From the moment we become aware, women are taught how to be. We are limited by the world around us, a world that is hostile to the wild woman who lives inside of us. We are told to smooth the edges, hide the seams, follow the rules, act like a lady, and do what we’re told. This helps to dissipate the threat from the wild woman. She’s dangerous, because she defies the social norms.
Even the “rule breakers” police us from their own limited constructs. “Conform to our version of nonconformity! You’re not nonconforming properly!”
We are sent an endless stream of contradictory messages that reinforce the lie that we are not good enough no matter what we choose. The drip, drip, drip wears away at that wild woman, taming her into submission.
Here’s a secret: The world may construct the cage, but we lock ourselves inside and hide the key.
This wild woman has had enough. She’s setting herself free.
Every aspect of how I live my life and move through the world belongs to me. I don’t owe anyone an excuse or an explanation. I don’t owe anyone anything at all. I am tired of being policed. In fact, I soundly reject it. I am also tired of policing. It’s not my place to tell other people what to think, do, say, wear, feel, believe. It’s not my place to tell other people what to think about me. If the world finds me three notches too loud and five notches too sparkly, that’s a judgment. It is only truth if I accept it.
My wild woman is fully unfettered. She will do as she pleases and she does not care if it pleases you. She will wear what she pleases, think what she pleases, and say what she pleases. She will vote as she pleases, love whom she pleases, and live as she pleases. She will age as she pleases. She does not require your approval.
Mrs. Potter Regrets
I posed a question on Facebook today: “Is there anything in your past you’d like to do over if it were possible to go back and make a different choice?” I asked because there is something I would most definitely like to do over, but since this is not a possibility, I’m working extra hard every day to keep marching forward. Some days are easier than others. Some days I feel as if I’m swimming in concrete.
It is my belief that a life lived fully is bound to contain at least a few regrets. Life is, after all, a series of choices, consequences, and reactions to the consequences of our choices.
Some folks in my thread handed the power over to the Divine, claiming that everything that has happened in their lives was “God’s plan.” My sincere apologies if this offends, but I don’t believe that’s true. If it were all destiny, I’d feel like tossing the towel in today. If there is no free will, we would never need to make any choices at all. If it’s all part of someone else’s plan, we are no longer responsible for any of our choices. In fact, that pesky thing called free will was the problem from the start, wasn’t it? We must choose—that’s part of the deal.
“Well, officer, I do realize that the car was speeding. Yes, I also know that it ran over several pedestrians, but, you see, I handed the wheel to Jesus. He’s a terrible driver, but a top-notch Messiah. So, if you don’t mind, you can make that ticket out to Jesus Christ and I’ll be on my way.”
We can’t live our lives playing the “would have, could have, should have” game. We can, however, learn and grow from the consequences of our choices. Life offers us lessons and opportunities for growth, grace, and forgiveness. We can feel remorse and take ownership of the choices that may have led to pain for others. We can learn to trust that still, quiet voice inside that is almost always pointing true north. To take responsibility for the consequences of your choices is a powerful thing and a sobering thing. We can, if we CHOOSE, make different choices with richer and more rewarding consequences. In that sense, what we choose, no matter what the consequences, offers us the same lesson—the opportunity to practice unconditional love.
Is it so wrong to want to learn that lesson with a little less collateral damage?
Does Mrs. Potter regret? Yes, she does regret a few things. She regrets the things left unspoken, and the things spoken in anger or sadness. She regrets a handful of questionable choices and the manner in which they negatively affected people she loves. She regrets the moments she was not present enough, compassionate enough, or thoughtful enough. It’s likely that when it’s all said and done, there will be a few more.
Top ten Things about Which I No Longer Care
1. The Kardashians.
2. Tampons.
3. What other people think about me.
4. Being pretty.
5. Arguing with people on social media.
6. Making the grade.
7. Making myself smaller to make other people happy.
8. Aging gracefully.
9. What’s in and what’s out.
10. People telling me to smile.
Ten Things about Which I Currently Care
1. The future of the world.
2. Comfortable shoes.
3. What I think about myself.
4. Being interested and engaged.
5. Making meaningful connections with nice people.
6. Breaking the rules.
7. Making myself happy.
8. Aging disgracefully.
9. What’s real.
10. Surrounding myself with people who inspire me to smile.
I was at QVC a few years back, being fitted for my microphone before going on air. A man stopped to compliment me on my dress. I started the “Oh this old thing? It’s godawful, blah, blah, blah” thing that women do. He smiled and laughed. Then he asked me why it was that women simply cannot accept a compliment without a long-winded list of reasons they don’t deserve one?
