65. How did things get this complicated.
When I was married, I was always worried about retirement for my husband. He wasn’t someone who I thought would ever retire: his only hobby was golf. The thought of him not leaving the house in the morning had me sweating bullets! And, we had nothing in common, so I can’t imagine what that would have even looked like. I always saw myself working at something forever and I always saw him working forever. I just did. That didn’t necessarily mean employment, but I don’t think I am an at-home kind of girl anymore.
But, when I became single, my outlook changed forever. Continuing to work might be a necessity rather than an option. I guess it didn’t hit me that my married friends were in the same boat. Or, might choose to be in that same boat because they aren’t ready to throw in the towel either. Some don’t feel like they have as much money as they thought they would and want to add to their nest egg. Some want to do something different. Some want to be more fulfilled for the next ten years. Whatever it is, we are all finding ourselves a little off balance and not knowing which direction to face.
So, it’s not just me who feels the pinch of being in my sixties and not knowing what should come next. And it’s not just single women over 50 who are looking forward with big question marks in their eyes. All of us girls are looking for clarity as we gaze into the future. We all wish we had a crystal ball. I Sure do!
Maybe, there will just never be a time when any of us feel settled with our plans for the future, single or not. Is that OK? Let me know what you think.
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