You know those days where magic seems to permeate every drop of sunshine streaming through the air?
Those days where Orcas appear as you cross the Strait and sunbeams dance like fairies on the water?
Yup. Yesterday was one of those days. I do hope you come and revel in the beauty of it all! It was so exquisitely magical!
The video of my day is on my Substack HERE.
It’s time. Time to write our own ageless script. Time to defy the notion we need to tone ourselves down as we grow older.
I’m not just defying aging —I’m giving it a playful wink and a knowing smile. Forget those tired old notions about what a woman “should” be, do, or say. I’m taking that rulebook, scribbling all over it, and maybe even adding a few pretty doodles in the margins before I rip out the pages and write my own!
This ain’t no 60s liberation movement. We’re not just breaking through barriers; we’re dismantling them brick by brick and building something far more magnificent in their place. We’re not just finding our voices; we’re turning up the volume and letting them echo through the ages.
I’m diving into the world of AI, (like the image above which I generated using AI and a whole lot of descriptors and trials and errors – which btw, is a clear indication of how so many of the algorithms are written by men! Try getting it to create a woman without big breasts and loads of cleavage!) embracing its potential like a fearless explorer. Sure, there are concerns, but I’m choosing curiosity over fear. Because a life lived in the shadows of ignorance? That’s not for me.
I’m talking boundless, liberated, authentic. I’m shedding those outdated expectations and stepping into my own power. I’m crafting my own rules, setting my own course, and living life on my terms.
So, are you with me? Are you ready to shake things up, challenge the norm, and create a life that’s uniquely, vibrantly yours?
Let’s tear up that old rulebook together, ladies. And then, let’s write a new one that celebrates our strength, our wisdom, and our unyielding spirit.
Let’s let our age grow wild and our spirits soar free!
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Join me for my upcoming Masterclass Unleash Your Ageless Radiance – Juy 3, 5pm MT
Superheroes have one. So do major brands like TOMS, IBM, NIKE, and charity: water. And so do I – an origin story. But there was a time when mine wasn’t serving me well, so I changed it. My origin story.
Years ago, on a personal development retreat in the heart of British Columbia’s Valhalla mountain range, I found myself reflecting by a serene lake. It was there I realized that the origin story I had been telling about myself wasn’t just inadequate; it was harmful. In my narrative, I was the victim of my parents’ poor planning, an unwelcome disappointment born the wrong sex and on the wrong day. Although I often shared this story as a ‘funny anecdote,’ the truth was far from amusing. Each retelling was like picking at the scab of a deep, painful wound.
To heal, I needed to rewrite my origin story into one that celebrated my journey and supported my life’s path. I had to craft a narrative that I loved, for this story lived in my mind, sustained solely by my own recounting.
The significance of origin stories cannot be overstated. Look at any superhero or successful brand, and you’ll find their vision, mission, and values anchored in an origin story. This narrative is more than a backstory; it shapes their identity, highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and charts their destiny. Their origin story is not just a tale of the past; it’s a guiding force for all they do.
As we navigate the journey of our lives, the profound impact of our personal narratives cannot be overstated. Unlike fictional superheroes, our lives aren’t scripted with predetermined strengths, weaknesses, and destinies. This lack of a pre-written script is not a deficit but a remarkable opportunity. It’s our chance to author our beginnings, redefine our shaping forces, and understand the currents that have carried us to our present.
There was a time when my origin story was a narrative of sorrow, marked by disappointment and loss. It weighed me down. But with care and intention, I rewrote my story into one that echoes how cherished and valued I am in this world. This new narrative celebrates my existence, setting the stage for a life brimming with abundance, passion, and joy. It underpins my raison d’être and, in good times and in challenging times, it provides direction, purpose, and focus.
Your origin story is far more than a mere collection of past events. It’s the foundation upon which your current identity rests, a rich source of insights reflecting your deepest values, fears, and aspirations. Engaging with this narrative isn’t just about revisiting the past—it’s about reclaiming it. You’re seizing the pen that drafts your life story, acknowledging that every challenge, every joy, and every lesson has played a part in shaping the extraordinary person you are today.
Now, think about your origin story; the story you tell about the times and circumstances into which you entered this world. Does it elevate you? When you recount it, do you feel like a superhero in your own life? Does it inspire you to leap with joy and dance as if no one’s watching?
If not, what if.. you wrote your own origin story? What would it be?
Then, take the leap. Write it. Create the narrative that lifts you, that transforms you from a passive character in your life story to the hero you were always meant to be.
