Embracing Change Archives · Page 13 of 20

Are You Living in Alignment?

July 8, 2018

Three years ago I ran away from home: I moved out of the home that I shared with my husband before he returned from work at 6 p.m. I moved into a one-room industrial loft, the one in the photo here, that I absolutely loved. The apartment felt small and safe. It was the one little place where I could hide from the world while my marriage was crumbling.

Last Saturday I took a giant step in building a happy life for myself again: I moved again. I now own my own condo (well, of course, the bank owns my condo!). I have lots of space and a wonderful view, two stories and the biggest closet I have ever owned (I will post some pictures when the boxes are unpacked)! And, while it is filled to the brim with boxes right now, it represents a new beginning for me; a new, happy chapter filled with hope and success and family and friends. “All that, just from changing your address,” you might ask. Yes! Yes! Yes! When I moved to my loft, I felt that it was important for it to look like home for my adult children. I wanted them to know that no matter where I lived, it would be their home. It might have been just one room, but it was their home. And that’s what it was, their home.

Now, while this is still their home, it is my home, it is me. My new place is not a miniature replica of my married life: it is a home for a single woman over 60 who has a full, exciting life. It is a place where I can entertain, where my children can sleep in separate rooms when they visit (rather than all in one room) and it is a place where I can really start my life over. There is nothing about it that screams, “I am a sad, sad woman who is having to pick up the pieces of her failed marriage and trudge through life.” Instead, I feel like it says, “Paula has overcome a mountain of obstacles and look at her now!”

Join My New Program!

So, I am launching a test program for Starting Over at Sixty followers designed to build community among women who are 50+ and single and want to live the fullest lives possible. I mention it here because the focus of the group will be how to take steps forward in order to live a life on the outside the way you feel on the inside: vibrant, vital and relevant. I want you to live in alignment! I hope you will join other women who support each other through this chapter of life. Please register here. This test group is 100% free and launches August 1, 2018. I can’t wait to get started!

Jaime’s Life Changes Course

July 1, 2018

That arrest may have been the best thing that could have happened to Jaime. First, it got her out of an abusive, captive relationship, where she was already in a prison of sorts. Then, it lead her to Tapestry, a recovery program within the Ohio Reformatory for Women: it was a critical pivot point in her life. Jaime learned self-validation, rather than seeking validation from others. She learned that she had so much anger internally, anger aimed at herself, that had not been addressed over the years. The dissociative disorder that had been diagnosed when she was a young child was brought to the forefront. She was taught how to recognize the signs of those internal demons and how to stop the behavior before it takes over.

While in prison she also joined a program focused on human trafficking victims, where she learned how to trust someone prior to intimacy, a concept that would have been lost on the old Jaime. She took classes focused on domestic violence while there as well.

Jaime spent 3.5 years in prison before going to a halfway house. She then traveled to Columbus, Ohio to join the Harmony Project, and David Brown, the director. “I knew he wouldn’t let me down,” Jaime told me. “I knew I’d be OK with David Brown,” she said, and we both knew what she meant. The Harmony Project group took Jaime under their “wings.”

“Now, I work at The Old Spaghetti Warehouse full-time, and I go to Columbus State Community College full-time,” she told me with great pride. And she should be proud. Her youngest son is living with her, too. “It breaks my heart that I wasn’t there for them when they needed me,” she said of her relationship with her children. While her youngest lives with her, her daughter is more in and out of her life and her other son is in constant communication. And, that man who cared for Jaime’s son back when she was using and was not able to be the parent that she wished she could have been. “I have a lot of shame about that. I don’t talk about it a lot because I have to admit to myself the mess I made.” Well, she has spoken with him. He was someone who was so kind to her when she wasn’t being kind to herself.

“What do you want to do next,” I asked her. If she could do anything, and I believe she can after all of this, it would be to put in place a program in which a judge, or children’s services, could give a female offender one more chance, one more opportunity for change before she loses everything. “Prison ended up being my chance,” she said. But she went on to say that she feels that there could be a program that could be used at a judge’s discretion for a woman to have one more opportunity before losing her children and serving jail time. “It (prison) definitely worked for me. I just wish I had had the resources, the knowledge, sooner.”

Jaime has been back to the prison where she spent years of her life, talking to women about her story. Her mantra, “Just start.” She said she writes it on her hand sometimes when she gets nervous. “I tell them to take chances, be willing to learn and just start. Take the necessary steps and be willing to be reachable. Don’t let the fear take over, just start.”

Jaime was featured in a brief documentary about human trafficking here.

To learn more about Dissociative Identity Disorder click here.

Get Inspired by Jaime’s Story

June 24, 2018

I met Jaime in the Harmony Project, a citywide choir for which I volunteer. But, prior to that, I had met her at the women’s prison in my state. She was in a recovery program called Tapestry and through Harmony Project, I visit there, singing with the women in that program. Now, Jaime is on the outside and came to Columbus because she knew she had a support system through the Harmony Project. She sings in the choir. I didn’t really know her story but I knew that she always has a smile on her face and is outgoing and making good use of this second chance. I didn’t know her background but knowing she had been in a recovery program in prison let me know, at the very least, her life had been somehow shaped by substance abuse. When she sat down and started talking to me my jaw dropped to the ground.

Jaime began by telling me that at an early age, and by early I mean within months after her birth, her life became a series of sexual assaults by nearly every man with whom she came in contact. She developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, to protect herself from the pain, both physical and emotional. “Dissociative Identity Disorder made everything bad that was happening to me feel like a dream. I had to escape that horrible reality to survive,” Jaime told me. She soon was placed in the foster care system, where she found more of the same abuse. She thought her luck had turned but her adoptive mother was extremely mean. Something was still missing in Jaime’s heart.