I have pondered this ever since. It’s a very good question. People give us compliments because they genuinely mean them and they want to make us feel good. If we can’t graciously accept them, we deprive them of that opportunity. Is it really that tough to wrap our minds around the simple fact that someone finds us attractive, smart, funny, interesting, or worthy of praise?
After that illuminating moment, I broke out of my habit of immediately responding to a compliment with a self-effacing witticism. I shut off the voice inside of me that told me I was unworthy of compliments. Now I breathe them in and feel worthy. Because I am. Worthy. You are worthy. We all are. I love me! What was I thinking?! Whenever I instinctively blurt out something along the lines of “I’m so imperfect they need to invent a new word for it” or “I got this dress on the sale rack. It has a stain on it,” I try to regroup and follow that with a simple “Thank you for the lovely compliment.”
Sometimes the hardest thing we do in life is to accept that we deserve happiness. We’re our own worst enemies. You like me? Me?! Are you freaking kidding? I’m such a dork. You must be a real asshole for liking me. What the hell is wrong with you?! Why don’t you go and like someone else?
Until we open our hearts to love, we will never really be able to receive it. If we are unable to receive it, we will be unable to fully love anyone else. Yes, you deserve to be loved. So, start acting like you deserve it, Sweet Cheeks, or soon the compliments are going to dry up like your post-menopausal vagina.
Here’s a little dime-store guru advice, for what it’s worth. Stand in front of your mirror every morning and pay yourself a sincere compliment. Like “Shazam! You are one hot tamale!” or “Hubba, hubba that’s a seriously sassy caboose you’ve got there” or “Hey, nice blouse. That’s a good color for you.”
You get the picture.
I am sending all of you a compliment today. I think you’re the bee’s knees.
Now please don’t tell me about your knee surgery.
Write a New Story
There was a commercial for an antidepressant medication a while back that featured a black cloud on a string that followed a sad person around. My daughter dubbed it “the depression turd.” I loved that! Depression is less of a cloud, and more of an incredibly stinky turd that leaves its stench on everyone and everything, and follows us wherever we go. The more we drag it around, the bigger and smellier it becomes.
You don’t have to define yourself by your old stories. You can choose to write a different one: This happened to me then, but this is what I am choosing now. Why keep dragging a turd around? You can flush that crap any time you like.
The world is filled with horror. People survive and endure things most of us cannot imagine surviving. We can’t ignore these things, but we don’t have to focus on them. They can remain in the past, or we can drag them into our present. Every day we make that choice. No matter what we’ve endured, we can rise above it. We have choices! Happy people aren’t in denial of sorrow; they’ve just opted not to get stuck in it. The truth is, we define our experience of life. Our reality is shaped by our perception and the choices we make.
When you start to feel yourself getting dragged into negativity, breathe deeply, take a moment, and ask yourself, “How is this serving me—or anyone else? Is what I am about to do or say contributing to the greater good?” You are allowed to walk away from negativity. You can remove yourself from people who continuously seek to dull your sparkle. You don’t owe them anything at all. You can walk off their set. You don’t have to be in their movie. You have the power to write your own story: You can choose an adventure or a mystery, a romance or a thriller, a comedy or a tragedy. And you can, if you so choose, write your own happy ending.
Carpe Gaudium
This New Year we rented a little apartment on the River Liffey in the Temple Bar District in Dublin, Ireland. My husband, my daughter, and I spent a week exploring the city together. Now that our daughter is away at college, our trio has become a duet. With the amount of travel my husband does for work, the duet is often a solo act. It was nice to get the old band together again and take the show on the road.
A place called Ink Factory was right next to the entrance to our apartment. It’s a tattoo and piercing parlor, barber shop, and coffee purveyor. I’m not even remotely cool enough to hang out there, but they were very welcoming and kind enough to pretend they didn’t notice. I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo for years. My husband has several. Many of my friends have wildly colorful tattoos running up both arms. Way back in my wayward youth, most of my friends had tattoos. I was never able to decide on anything that I wanted emblazoned on my body forever. I decided to wait until I felt moved enough to do it.
