Is it easier to be thankful as we age?

Posted on September 13, 2022 by Louise Gallagher

The stillness of morning envelopes me like a warm blanket on a cool winter’s day. Outside, the sky is dark in the early misty gloom of dawn not yet risen. Inside, the glow of my desk lamp casts a halo over my fingers typing on my keyboard. Piano music plays softly. Beaumont the Sheepadoodle lies under my desk, his head resting on my feet. The gentleness of his snores warms my heart.

I am grateful for this morning.

Gratitude, the experts say, is good for your body. Your whole body of which the mind is part of the whole.

We, westerners, tend to separate body and mind as if the two are connected yet separate entities with one having the upper hand over the other whose purpose is to be the vehicle that carries it around.

They are interconnected. One brain. One body. One person. One. Whole. Being.

This is why gratitude is so important. Our thoughts are our body’s thoughts, not just our minds. Our thoughts become our reality. Our thoughts impact the entirety of our being — including our health. And, when we practice gratitude, we ignite endorphins that happily dance through our veins and arteries, filling our nervous system with feelings of joy. (At least that’s how I like to imagine them.)

There’s good news about aging and positive thinking!

According to this article in the Globe and Mail from October, 2015, “Neuroscientists have suggested older people have a sunnier outlook because the limbic system, particularly the amygdala, an area of the brain involved in emotional attention and memory, becomes less active in response to negative information. At the same time, older individuals maintain or even increase their reactivity to positive information.”

Yesterday morning, walking back from the park with Beaumont, I watched two city workers clean up the garbage left behind by the weekend visitors to the park. There was a lot of it.

As they worked they chatted. As they worked, they created inviting islands of green space free of garbage.

I watched and was grateful they were out so early in the morning making the park whole again.

I decided to share my gratitude.

I walked towards them. As they noticed my approach they both stopped working and watched me.

“I just wanted to thank you for making the park so inviting and clean!” I called out.

Suddenly, both their faces broke out in smiles. “You’re welcome,” one of them called out.

“Thanks for all you do to keep our city beautiful,” I said before moving on with Beaumont.

As I left, I heard one of them say to the other. “D’ya hear that? Someone appreciates what we do.”

I was smiling as I walked away. It felt good to give a gratitude bouquet to strangers. Especially as I truly am grateful for the work they do.

Their work is important. It matters.

I am grateful for my mind’s ability to remind me to not just think thoughts of gratitude, but to share them freely wherever I can.

Spreading gratitude is important. It matters.

I am grateful that with aging, I am becoming… more at ease with my power to spread gratitude.

I am grateful that with aging, I am becoming… more accepting of life’s gifts. More thankful for life’s beautiful moments. More capable of letting the not-so-nice moments fade as I pour love and joy into each moment I experience the gift of my life on this earth.

And I am grateful that there are people like University of Oregon neuroscientist and research associate Christina Karns, studying the impact of gratitude on aging. In the same G&M article (above), Karns is quoted as saying, “It’s [Gratitude] different than those sort of basic emotions, like happy, sad, fear, anger. So there isn’t going to be just one system in the brain that is implicated in gratitude.”

While happiness occurs in the brain’s immediate reward systems, gratitude is believed to also involve the cortical structures associated with higher order cognition and social reasoning, she says.

Gratitude is a whole-brain undertaking. And, as the brain is as integral to our well-being as the heart and belly, veins and arteries, limbs and skeleton, being grateful pays dividends throughout our body creating well-being and lightened spirits where ever it flows.

As we age, numerous studies have shown, we become happier. Apparently, we are, on average, at our most positive in our senior years.

I am making a conscious decision to flow in gratitude. Choosing to express it whenever I can, where ever I am.

I am grateful for all of you. Grateful for your presence. Your words of encouragement. Your sharing of your insights and thoughts. Your light. Our shared connection.

Namaste.

Who Am I?

Posted on September 8, 2022 by Louise Gallagher

Years ago, as part of a play he was performing in about homelessness, my dear friend Max wrote a short soliloquy about his lived experience of homelessness.

I am a father, a brother, a son, an uncle, a friend. 
I am a carpenter, a musician, a writer, an artist. 
I laugh. I cry. I bleed. I feel pain. I feel joy. 
Which of these is diminished because I am homeless?

In her comment last night on yesterday’s blog, which reminded me of Max’s words, Iwona wrote,

I am a writer, a quilter, a calligrapher, a photographer.
I am a wife, a friend, a relative, a confidante, a mentor.
These are the qualities and traits that I am proud to acknowledge.
Some may say these are "labels".
Whatever!