I am of that demographic often referred to as ‘Baby Boomers,’ I believe it’s time for a rebrand. Let’s step into the spotlight as the ‘Take a BOW Generation’ — a community that celebrates being Bolder, Older, Wiser.
Society often paints aging as a decline, a burdensome journey of diminishing strength and fading vitality. While it’s true that our bodies evolve with age, this narrative overlooks the profound capacity we have to contribute, regardless of the years under our belts. We can still enact change, influence perspectives, and champion new ideas that dismantle the myth of age as a harbinger of only limitations.
As members of the BOW Generation, we have the power to defy these stereotypes. Let’s assume center stage in our lives, taking a bow for our accumulated triumphs and persisting in our drive to contribute and foster transformation. In doing so, we pave the way towards a world that’s fairer, more just, and equitable for all. A world that doesn’t see aging as a barrier to contributing but an integral part of changing the world.
Because, let’s face it, age is only a barrier if we make it one. Fact is, age is simply a measure of time. As yesterday’s post suggested, the significance of the adage ‘age being just a number’ lies not in the figure itself, but in the experiences and legacies we craft with it.
I invite you to be part of the BOW Generation movement. Celebrate the boldness, the wisdom, and the insights that come with age. Share these gifts joyfully, contributing to a world that embraces every stage of life. Let’s leverage our passion, talents, and unwavering commitment to excel and create impactful, lasting contributions.
I hope you join me. I hope you too — Embrace your age. Share your wisdom. Make your mark.
Today, and every day, let’s be Bolder, Older, and Wiser together.
I hope you’re with me — I’m not ready to bow out yet. I am ready to take a BOW for all I’ve achieved. I hope you are too! I hope you are ready to keep stepping into the spotlight of all that’s yet to come with an open heart and mind!
Namaste
It’s been quite some time—over a year, in fact—since I last contributed a video to my Dare Boldly: No Matter Your Age video series. The last episode was last year on October 22.
As my birthday looms on the horizon, however, and as I delve deeper into the complexities of aging within our youth-centric society, I find myself reflecting on the significance of raising our voices. There is immeasurable value in every woman’s story as we collectively embark on this crucial journey, learning to embrace bravery and boldness at any stage of life.
The reminder about the series however, came yesterday evening when I had the pleasure of meeting with a remarkable group of women, all members of Calgary’s longest-running women’s book club. Established in 1976, this group convenes ten times a year to engage in thoughtful discussions about the selected book of the month. Notably, one of the attendees has been a dedicated member since the club’s inception.
These women are not only avid readers, but also independent thinkers—progressive, reflective, and deeply curious about life’s myriad questions, contradictions, and possibilities.
I am honored to have been invited as the guest speaker for their annual Christmas gathering at the end of November. Last night’s meeting served a dual purpose: to discuss my upcoming presentation and their expectations, and to provide me an opportunity to familiarize myself with them prior to addressing the larger group. This larger assembly comprises seven book clubs, each with ten members, totaling seventy women representing a diverse range of ages.
The founding group, with whom I had the pleasure of meeting, consists of women who, like me, are gracefully navigating the complexities of being a woman of a ‘certain’ age. Together, we have created homes, forged careers, and nurtured our families. We have embraced the joys and challenges of becoming grandmothers and, for some of us, taken on the significant responsibilities of caring for partners and parents.
Like my own journey, their lives have been marked by love both found and lost, by the profound grief of losing loved ones, and by the courage to embark on new beginnings. We have navigated endings and weathered life’s fluctuating highs and lows, all while striving to deepen our understanding of our true selves. In the process, we have learned to live authentically, remaining steadfast to our core values and our shared humanity.
As I departed from our meeting, having shared a glimpse of what I plan to discuss later this month, I was profoundly moved by the richness and fullness of these women’s lives. Each individual is fascinating in her own right, and together, they form a captivating and vibrant collective. Many of these women have been part of this book club for several years, fostering a circle characterized by intimacy, companionship, and mutual support.
My friend, who kindly recommended me as this year’s Christmas bash speaker, took a moment to tell the group about my video series, “Dare Boldly: No Matter Your Age.”
This interaction served as both a reminder and an invitation, prompting me to set up my lights and camera this morning to record the 37th episode of the series.