She married after leaving her adoptive home and had two children. She was afraid to touch her first child because she was terrified that she would abuse him: it was all she knew. What was still missing in Jaime’s life was a relationship with her biological family. She left her husband with her two children and returned to the family that she craved and the love of her biological mother. But, she had unrealistic expectations of that family. She said, “I was looking for Little House on the Prairie. I was always running from something and running toward something at the same time.”

For an extended period of time, Jaime was in a healthy relationship. She had had another child, a son, who was living with her. She told me that the man in her life said he could tell when she was “zoning out.” “He said he could look into my eyes and I was gone,” she told me. She began to use methamphetamine, which to her felt like reality, something so strange to think about now. The man in her life took care of her son as she was unable to do it herself. She was an addict. She became promiscuous and became involved with a bad guy.

Now she was being trafficked, she was an addict and was being held captive by her “boyfriend,” Then her life changed. She was arrested for drug trafficking. As the arrest was happening she said that she felt relief, the relief of finally getting away from that relationship.

To Be Continued…

Jaime’s story was featured in a short documentary you can view here.

For more information on DID, click here.

Is Gray Hair Better?

June 17, 2018

I often read about women deciding to stop coloring their hair and letting it grow out naturally: there are even Facebook pages dedicated to it. They have decided to take the plunge. And, I know so many women who look fantastic in their gray/white hair. They say they feel liberated, that they feel free. Hooray! They are standing up to the evil hair dye companies and I say yippee for them. But, it seems like we applaud the women who go gray as if by doing so they are more authentic, more real, more attuned to their inner self. Well, that is a bunch of hooey! It is hair color for goodness sakes. A murderer could have gray hair. A thief could have gray hair. How does that make them better, and more importantly, how does that make me, a hair color enthusiast, less in touch with myself?

I get that it might be a nice change, not to have to sit in the chair at the salon for an hour waiting to process. Congratulations! And, it might be freeing to feel like everyone now sees you as you were meant to be seen. But come on! Letting your gray shine through doesn’t make you Mother Teresa. It doesn’t mean you are a better woman than the one sitting next to you who is all colored up. Having your gray show doesn’t make you more in touch with your inner self, it doesn’t mean that you are mentally dealing with your age in a positive way better than those of us who color our locks. It means that you just stopped getting your hair dyed. It’s like not getting your nails done. Big deal!

I have been feeling like a little bit of a phony because I bought into all that, “Look at me. I am so secure with myself that I don’t cover my gray hair anymore.” You are not embracing your age any more than I am, with my gray covered. For all I know, the same women who are striking a blow for the women’s movement by going gray may be at the plastic surgeon’s office getting their faces filled to erase the lines.

This is all I am saying: I color my hair and I don’t think that makes me less authentic than the next woman. It doesn’t make me less empowered. It makes me a woman with brown hair. Will I be turned down for the next March on Washington because of my highlights? I hope not. What I want us to all see is that every woman is part of the story. “I take pride in who I am and I color my hair.” There, I said it. It feels good to get that off my chest and out in the open. Now that is freeing.

When I decide to stop coloring my hair, I will. But until that time I don’t want to feel like I am ashamed of my age. I am just meeting it at the shampoo bowl!

Don’t Act Your Age!

June 3, 2018

My oldest son is 6’3″. He is all legs and when I walk with him in Chicago, where he lives, I am always behind him. I actually have to start skipping to catch up. And one day it hit me that I used to be the one who walked faster than everyone else. He inherited his long legs from me and I used to walk with purpose and at a good clip. Well, I don’t like being The slow poke. I have slowed down a little and I don’t like it one bit. While I embrace my age, I don’t want to be the slowest person in the bunch: that makes me feel old. So, I am purposefully changing that slow walk. Slow is not who I am.

Some of My Friends are Slowing Down

I have friends who seem to have given up. They are kind of coasting through life: not old enough to sit at home and watch reruns of The Price is Right and not working full time any longer. They are moving at a slower pace and it feels as though they are not taking advantage of this great time in our lives. This is the time when we are still able to do most things physically and we have the time to do them. We have the ability to think clearly, for the most part, and we have lives that we might have envied several years ago.

So I do not get the mindset of settling in for the next thirty years. I am filled with anxiety over not having enough time to do everything that I want to do and that thought keeps me awake in the middle of the night sometimes. I know it is crazy I am so anxious to get going on new projects and new opportunities that I honestly can’t sleep.

Be Active While You Can

I was talking with one of my doctors one day not long ago and he was getting ready to have some back surgery. He told me that he and his wife are physically active and that he wants to get his back repaired so he can still do most of the things he loves before his age prevents him from doing it. I couldn’t agree more. With no knowledge of what tomorrow will bring you have to do the things you love now, not coast through one-third of your life. Think about that, one third of your life might be ahead of you. When you hear that stat I hope it gets you motivated to get busy. Be active, volunteer in your community, ride your bike: whatever it is that gets you excited.

And by all means, do not act your age. Act the age you feel inside. Act the age of a woman who has so much life left in her that she can’t take time to play solitaire. You will be amazed at how much fun you can have when you fill your day with activities that you love. Or go back to work doing something that you always wished you could do. Or, retire and go to Europe, just as you had always planned. Keep yourself busy and full of life and others will start to see you as the age you feel as well. They will know you as a person who brings something interesting to the table rather than someone who sits on the sidelines waiting for the game to start. Be the game!

Tell me what you are doing to not act your age. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Embracing Change