Self Discovery
This has absolutely nothing to do with being over sixty or single or any of the usual topics that you read here on Starting Over at Sixty. But I had such an interesting conversation with some women this past week that I just wanted to share it with you.
I volunteer at a women’s prison near me several times throughout the year. The women I visit are in a recovery program and together we sing and share and get to know each other a little. It is an awesome experience.
Last week we worked together on a service project and we had lots of time to chat while we were crafting. We started a light-hearted conversation about things you learn in prison. I told the ladies that I was going to write about it for my blog, and they were so excited.
As single women over fifty, many of us are living lives that haven’t exactly worked out the way we expected. I planned to be married forever. Didn’t happen and I can feel very sorry for myself at times. But now, when I’m right in the middle of a pity party, I am thinking of my friends inside the prison walls and I am zipping it!
Here are the lessons that I learned about prison and prison life that I want to carry with me in my back pocket when I am getting ready to melt down over something small.
Have Patience
The ladies told me that the most important lesson they learned right away is to wait. Women in prison have nothing but time and they learn to wait for everything. Nothing moves quickly in prison. And while they wait, they have nothing to do: no cell phone, no tablet, no book or magazine. They can’t watch TV while they wait or go take a nap or throw in a load of laundry. They just wait. When you are in prison you just have to get used to waiting. I am going to use this lesson during my road rage sessions!
Be Resourceful
There isn’t much to work with in prison. I hear a lot about women making do, like using body wash and water in a spray bottle to come up with “fragrance.” Or using oats and some seasoning to make “veggie burgers.” You would be amazed at what they can do. I have even heard of Jolly Ranchers being used to make hair gel! Our service project last week was to make “bouquets” of tissue paper flowers for Mother’s Day. They were beautiful! You would not believe what they can do with very little. And, they waste nothing: they come up with a use for everything they have access to.
Hoard the Good Stuff
We were laughing about the fact that while they do so much with so little, if they do get something that they are excited about, they hold on to it with all their might! They use every last drop and they use it sparingly. Nothing more to say about that except that we were drooling over the hot pink tissue paper at the table next to us! We knew they would never part with any of that.
Needs vs. Wants
This was a good one. These women say they now know rthe difference between a need and a want. We laughed a lot about that! Most things that we say we need, are, of course, wants. As if I need a Starbucks before I get going. It sounds pretty silly when I say it now.
So, what’s the takeaway from this? How can we use these little nuggets in our everyday lives? I am going to talk about that next week in my post. But, for now, think about how these lessons from prison can be incorporated into your own lives and what they mean to you.
Read MoreAre you living the life you envisioned? I bet most of you are shaking your heads about now and saying to yourself, “No, I am not.” I have to say, I’ve been so focused on the fact that being single wasn’t part of the plan, that I didn’t realize that I am actually closer to my vision than I have ever been in my life.
I am single. I didn’t expect to be single, although that thought seems ridiculous now. But, I always saw myself as the married mother of three for the rest of my life. That didn’t happen, so my happiness was over. I had failed. I saw my divorce as the tent pole for everything, rather than one piece of the puzzle.
Recently, I’ve been evaluating my life and what’s missing and how I can make it better and the truth is this: the only thing missing in my life is that marriage. And, it was a terrible marriage. It wasn’t happy, it wasn’t healthy, it was not right for me. I have been so mad at myself for not picking the right guy, for not making it work with that guy, for not being able to hold on to that marriage no matter what, for failing at marriage. It is time to stop.
The only opinions that matter to me about all of that are my children’s and they don’t see a failure. They actually see a woman who was able to take all of that and reboot.
I am actually the closest I have ever been to living the life I envisioned. There is one piece missing, but that one piece isn’t everything. I am not married to the father of my children. That’s all. But I have a great life, I love my life. It actually looks like a life that I could have envisioned all those years ago, with a couple of exceptions. I am proud of it.
So again, I ask you, are you living the life you envisioned? What’s missing from it and are you letting one missing link takeover your wellbeing? Re-evaluate where you are, where you want to be and I feel certain that you will be closer than you think to your dream.
Read MoreI have been picking up a few old hobbies that I used to enjoy, but have somehow left my life. A little sewing, a little knitting, you know, just those things that used to bring me some joy. So I wondered what made me stop doing the things that I loved in the first place? Well, I can’t blame this on anybody but myself, but I have learned that being yourself is everything.
So many of the things I loved to do, were not of any interest to my husband. He didn’t care if I made the pillow shams or the baby bumper. I played the guitar a tiny bit, that was a big yawn to him. I can name so many things that slowly drifted out of my life because they weren’t valued by my husband, and in the name of compromise, I just stopped doing them. My focus began to lean more toward the things that I thought would make him like me better, and we all know how that went.
I remember being very tired in my marriage, I was always tired. It’s no wonder! I was so busy trying to be someone, anyone, that my husband would like. And, of course, nothing I did was going to make that happen. I wasn’t who my husband wanted simply because I was his wife: that made me the lowest person on his priority list. He already had me.
Now, I might be the only one who values me and my interests but, so what. Now I sing out loud at home. I can play the guitar anytime I want, badly I might add. I bought a couple of patterns to sew for my grandson and I am knitting him a sweater. Value that!
But, the best part of being myself and doing those things that I love is that I’m not tired anymore. It’s true, I wake up refreshed and alive and looking forward to the day. I look forward to doing the things that I like and not having to do the things that I pretended to like. You won’t find a Sport Illustrated here!
The moral of the story is this: not being yourself is exhausting. It zaps you of the energy you could be spending on something way more fun. Don’t let this happen to you. Do what you love, no matter what it is.
Read MoreIt’s been a long time in the making, but what you are looking at is the new and much-improved startingoveratsixty.com. Everything that you like about the site is still here (weekly blog posts and all the past posts are here for you to read anytime). But, there are more options now:
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Read MoreAs single women, we know the importance of friendship. For many of us, our friendships are our primary relationships: we have family and we have friends. That’s it, that’s everything. So, it’s important to be a good friend. But recently I was faced with the fact that I hadn’t been as good a friend as I could have been to a couple of my besties and it made me mad at myself.
For the last 3 to 5 years I was the one who was dealing with something: I was moving out, I was leaving my husband, I was waiting for the divorce to become final, I was moving into my own place. Me, me, me. Honestly, I have never been this interesting in my life! But, what happened was that I became the topic, always, and I got used to it. I got used to feeling like my life was way worse than any of my friends. I was the story, not them, and I became indifferent to what was going on in their lives. I hate to even admit it.
Recently it came to my attention that plenty of my friends were going through transitions, too, and I had stopped being sensitive to that. I had become so used to being the one, the one who needed support. The one who needed a shoulder to cry on. The one who was putting on a brave face through this tough time in her life. That became my identity and my story. And, really, I am sick of being that woman.
So, friends of Paula, look out. I am putting all my effort into being the friend who I haven’t been over the last few years. I am at the other end of the phone just waiting to hear from you. Wait, I’m not waiting for you to call, I am calling you. I want you to get yourselves all worked up about something so I can talk you down. Just kidding.
I am not kidding about being a good friend, though. I want to get better at it and I want you to get better at it, too. As single women, our friendships are everything and those relationships need to be nurtured constantly. Our friendships are not static, but a dynamic, living piece of our lives that we want to remain solid as we change and age.
I hope this spurs you on to think about your friendships and what kind of friend you are. The good news is that you can change how you are as a friend at any time, so give yourself an assessment and if you need to, do better. Just be a better friend.
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