Friendship
If you are starting over and feeling lonely, just remember that you can make new friends at any age. If you think that sounds like work, it is. But, it’s necessary and worthwhile. One thing I realized when I was starting over was that as much as I loved my friends, most of them were married. I was married. We were all married together. And as much as I love them and they are still a huge part of my life, they had a life at home. I did not. We went out together (I am a lucky girl. Most of my friends seem to not mind having me tag along.) and then they went home together and had a family life. My life is not like that anymore.
It wasn’t very long until I figured out that I had to attack this loneliness head-on. Sitting at home crying myself to sleep had to stop. No one was going to find me in my apartment: that’s like sitting in a movie theater waiting to be discovered! So, I found some ways to get to know new people, people who were not part of my past. They know me as I am now. If you need help with loneliness try these tips.
Volunteer
Whether it is faith-based or through your community or is directed where you work, get yourself into some volunteer activity. Not only are you doing something good-hearted, which makes you feel better automatically, you make friends with the people on either side of you. You are working together. You already have something in common, you like to help others. If it is a recurring activity, you will naturally bond with your fellow volunteers and coffee or a glass of wine can’t be far behind. Everyone has a passion for something philanthropic, so get engaged in it and see what happens. You will reap such benefits: you will feel good about what you have accomplished, you will meet new friends, you will fill some time if you are feeling like you have too much isolated time in your new life, and you will let a few more people in the world know that you are single and looking for other opportunities to meet new friends. And, best of all, you spend some time not thinking about yourself, which is an unavoidable byproduct of the turmoil in your life. Bingo!
Take a Class
Want to learn something new? Then, learn it! For me, it’s knitting. I like to knit. I like to take knitting classes. When I take a class I am usually with women around my age so those are new friends. We talk while we knit, so we get to know each other. If we enjoy each other’s company we might get a cup of tea afterward. You may be thinking that you would like to meet some men as well. Take a class that offers you that opportunity. Any class, or training, allows you to improve yourself and make some new acquaintances, male or female, at the same time. You can even plan to take another class together, to keep the friendship going.
I love spending time with young people. And, taking a class at a local university or community college allows you to do that, again, while bettering yourself. I am a lifelong Spanish class taker: I have taken so many Spanish classes without seeming to learn a word of Spanish, but I keep trying and I have met some lovely young people in the process.
Become a Regular
OK, I’m sure that this will not sit well with some of you but just keep reading and I think you will stop judging me! When I left my big fancy home and moved to a one-room loft space downtown I had some bleak evenings. I could walk into my place at 5:00 and not talk to another soul until the next day. Once I walked Red, my cute dog, we were done for the night. Horrible. So, I walked myself down to one of the restaurants on my block and sat down at the bar. I introduced my self to the bartender, Tony, who was the Thursday night bartender. I told him I was new to the neighborhood and that was all I had to do. He introduced me to a couple of guys who were super connected around my area and they helped me know about the neighborhood organization that meets monthly. I ran into a couple who I had known in my previous life and they invited me to a party. Needless to say, I went to that restaurant every Thursday night and still do. I did the same thing at another place near me and had the same results. And, it can be a neighborhood coffee shop: it doesn’t have to be a bar. Just a place where you can walk in and introduce yourself and let people know that you are there and want to be social. Is it hard to walk into a bar and sit down by yourself? Absolutely. But without having done that, I would still be sitting in my apartment watching Wheel with Red.
Meetups
If you don’t know about meetups, here you go https://www.meetup.com. There is a meetup in every city around the world about any topic that you can imagine. They are held at restaurants and coffee shops and are groups of people who have similar interests. It is exactly what it sounds like, you meet up and discuss the topic of choice. So, there is a knitting meetup. There is a Spanish meetup that I want to attend but am too afraid since I have learned virtually no Spanish! There is a running meetup. There is a social media meetup. There is a French meetup. There is a wine enthusiast’s meetup. There is a parenting meetup. You name it, there is a meetup for it.
Please don’t think that I am being flip about loneliness. I did all of these things and I was still lonely after my marriage broke up. Years lonely. Still sometimes lonely. But, you must be proactive and you must do the work that it takes to get yourself back on your feet. Try just one of these tips and you will be amazed at how you will feel. And, if you have some tried and true methods of beating loneliness, please let me know in the comments. If you know someone who might benefit from these tips, please share with her.
Read MoreWhenever I have a long day, especially when I am traveling, I feel like my outfit always includes a piece by Eileen Fisher. Of course, it is black (sorry, just the way it is with me). Maybe with lighter pants if I am going wild! It is comfortable, easy care most of the time, and I can just hang it up while I take a shower to get the few wrinkles to steam out. So, today I have everything from a gyno appointment to a taping of the national anthem with Harmony Project, then meeting a friend for drinks. My tunic, which is sheer at the bottom so I don’t look like I am wearing a tent, will look great all day, even if I spill a marg on it! If Red hadn’t jumped in the photo, you would actually be able to see how good it looks, but he just wouldn’t leave me alone so, a star is born. This tunic is still shown on their website as available so check it out. It is one of my faves!
