Tag Archives: ageism

Resilience is built into our nature.

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Episode 26 – Dare Boldly: No matter your age

When I worked in an adult homeless shelter, people always commented on how it must be a very depressing place to work.

I always replied, “It’s one of the most inspiring places I’ve ever worked.”

Every day I experienced a thousand people awakening in the morning to take another step. Their lives may have been in disarray, they may have lost everything and carried only the heaviness and indignity of the label, ‘homeless’, but they kept going.

That was inspiring.

I learned a lot about resilience at the homeless shelter. I saw it every day. From the young 18-year-old who was determined to finish his high school education to the 60-year-old woman who met her 20-something daughter, whom she hadn’t seen in several years, on the elevator one day. In that one meeting the mother made the decision to get help with her mental health issues so she could move out of the shelter and be a mother that could guide her daughter away from street life.

Resilience was everywhere at the shelter.

I remember Colin. An indigenous man who had left his family and community behind when the load of his past became too much to bear. When we met, Colin had been on the streets for many years and hadn’t seen his adult sons since they were school-aged children. “I want to be a man they’d be proud of,” he told me in the self-esteem-building class I was teaching.

In an environment where being sober was the anomaly, Colin was very proud of his three-month-old sobriety. Determined to see his sons again, he kept taking steps in the right direction.

I was in awe of Colin’s commitment and resilience. Life kept knocking him down and he kept standing back up and moving forward.

Six months after we met, a massive heart attack took away any chance Colin had of meeting his sons again. And though he lost that final battle, he died exactly as the kind of man he told me wanted to be, “A proud man.”

Colin, and so many others I met at the shelter, displayed the characteristics of resilience every day. Courage. Strength. A willingness to face life’s challenges without giving up, and a deep awareness that to take a different path they had to change the things that brought them to the shelter door.

Resilience can come in many forms. There’s physical resilience, mental resilience, emotional resilience, and social resilience.

At the shelter, resilience came wrapped up in a community that held each other up and gave what they could to one another, no matter how little they had. And, it came in the hope and belief tomorrow would be a better day as long as they made it through today, together.

Colin never got to that tomorrow where he met his sons and heard them say, “We’re proud of you, dad”. But, in getting up again and again and continuing to fight for his sobriety, he taught many others the value of holding true to yourself and your dreams.

It is a lesson that continues to inspire me today.

Episode 26 – Resilience week – Dare Boldly: No matter your age

Take the “What’s the Big Deal about Aging?” questionnaire!

I’m really interested in a) writing and talking about aging, and I’m really interested in your feedback so if you don’t mind taking a few moments, I’d love to get your feedback – it’s my very first survey so I’m learning as I go! (in other words, it’s not the best designed survey but it’s my first! 🙂 )

Click HERE for survey (max 5 minutes to respond)

How to be grateful for it all

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After five years of enduring a relationship that almost killed me, freedom tastes so sweet. In the aftermath of being freed from that living hell, when anyone asked me, “How are you?” my first response was, “I’m alive!”

Being alive, after feeling like I was the living dead, and believing (and hoping) the reality of death was waiting just beyond my next breath, being able to say, “I’m alive” and mean it was pure joy.

Sitting here, almost 20 years away from that moment of release, it’s hard to remember how lost and alone, terrified and depressed I was.

What I can and do still feel, is the elation I felt, and still feel, with being alive.

And, while I haven’t quite mastered the art of being grateful for the things he did that brought me to the point of trying to unhook gravity’s hold on my body so I could simply fall into the ocean and be washed out to sea forever, I am grateful for the realization I carry with me today. A realization that came from having walked that path of abuse and self-annihilation so long ago. Life is a precious gift. It asks only that we fall in love with ourselves and all of life moment by precious moment.

There is not one moment of the past that I can change. Regretting that relationship and all the pain and harm it caused those I love is a journey of futility.

In living my realization that life is precious, I fall in love with the woman I was then, and the woman I am today and every day when I hold firmly to my belief in the precious nature of life and celebrate every breath as an act of freedom.

And in that realization, I embrace the deep knowing that I don’t need to be nor become grateful for the things he did. To live in freedom, I only need to live with a grateful heart full of love for this beautiful, fulfilling, love-filled life I live today.

My gratitude I know today is not based on what he did back then. It’s founded in knowing that what he did is nothing compared to what I do, every day, when I embrace everything in my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, with arms, heart, and all my being wide open in gratitude and love.