I Worry… ©2023 Louise Gallagher I worry that humanity will never find an end to war I worry this beautiful planet we call home will grow weary of our excesses and excuses. I worry that the sun will grow tired of shining, the winds die down or rage too strong the rivers overflow or dry up the air grow too thick or disappear completely I worry the trees will stop abiding by the seasons the earth will quit giving life the wheatfields will grow fallow and the flowers die forever and the darkness will overcome the light. I worry and in all that worry one thing remains constant I am not powerful enough to stop the guns blazing the planets spinning the sun shining or hiding behind grey clouds I alone am not powerful enough to change the river’s flow the consistency of air the nature of trees the colour of dirt the bounty of wheatfields the perpetuation of flowers the depth of the darkness. What I am powerful enough to do Is let go of worrying and move, confidently and with grace into everything I can do to create harmony in my world I am powerful enough to do everything I can to preserve the integrity of this planet the health of its rivers and fields its mountains and streams and always, shine light and love where darkness would prevail. I am powerful enough to stop worrying about the things I cannot change and instead, do my part to change the thing I know I can to bring us together to change the world. I can dare boldly to change Myself
Life is full of magical imperfections.
I’ve always seen life through the lens of, ‘no matter how cloudy the skies, the sun still shines behind their sodden blanket.’
It’s been both a strength and a weakness, but, when I peel away the judgements that cause me to see my weaknesses as a roadblock to joy, I find that there is always a gift, always value, beauty and magical imperfections in EVERYTHING.
Always.
It just means that sometimes, life is asking me to dig deeper to find them.
Now, I also acknowledge that my rosy outlook is also a result of the inherently privileged environment in which I live my day-to-day life.
I have always had food on the table, clothes on my back, access to hot and cold running water, secure housing (ok, there was a brief period while I was in that abusive relationship where that wasn’t true) access to education, employment, health care and a host of other life necessities and niceties.
Being positive is easier when fear of nowhere to sleep, how to pay the bills, or worries about how to feed your children don’t cloud your thinking.
Which is part of the impetus for my She Dares Boldly Series. To inspire finding life’s magical imperfections in all things — big/small, consequential/inconsequential/ exciting/mundane.
I also admit, some days it’s harder to do that than others.
Which is when I need to take time for myself. I need to go back into the studio, write it out in my journal, share my sorrows, woes, and sadness with a friend, meditate, sit in silence and listen to my heartbeat, walk in nature or simply, be still.
Self-care is good care of your life and everyone in it.
Allowing and accepting the magical imperfections in how we take care of ourselves is part of the journey of aging and becoming ourselves.
Namaste
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The moon hangs high in the morning sky above the horizon bruised rose and violet by the sun’s awakening rays.
The air is crisp. The river runs past, its surface gunmetal grey tinted with the soft mauve reflection of the morning sky above. The trees sway in a gentle morning breeze as gracefully as Sufi turning round and round to the soft melodic chants of ancient verses wafting in the air around them.
And the earth keeps spinning.
And we keep breathing and taking, breathing and taking as if the largesse of Mother Earth will go one for eternity.
It can’t.
Go on and on and on.
Not if we keep treating Mother Earth’s gifts as ours to take and plunder and abuse.
We need Mother Earth to survive. She is not just our home. She is the home of every organism, every creature, every sentient and insentient being on this planet.
We must take care of her. We must act like guests on the planet. Not like we own her. Because we don’t. No one and no one thing owns Mother Earth. She is our host and hostess. She is our conduit around the sun every year. Our purveyor of all things wonderful and marvellous in our world.
We do not own Mother Earth.
Instead of taking whatever we want, whenever we want, lets sing a song of gratitude. Let’s give thanks for this wondrous planet that supports all of life without discrimination, without judgment.
Instead of abusing her, let’s change our ways and dig deep into our hearts to become the change we want to see in the world – Sustainability. Longevity. In all life. All things. All ways.
Our very breath depends upon it. And the lives of our grandchildren’s children depend on our changing our ways too.
Now. Forever. And Always.
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I have a limited number of #ShePersisted 2021 Desk Calendars left in my Etsy Shop. To order yours, please click HERE, or message me if you have questions or prefer to send an etransfer. Free Shipping in Canada. Get it in time for Christmas!
We all have dreams. Big ones. Little ones. Quiet ones. Loud, audacious ones. Dreams of living lives of wonder. Dreams of great adventure. Dreams of discovering far off lands, of creating stories of greatness in our lives.
Sometimes, our dreams come true. Sometimes, we let them go because life happens.
We fall. We face a wall we cannot climb. We trip over a rock that sends us flat on our back.
In our pain and fear of getting hurt, in our concern others will laugh at us or judge us for our failures, we lock away our dreams and continue on our journey taking the safer path, the road more travelled.