Before we left for Dublin, I decided to go into the New Year actively embracing exciting new experiences. As I’m a writer, and I love words, I decided to get a favorite phrase tattooed on the inside of my left wrist in a vintage-style typewriter font. At the age of 55 my skin is not perfectly smooth; therefore, neither is my tattoo. I’m okay with a little wabi-sabi. My new tattoo says Carpe Gaudium. The Latin word carpe literally means “pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather, serve.” The word gaudium means “joy.” Okay, so work with me here, people. Carpe means “seize and serve” and gaudium means “joy.” When we “seize joy” we can also “serve joy,” meaning the act of embracing it for ourselves offers us the opportunity to serve it to others.
What if we seized as much joy as we could carry, as often as possible, and then let it spill out and over and around us to others? How would that inform our experience? How would that shift our perspective?
Seize joy. Share joy. Become happy.
Watch the world shift.
My new tattoo is a reminder, especially at those moments when I lose perspective, that I’m in charge of the journey, the destination, the perspective, and the message I share with others. I choose.
I can, if I so choose, seize joy as often as possible and share that with those I meet along the way.
Carpe gaudium.
Bittersweet
Bittersweet is one of my favorite words.
It’s encapsulates the complexities of being so succinctly.
Most joy has some element of sorrow. It could be the sorrow of what is missing, or the sorrow of what is yet to be, or the sorrow of wanting to share the experience with someone who is not present, or the sorrow of knowing that joy cannot be sustained.
Being in the moment is so difficult because we carry so much into each moment. We carry the burden of what has passed, and we carry the anticipation of what’s to come. This makes being fully engaged and invested in what is happening right now challenging. The moment is all that is real, but moments pass before we can evaluate them. We assign meaning to them in retrospect. We alter them by examining them. Moments are not good or bad, they just are. We view moments through clouded lenses.
As I get older, I find myself reflecting on time: I see the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years of moments past. I know that what lies behind me is greater than what lies ahead of me. My time is decreasing. This gives new moments a deeper resonance, but that’s perspective. The moments to come are no more or less important than the moments that have passed.
I think more often these days about the importance of not wasting moments, yet I waste them anyway. I waste them when I focus on what I don’t have, what I have lost, and what I didn’t say or do. I waste them waiting for invitation, illumination, affirmation. This is frivolous. My life is a nanosecond in eternity. Most of what I find happy or sad or meaningful is meaningless in the face of infinity.
I know this. Yet, here I am, breathing in, breathing out. Feeling all the feelings. Stretching toward infinity. Aching for meaning. Seeking the purity of the unfettered moment. Feeling the complexity of being alive.
Bittersweet—both pleasant and painful.
Yes, this.
“Age Is Just a Number” and Other Stupid Things People Say about Getting Old
• AGE IS JUST A NUMBER. Sometimes it’s a really big number. When the number gets too big, you can’t fit all the candles on your birthday cake without having a fire safety professional on call. This adds the perfect touch of danger to the occasion.
• I’M OLDER AND I KNOW BETTER. Do you, though? I know a lot of older people. I can attest to the fact that many of them don’t know better, as evidenced by how many of them voted for Donald Trump.
• SHE’S NO SPRING CHICKEN. I live on a farm. Spring chickens are overrated. Many of them don’t make it to summer. Winter chickens are survivors. I propose we create a new saying, “She’s a winter chicken—what a plucky broad!”
• FIFTY IS THE NEW 30. No, it’s not. It’s 50. Brown is also not the new black. It’s brown.
• YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE YOUNG. See “Fifty is the new 30.”
• YOU’RE TOO OLD TO WEAR THAT. I will wear what pleases me and you can mind your own damn business.
• SEX, AT YOUR AGE? Is that an offer or an inquiry? Yes, to both. Thanks!
• OLD PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGY, RIGHT? Would you like my reply via tweet, text, snap, FB post, GIF, meme, email, instant message, or the classic no-tech middle finger?
• ACT YOUR AGE. I never have before, why would I start now?
• IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO LIVE YOUR DREAMS. Unless your dream is to be 15, in which case once you turn 16, you’re screwed.
Everyday Magic
This morning something magical happened. You may not think it was magical. On the surface, it’s perhaps even prosaic. Still, I’m a believer in everyday magic.