Long ago, I fell into the trap of believing someone else held the answers to my life and could give me a shortcut to happiness. I am grateful that through that journey, I have learned the truth.

I am 100% accountable for my own happiness. In claiming my responsibility for my life, all of it, I set myself free of regretting things I did and that happened in the past as I say, “Thank you” for the good, the bad and the ugly. IT is all a beautiful gift opening up to the gift of becoming, me.”

And in that gift, I lean, with anticipation and joy, into all life has to teach me on how to live without regret so I can experience the wonder, beauty, and awe of all the world unfolding in its mystery and magic all around me.

Namaste.

Age Matters. So does Gratitude!

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I love rituals.. Ritual activates my gratitude muscles.

This morning, while lying in the bath (one of my favourite morning rituals) I was reflecting on gratitude, and how I have gotten out of the habit of writing my gratitude list every day.

I smiled and shook my head in loving consternation at my humanness – it can be so easy to forget to do the things I know are healthy, healing and nurturing.

As I looked around to see if I’d remembered to put my journal on the little stool beside my bathtub, (and realized I hadn’t) I decided the time to act was now.

No pen. No papaer. Easy peasy. I always have my phone on the counter beside the tub — it controls my music.

Why not download a gratitude app?

Over the weekend I’d been researching gratitude and come across several apps during my search. One that looked interesting and got good reviews is, Gratitude.

Being a ‘when I have an idea I like to get to it!’ kind of gal, I picked up my phone (careful not to drop it in the sudsy water) and checked out the App Store.

Sure enough, Gratitude is the first app to appear in the long list. I did a quick peruse of other apps and decided I’d give it a try.

And so, while I soaked in the warm soothing waters of the bath, I created my first Gratitude List on my phone. In the process, I smiled. And laughed at myself. I mean really Louise – I’m grateful for morning poops? Well that’s not very sophisticated now is it? I let it stand. Some mornings, I am just that – grateful.

The app also has a section for building a vision board.

I checked it out.

And that’s where I came up against the big, bad, ugly, feelings of symbolic annihilation.

The Vision Board section allows you to post photos for different areas of your life that reflect what you are seeking to manifest.

Problem is, of the many, many, many photos for each section — Family, Friends, Health, Travel… etc….. there are relatively few, and I mean few, photos that I can relate to.

As an example, in the ‘success’ section I found a handful of photos out of many, many, many, that depicted an older adult — and they were all the same 3 different men, all in business attire, all white. (add some racial disparity to the mix too!)

I wasn’t deterred – the app does allow you to pull photos from your own phone — and I have lots of those I can include.

But what struck me was how subtle ageism can be – even when the app builders were trying to build an app that would allow people to strengthen their gratitude muscles, they (I’m hoping unintentionally) practiced symbolic annihilation (one of the challenges THIRD ACTion Film Festival is combatting through its amazing line-up of films and events – full disclosure, I sit on their board)..

See, ageism is subtle. I probably would not have noticed it if I hadn’t been scrolling through their photos before realizing I could add my own! It wasn’t until I realized I’d been scrolling and scrolling before finding one or two that fit my ‘mindspace’ that I realized what the issue was.

I’d say –Hey! Anyone want to build an app just for older people? but… that would actually defeat the purpose of this journey into how to age with grace and be grateful for it all.

Because a separate app, just for baby boomers for example, would actually be saying, we’re special and separate from all of you. And we want to keep ourselves that way ’cause you don’t understand!

At least I think that’s what it would say — please share your thoughts! I’d love to know what it says to you.

In the meantime, I’m adding this one to my list of gratitudes this morning – I am grateful for this app that will send me reminders to practice gratitude, and that reminds me, to not think of myself as invisible and powerless. To not sit back and allow synbolic annihilation to erase my presence because I tell myself, there’s nothing I can do, it’s just the way it is. I must use my voice, my words, my actions to stay relevant, present and above all, true to myself, doing the things I believe will create better in this world for all.

In other words, I gotta wear my age like a crown of precious jewels! Shining bright for all the world to see… Age matters! So does Gratitude!

Sparkle. Sparkle. Sparkle!

Namaste.

PS – I’m off to my physio appt this morning. If you’d like to listen to the video, please do come back later and I’ll have posted it!

My worth is not measured by a label

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I AM many things. A wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, friend. Artist, writer, poet, story-teller. I love fiercely, care deeply, act with intention. No matter what my role, no matter how I am in this world, none of who I am is diminished by the label, senior citizen.