Read MoreA colleague introduced me to a young woman who needed some help or advice for her vision of an organization dedicated to helping women 18-34 get a leg up, get themselves moving in a positive direction. I was happy to do it, and when we met for a cup of coffee I was reminded how much enthusiasm can come out of one person: like a puppy wagging its tail so hard it falls over (I mean that in the most positive way). She was excited, she had events planned, she wanted to do something good. Just do good for these young women. She is driven, and maybe just lacks some direction and organizational skills to get herself going. So we talked for a while and I asked if she has an elevator pitch: a sentence or two or three that would tell the story of her organization to someone she might meet in an elevator. When she said she had never heard of that before, I told her to start there. I know she will do it and I will feel like I was able to help another lady out.
For some of you, an elevator pitch is a well-known phrase, for others, you’ve never heard the term. It doesn’t matter. The point is that I knew something that she didn’t and I was able to give her that little nugget to get her focused. Easy, right? Yes, it was and is easy. That is what I want to share today: that all of us women of a certain age have tons to offer other women and this is the year to get all that knowledge out there.
I think that we will look back at 2018 as the Year of the Woman. The movement got started with the Women’s March in January 2017, which led to additional activism along the way. Add to that the #MeToo movement and by the end of 2017, women were poised with a strength that I am not sure I have witnessed. It wasn’t some women, it was all women. And now, it isn’t just women, and I think that makes an enormous difference. Once evolved men began to see what women had been up against for so many years, they too started to take action and got onboard. Make no mistake about it, if you are a politician you know without appealing to women and women’s issues in your next election, you are going to have a very difficult time getting elected.
So where am I going with this? Here it is: this is our time and we are not passed our prime. We are necessary to the women’s movement. We women 50+ may have felt a little invisible from time to time, but no longer. It is not only our privilege it is our duty to help other women get to the top of their game, whatever that is. It is our obligation to help other women who are struggling financially. Helping is what we women do and we should be doing it for other women as much as we can. Let’s focus on supporting other women and watch what happens. I know it will be amazing what comes of us working together.
I plan on continuing the discussion about how we women can help one another over the course of the year. I hope you will contribute to that discussion with ideas and what you see working in your community. This week, think about what you can do to Help Another Lady Out. FYI, my original title for this article was Help Another Girl, but #HAG was more than I could stand!
Read MoreI know you have all heard the saying that holding on to anger is like trying to kill your husband by drinking poison yourself; well it is something like that. Last week I received a phone call from a woman who just began to spew anger, not at me, but on me. I was having a perfectly great day and in 20 minutes I was a puddle on the floor. I was a wreck. It was as if I had stepped into quicksand. My mind was transported back to the terrible years I spent living with heartache and anger before I left my marriage. I actually began to sweat, physically sweat, while she was talking to me. I understood her pain, but I didn’t want to be part of that world any longer, and just hearing about it made me so sad. I thought to myself, “how did this just happen? How did I go from happy and looking forward to the weekend, to a red-faced woman with tears and snot running down my face?” I know you can’t make yourself let go of past issues, that happens in its own time. But, you can give yourself some guidelines, or rules, to follow that will help you have more good days than bad. When you are armed with your own “blueprint” of who and what you want in your life you are released from so much of the bad.
My Blueprint
My rules, the ones that I try to live by, are pretty simple. I have learned that if I am dreading seeing someone, whatever the reason, it’s time to give that relationship another look. It may not be a friendship that is worth keeping. Of course, if it’s a relative, there is no getting out of it, good luck with that. But you can move friends who constantly bring you down to a lower “importance” tier on your imaginary chart. If you feel guilty about that, don’t. It puts you in a bad mood and why would you let someone do that to you? You are doing it to yourself!
A more serious matter is betrayal. If I feel that someone has betrayed me, and there are lots of levels of betrayal, I’m most likely out. Once that trust is broken I am probably never going to get it back. I’m just not. Whether it is a friend, spouse or co-worker, we are done. Remember, these are the rules that I follow, and they don’t have to be your rules. One thing about being older is that I know myself and what works for me. I thought I could bring my marriage back from the dead once, but looking back, there was no way. I was sleeping with the enemy, literally. I wasted fifteen years trying to figure out how to like my husband when the answer was right in front of me: I was never going to like him again. Sadly, betrayal won that battle.
That is my blueprint, but it doesn’t have to be yours. You may be a person who is able to work through betrayal and that is great for you. Or you don’t want to sever a relationship that isn’t working, whatever the reason. That’s OK.