When we moved this past summer, I misplaced my favorite necklace. After months of searching, I thought for sure it was gone for good. Then this morning, I opened the cabinet that I open about a hundred times a day and saw a red organza bag. I felt compelled to reach in, pick up the bag, and open it. Inside of the bag was a carved quartz cabochon we’ve had for many years, two big-faceted Swarovski sew-on stones, one tiny blue ceramic tile, a few unused metal stamping blanks . . . and my missing necklace.
Why today? Why after months and months of digging through boxes, bags, bins, and drawers would this necklace finally show up? Was it always there? How did I miss it?
Just a few days ago, I stood in the same room and said to my husband, “Why is it the things we don’t care about never seem to get lost? We stumble upon them over and over again in drawers and boxes and wonder why we still have them. Yet, the things that do matter disappear?”
I used to joke that when you die, you get a box. Inside of the box are all the things you lost while you were alive. The box would be filled with keys, jewelry, single socks, tickets, and papers that seemed to have so much resonance when you were frantically looking for them . . . random things that would have no resonance at all once you were dead. This box would show you how absurd and pointless it was to have been so concerned about those things.
As I let go of things that are weighing me down and holding me back, I make room for experiences that will lift me up and propel me forward. I feel lighter and more flexible. Still, there are a scant few things that I am not ready to release into the great cosmic dustbin. So, thank you, elf or fairy or sprite or whomever it was who put my favorite necklace back in my path this morning. I’m a believer in everyday magic.
Wrinkle, wrinkle, little scar,
How I wonder why you are.
Up above my furrowed brow,
Framed around my smiling mouth.
So many tales you have to tell,
Of love, and loss, and life lived well.
Wrinkle, Wrinkle, Little Scar,
How I wonder that you are.
The Unbearable Lightness of Letting Go
As time passes, I find my focus shifting away from the physical and toward the ephemeral. I find myself less worried about my wrinkles and more concerned with my legacy. What footprint will I leave behind, if any? Either way, does it matter?
If I do leave a footprint, I sure as hell hope it’s deeper than Instagram selfies or Pinterest-friendly DIY ideas.
Perhaps this is what happens as our “beauty fades,” because it does, regardless of futile attempts to prevent it from fading. Unless you’re Christie Brinkley, in which case, I’ll have whatever the hell she’s having— Or not, because there is something powerful about losing the desire to please other people. It’s kind of delightful not having to be pretty anymore. It’s freeing. It’s transformative.
It’s also a huge money saver. Magical skin creams are fucking expensive.
I am also less interested in owning stuff. Don’t get me wrong: I still like stuff, but I’m less inclined to drag it home and put it on a shelf. I can appreciate it without needing to possess it. Even though I keep de-stashing, there is still so much stuff left. I worry about other people having to deal with the stuff I might leave behind. I want to be lighter, freer, less weighed down. I don’t want my legacy to be a hoard of glitter tubes or a bin full of shoes.
I find petty grievances and small slights less worthy of my attention. I’m less inclined to care if people agree with me. My worldview is not defined by how many likes or shares it generates. My positions are more flexible and less dependent on their alignment with the status quo. I am less inclined to demand that others share my worldview, and more inclined to agree to disagree.
Neither preaching to the choir nor arguing with fools are worthy endeavors. Better to join the choir in a joyful noise and leave the fools to argue among themselves.
As time passes, I find that my sense of self-importance diminishes. I realize that my life is just a tiny, almost imperceptible blip on the grand cosmic radar, and I’m learning to embrace that. I take myself less seriously. The need to be right fades in importance. I appreciate the tragi-comical absurdity of day-to-day life.
The more I let go, the more space I make for love to move in and expand. I am lighter and lighter. My ego shrinks as my heart grows. The word I becomes less powerful than the word we. The importance of civic duty increases. The stewardship of the planet means more than the stewardship of stuff. The fight to protect kindness, joy, truth, freedom, and equality becomes far more urgent than the desire to protect myself.
The unbearable lightness of letting go becomes more bearable with each release. As I inch toward the finish line, I hope to arrive free of attachment and filled with so much love that I expand into the great cosmic is-ness and lose my “self” in it forever.
I did hedge my bets by writing this book, which may or may not make it past the first printing. Ah, the irony is rich.