And Cristl wrote her manifesto too,

I don’t like labels as I have been called a criminal, homeless, senior and blunt. None fit me as the people I am now. I am a passionate person who believes that every person be treated with dignity and respect. This includes me.

While Nance shared her beautiful insight, as did JoAnne.

Nance wrote,

Somewhere along the line we decide which labels suit us. We can accept labels we agree with, and make our own labels. We can live without labels. We can talk about what we do, without making it who we are.
But some people work very hard to have certain labels. It’s good to think before we label.

And maybe that’s the thing about labels.

I have the power to choose my own. The one’s that work for me. They are not all of me. They are often a reflection of my passions and what’s yearning to be expressed within me.

I do not give others the right to choose them for me. And, while I get that for demographic stats it’s easiest to group people under labels or headings that denote similar attributes, and l understand that labels are convenient for identifying demographic trends and policies that work and policies that need to change to address gaps in public services, I have the power and the choice of determining what the ‘label’ that puts me in a specific group means to me.

I have the power to choose how I live the labels with which I am identified.

I have agency.

Which brings me to my own statement of Who Am I. Because in my agency, I also know that while there are many ‘isms’ I have encountered because of my gender, I have privilege that too many others do not experience because their choices were limited by the labels we applied to keep them in their place.

I am a human being of great worth. I am a woman. A mother, a wife, a grandmother, a sister, an aunt, a friend. I am an activist, a disruptor, a staunch defender of our human right to be treated with dignity and respect. I am a believer in upending our social constructs to create equity and inclusion for those who have been marginalized, pushed aside and under the colonial structures of our past. And however I am, where ever I am, I am an artist, a writer, story-teller, creator of words and images, a lover of life and this fragile condition we call our humanity.

Which of these is diminished because my age puts me in the demographic cohort of being labelled a ‘senior citizen’?

The ‘Senior’ label is getting old.

Posted on September 7, 2022 by Louise Gallagher

We humans love our labels and our groupings.

We have those who fit the label ‘Senior’. We have, young adults, millenials, GenXers – GenYers – GenAnthingGoes.

That last one is a label of my own making.

It feels right for this age I find myself embodying with mind, heart, body and soul – I’m ok with who I am and how I am because I choose to love who I am and how I am becoming completely.

And in that statement, recognize that no matter my age, I am always becoming – more of who I am, less of who I don’t want to be, all of me – beauty and the beast, yin and yang, darkness and light, imperfectly perfect in all my human imperfections – with or without a label.

Year ago, when I was preparing for my first talk at a major conference about how I learned to live with joy and love after an abusive relationship, the organizers, after reading my talk outline said, “Okay. You fit into the “Victim Stories” category.”

No I don’t, I quickly replied. I am not a victim. I am a victor.

That distinction was extremely important to me. The label ‘victim’ is an emotionally charged one that says to me, I am weak. I am beaten. I am the underdog. I DO NOT want to be a victim. I AM NOT a victim. (and yes, I am sure there is a whole lot of unconscious bias going on in my head around that word!)

To be a victor is, for me, empowering. I can handle carrying that label. It feels expansive. Empowered. Strong.

Just as being labelled a baby-boomer feels open-ended. It says, I am of the generation who marched for women’s rights and burned bras. Who stood up to authority to ensure, ‘anything goes’ became a reality for gays and lesbians and so much more. It is full of limitless possibilities and as long as my ‘anything goes’ creates better in the world, is fair, kind and does no harm, then my anything goes is powerful!

The label ‘senior’ on the other hand… that is an emotionally charged one for me too. I don’t think I was ever a ‘junior’ human so why am I suddenly a ‘senior’ one?

It’s a challenging realization for me – perhaps my unconscious biases are preventing me from living into the possibilities of ‘seniordom’ whatever those possibilities are.

Or, perhaps, my resistance to living into the label ‘senior’ is actually my rebellion against doing ‘the safe thing/right thing/expected thing’.

I’m not sure.

What I am sure about is, I do not want to live up to nor down to an arbitrarily applied label of ‘their’ construction (whoever ‘they’ are.)

I don’t want to live ‘the label’. I want to live my life.

I want to live free to be, to express, to become all of me – consciously aware that my becoming is an evolutionary process full of possibilities.

Labels are handy for prescription drugs and supermarket shelves.

For we humans… labels can act as limitations to how deep, wide, wild and free we live our lives. And, until we confront the unconscious or conscious labels we carry, collectively or singularly, we will not see beyond the limts of that label all the beauty, mystery, magic and wonder life has to offer.

So here’s to the GenAnythingGoes – no matter your age!