Forgive and Move Forward
No matter what rules you live by in the friendship/relationship piece of your life, start to notice how you feel when you are with certain people. Are you excited? That’s perfect. Are you clenching your teeth? You might want to re-think that one. And, what about forgive and forget? Forgiveness is a wonderful quality and one we should all practice. But, forgetting is a mistake in my book. One thing we old girls have is experience, and to forget what we have experienced would be to erase our past. I say, forgive and move forward. You should take what you know and put it in your back pocket for the journey ahead.
Grow Younger
Are you still wondering where the grow younger part is? Well, people tell me all the time now how great I look, and I know they aren’t talking about my body! They are talking about my face: I knocked ten years off my face by leaving a bad situation. I can even see it in the mirror, so I know they aren’t blowing smoke up my bottom. Letting go of the muck that I was living in has actually made me look younger, something all the botox and fillers in the world couldn’t do. I promise if you let go of some of the things that are on a reel in your mind running over and over you will look, and feel, younger, too. Take a look at the photo of me above and the photos on the site that were taken more recently. Wow!
Read MoreHaving been in a bad marriage for more than thirty years, I thought I was the biggest loser on the planet. I was certainly not attractive and was unappealing. I was overweight. I was not good at making money. I wasn’t sexy at all and actually had zero sex appeal. I spent too much money. I was the b-word.
Well, guess what I have learned about myself in the last three years since I left my husband: there’s nothing wrong with me after all! That’s right, there is nothing wrong with me. I have a feeling that if you are reading this article, there is nothing wrong with you either. Amazing, right? It took me a long time to get here, though. After years of being beaten up, figuratively, when I left my husband and moved into a one-room loft, I was what I refer to as a hot mess. I was truly broken, and I thought I was all used up. Like I was unlovable, like I had grown thorns on my body. I had definitely built a wall around me to protect myself from the unhappy life that I lead with my husband. I honestly thought that the real me was gone, buried so deep that I wouldn’t get it back.
It took some time, a lot of time, in fact. And, while I worked to be content on the inside, it didn’t hurt when a man paid attention to me, whether as a date or a new friend. It felt good and made me feel like “I’ve still got it.” That is probably the icing on the “new-old Paula.”
Be OK with Yourself First
So, if you are in the position of having to start over, due to divorce or death, follow these steps and you will get it right. First, you need to be OK with yourself. If your life is in transition, this is the best time to take stock of who you are and who you want to be and figure out what changes, if any, need to be made. For me, I was in a business that I despised, and I needed to get out of that no matter what the consequences. I did and it cost me but I did it, because as long as I was trying to be something I was not my life was never going to improve. Getting out of that business allowed me to spend time thinking about what I wanted my life to look like moving forward. It gave me permission to dream. I was out from under a huge boulder.
I started thinking about what I used to like to do, before I met my husband, before I had children and before I was Mrs. Harer. My husband valued popularity: I know it sounds goofy but it is true. So, to make him like me I valued who I was outside myself. I wasn’t happy. I love being a party girl as much as the next person, but that as a constant was not fulfilling. Now I have a great time when I am with people but it does not define me. I knit, I go to the movies alone and I read. I am happy with myself.
When you can find that girl inside who you were many years ago, I think it makes for a more grounded feeling. I know who I am and I know what I like and what I don’t like and I don’t have to change that. How empowering is that?
Then Add in What You Like to Do
When I was first living alone again I joined everything I could in order to meet new people: neighborhood groups, a single women’s social group ( I think I would be more comfortable calling it a gang), a book club, and a couple other meetups. I needed to feel connected. But, after a while, I began to dread some of the meetings and realized that they just weren’t me. I could get to know more new people but I wasn’t enjoying the activities and the people weren’t necessarily a good fit for me. Lesson learned. However, I love singing in a citywide choir and I love volunteering in that choir at the women’s prison near my home. So, I have found out what I like to do and what I can live without and I am making changes in how I spend my time. I don’t want to do what I don’t want to do anymore.
Take the Risk
Now, the hard part. Dating after sixty is horrible. There’s no other way to put it. HORRIBLE! But if having a man in your life is something that you want, and I do like having a man in my life, then you just have to put yourself out there. Here’s how I look at it: I wasn’t going to meet someone by sitting at home and telling myself how gross online dating sites are. They are, it’s true, but they are what is available, so I just had to buck up and get onboard. The point I am making is that whatever method you use to meet a new partner or friend, you have to be proactive. When I was in my twenties I didn’t have to be proactive. Those days are over. And sitting on your couch complaining about how there are no men doesn’t help either.
I have met many frogs. And it’s not like all of them call me back, so I’m a frog too. But, once in a while, I have met a nice guy: he might be a friend or might be more. There are still a few great guys, but I would not have met them without taking the risk, without putting myself out there. So if you want to meet a partner or a friend, put on your big girl pants and get out there.
Going through all these steps have helped me figure out that I am OK exactly as I am, and if you are in the position of having to start over you may need to find out that you are OK just as you are as well. When you do, you will be able to start living life the way you always intended it to be.
What are you doing to find yourself again? What has worked for you and what has not? Can’t wait to hear!
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