We do okay. We create a ‘good enough life’. It’s just not the life we once dreamed of. But that’s okay, we say. Dreaming is for children. We’re “all grown up now”. We have responsibilities. Success. Things. Secure inside the comfort zone of the life we’ve created, we forget about our dreams and carry on living our good enough life.
And then, one day, if we’re lucky, something happens to remind us of our dreams. Tentatively. Hopefully. We unlock the cage inside our heart where we tucked away our dreams long ago and peer inside.
That’s where the magic happens. That’s where our dreams peer back at us and ask, “Are you ready to come alive?”
It’s a big question because if we say yes, the next question we must ask ourselves as we peer into our hearts and gaze at the sleeping beauty of our dreams unlived is, “Am I willing to believe in myself?”
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As with all the pages in this altered book art journal, embedded within the page is one of my mother’s prayer cards. Also included are a photo of my mother and father hidden behind the smaller bird in the cage.
I hadn’t intended to hide them. Initially, I was going to transfer their images to the page with a technique that requires you to rub off the photo backing so that only the ink from the image remains affixed to the canvas. I started the process with the prayer card only to discover, while that technique works well on a canvas, on a book page the vigorous rubbing off required to remove the backing paper can tear the page of the book.
Ooops.
I wanted to quit. To give up. To tear out the page and begin again.
And that’s when this page became something entirely diferent than what I started to create.
Isn’t that what happens to our dreams sometimes?
We start out all excited and open to the journey until we encounter an obstacle or something goes drastically wrong. Feeling dejected, or embarrassed or possibly hopeless, we pack away our dreams and continue on our journey. It’s a little less bright. A little less promising, but it’s okay. It’s a good life and we should be grateful for all we have.
We tell ourselves, “We didn’t really like that dream anyway,” or some such conjured up story that will hide our disappointment. We’re living well so we ignore the ache in our hearts and the yearning in our minds to fly higher.
Until one day, something happens and we remember our dreams. We remember we are brave, courageous, worthy. We remember we are dreamers.
In that sacred, rarefied air of possibility, we take a step outside the confines of our comfort zone and take a deep breath.
We stretch our arms wide.
We close our eyes.
We dare.
To dream.
To believe in ourselves.
To set our dreams free.
Perhaps it is that I have run out of words, or maybe just energy. Perhaps my psyche is telling me I have nothing new to say, or that everything I’ve said stands as true today as it did when I wrote it. Perhaps it is just I need a change of pace. That in order to get a fitness routine cemented into my daily schedule, I need to make space in the morning and not leave it until after work when it’s easy to talk myself out of going to the gym.
Or maybe, it’s just time for a reboot, refresh, renew.
Whatever the reason, I’m looking at ways to refresh my blog. To refocus it so that it feels more organic to my daily life.
I have been writing a blog almost daily since March 2007. On that blog, Recover Your Joy, I wrote 1,730 posts.
I have been writing here at Dare Boldly, originally called, A Year of Making a Difference, since January 1, 2012, a total of 1,213 posts.
Which means, over the past 9 and a half years, I’ve published, 2,943 blogposts. If I break it down by an average of 700 words a post (which is probably short for me) I have written over 2 million words.
That’s a lot of words.
A lot of thoughts.
A lot of ideas.
Which raises the question for me — what’s my focus?
Originally, on my Recover Your Joy blog, my intent was to take every day situations and show people how to find the joy in everything. That included the many stories of homelessness I shared, the trials and tribulations of healing from life’s traumas, and the realities of being a single, working mother.
When I started A Year of Making a Difference, it was with the specific intent of figuring out how to make a difference ever day, even when I wasn’t working at a homeless shelter. It morphed into Dare Boldly in 2014 as I got clearer on what I wanted to inspire in other people’s lives, as well as my own: to Dare Boldly. Live Bravely
It started as Dare Boldly after I wrote a poem called DARE and a dear friend, Max Ciesielski, sent me a track of music he wrote to go with the poem — and asked me to record it.
You can hear it HERE.
That poem evolved from a painting and blessing I used to announce the new name of my blog, Dare Boldly, on January 1, 2014:
And I continue to evolve.
All this means is that I am reassessing my online presence, the purpose of my writing here, the value of maintaining a daily schedule and the alternatives. It means in the coming weeks I probably won’t be appearing every weekday with any predictable schedule and it means, you’ll be seeing some changes as I adjust my theme, look, feel and direction.
It’s all good. All exciting. All important to me.
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