Sometimes, we wear a label as if it makes a difference to who we are and how we are in this world. A label is not our identity. It is not a reflection of our worth. It simply is what it is, a label of no value to the quality of our life. It’s only value is it works as a road marker to help us see where we are on the road of life.

A label sometimes serves to put us in a box. Sometimes, we call the box our comfort zone. Our familiar ground. Our ‘special place’.

What if there is no box?

What if we LIVE as if there is no box?

What if we choose to view our lives as limitless fields of possibility that greet us every morning with their invitation to run, wild and free, amongst the wildflowers blowing in the winds of change and opportunity, through the trees whose leaves are unfolding and dropping, unfolding and dropped in a continuous circle of renewal?

What if… There is no box!

It’s been an amazing week of fullsome conversation, sharing and for me, a lot of internal exploration, growth and learning.

Thank you. I am so very grateful for each of you. For this beautiful opportunity to keep growing and becoming more of me.

Have a beautiful, sunny-shiney bright kind of weekend!

Week 2: Episode 1 – Unconscious Bias

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The first time I filmed this morning’s video I unconsciously knew there was something not quite right. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

And then I watched it back and realized — I wasn’t wearing my glasses. Which meant, I was squinting the whole way through it couldn’t really see anything.

A very uncomfortable feeling.

So… I refilmed it with my glasses on.

Felt much more comfortable.

I share this story because having started to use ‘readers’ in my mid 50s, I recently got my first pair of prescription glasses. I had no idea I held an unconscious bias around wearing prescription glasses – the bias has to do with the idea that it’s an admission I’m getting older to need them!

‘Cause here’s the thing. If you have a brain, you have conscious and unconscious biases.

Bias is inherent in our human nature.

Our brains are always seeking feelings of belonging and safety. We believe we’ll be safer in groups of people who look, sound, behave like us. Which leaves us with an unconscious selection process of gravitating towards people… much like us.

When I look at our friends, most of them are white, middle class, have children, have similar interests and lifestyles.

We didn’t set out to create a circle in which we feel like we belong that looks similar to us. We naturally gravitated toward people who reflect ‘us’ and our life circumstances. (Selection bias)

While the many types of biases have a detrimental impact to varying degrees on our lives, ageism and the biases we hold about older people, impact our social, political and environmental practices, policies and ability to embrace aging as a beautifully rich and powerful time of life.

One of the areas of ageism that impacts all of us is the collective fear of what it means to age. We try to hide from it, avoid talking about it and in some cases, do everything we can to defy nature’s natural aging processes.

Being stubborn combined with my nature to persist, in spite of perceived obstacles and hardships on the road, has stood me well in my life.

It’s also created hardship and unnecessary challenges.

Once, in my late 40s, shortly after having an orthoscopy on my right knee, I was standing at the top of a mogul field debating whether to take the black run or the more cruising blue one. As I stood contemplating the mogul run, a 20-something dude went whipping past me, effortlessly zig-zagging his way through the field. “Ha!” my febrile mind declared. “I can do that!” And, without another thought, I pushed off and started down.

Knees limber, body loose, I was crushing it.

Until I hit an icy downside of a mogul, lost an edge, and fell.

On the way down in the Ski Patrol cart, I realized my unconscious bias toward having to prove… I can do anything I set my mind to combined with that stubborn streak of telling myself, no ‘young thing’ is going to outdo me, lead to my fall!

I’d like to say the awareness of that unconscious bias has lead to my awakening, but I still catch myself doing things that defy my body’s capacity to do them because I am also ‘awakened’ to the unconscious bias that says, “I can’t do that. I’m too old.” Am Not! 🙂

See… unconscious biases lead us to befriend those who are like us (or hire them). They lead us to do things, or not, because we think we can do anything we set our minds to, or we can’t do them because we’re too old.

They also mean we limit ourselves in our capacity to explore new and interesting pathways, especially as we grow older, because we believe, somewhere deep inside ourselves, that it’s just not done.

And… just so you know… I’m smiling as I write this because I know I’m not yet clear on what it is I’m thinking or even saying about it.

There’s a part of my that thinks I should scrap this post until I get it ‘right’.

Fact is, the reason I’m doing this is to EXPLORE my thinking, ideas, beliefs. And I can’t do that without being willing to risk being vulnerable, not getting it right, not ‘knowing it all’.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reading what you write helps deepen my understanding and broaden my perspective.

And I know that is a GOOD THING!

Namaste