A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

I’ve been reading a lot recently about women-in-their-middle-years (I guess that means post-menopausal, a period in one’s life formerly referred to as “middle aged”) who are “re-inventing themselves”. 

And I find myself reacting oddly to the Dennis Hopper television commercials for some financial services company’s retirement planning services.  Hopper looks intently and Hopperesquely into the camera and says firmly and boldly:  “Your dreams are now.” 

Finally, there are the cialis/levitra/whatever ads that talk about “when the time is finally right” and the ads end up with the couple relaxing separate-and-apart in adjacent clawfoot bathtubs that are in some meadow overlooking the horizon.  I am confused as to whether or not the time was EVER right for that particular dosage!

These three thoughts are connected to a concept of endless and fairly limitless possibility.  It’s almost as if we can reconnect to all of the bright potentials from our youth with enough money, the right drugs, through the right re-design.  Life 5.0, perhaps?  What’s Jane Pauley doing these days?

I’m wondering if re-inventing is really about re-imagining.  Those imagination muscles may be the most atrophied of all.  What’s the process for getting one’s imagination back into shape?

As always, suggestions welcome!

Susan Reimer’s column in The Sunpapers this morning gave lots of reasons why women delay having a mammogram. Read all of that faulty thinking and dangerous logic here.

I won’t rant, or go into what Kerch calls “the full Leslie.” I will however say that there are really only two reasons why smart women don’t get regular mammograms: Fear and Stupidity.

Ms. Reimer ultimately posits that money and pain are the chief reasons why women don’t get regular mammos. To which I say: having a baby was expensive and giving birth hurt, but we did that. Isn’t your own life worth the same?

Clearly I feel very strongly about this, given that I am a breast cancer survivor since 2000 and my early stage cancer was detected by a mammogram. I was 46 (which is “young” by breast cancer standards). And while we’re on the subject, colonoscopies fall into the same category.

If you’re smart and you want to live, you do what you can, right?

Just do it. Now.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve decided that getting my financial situation in line is just about my most important goal… behind tending to my family and keeping my own talents stoked, of course. I’ve even noticed my youngest son asking more questions about saving money and preparing for his future. I’ve been watching as friends and clients try to get a handle on some kind of budget for themselves and for their businesses.

Sunday I noticed an article in the Baltimore Sun called “Getting dressed for less,” by Gregory Karp about budgeting and saving money. He was talking about a plan for saving money on buying clothes for adults.

The bottom lines are these:

• At this minute, you probably have enough clothes. Most of us do.
• Consider what you have and plan what you need. Don’t just pick what looks “pretty.”
• If you need something, shop second hand places way before department or specialty shops. That is thrift stores and yard sales and then consignment shops before going to retail closeout places — like TJ Maxx — AND THEN department stores, etc.

Then I noticed this morning over at 9:01 am that for the first time, apparel sales beat computer sales online. So people are buying more clothes on line than they are buying computers on line.

Geeks have always bought computer stuff on line. But RAM is RAM. It either fits or it doesn’t. But moms are catching on. Stuff comes in a box and you at least imagine you’ll send it back if you don’t like it.

And so now, if it’s so easy to do, how to you maintain some level of control over shopping for stuff you don’t really need and can’t even see or feel?

What happens when the box comes and you’re embarrassed to have spent the money. You can’t bear to open the box so it gets shoved under the bed…

I’m not saying *I* do this.. but what happens to the people who do?

It just seems to easy to get out of control.

I long for the “one walk dog.” But I know it’s just a myth. I want to do a thing and have it be over and done with so I can go on to the next thing.

My grandmother told me “once and done.” I always hoped it applied to dishes and laundry, but no. She also said: “It’s better dusty than broken.” But it would seem from the disdain on my husband’s face just before he prints the date in the dust with his finger, that she was probably wrong about that, too.

So if there is so much that must be done over and over, If there is so much that can never be truly done, what is the point of bothering at all?

I want one marketing idea and that should work. I want one idea that is also the best idea to get rich quick. and yes, I DO want to get rich quick. I also want to do the work it takes, as long as it’s something I love.. and that’s not walking the dog!

I go to see my acupuncturist every other week. I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth when I feel the stick. (Personally, I feel bad for people who don’t feel anything at all. Where’s the fun in that?!) I am definitely feeling less agitated than I have other times in similar situations. And that’s a good thing for me AS WELL AS the people around me. She tells me that the treatments are part of a process, not a one shot deal. I have also learned, to my great disappointment, that they can’t just stick a pin in you and let out all the extra weight you wish you didn’t have. Now THAT would be medicine!

Maybe my search for that one-walk-dog is really a search for an activity that only feels like a once and done. When I love what I do, I don’t really care how often I do it. I’m only bothered by bordem when the thing fails to engage me.

I am an adult. I do know that there is work involved in doing anything well. But some of that should feel like the play that Ned Hallowell suggests is part of the process of being happy in life.

And maybe my flailing is just about my inability to decide on what ever is MY next big thing.

Stay tuned friends, I’m confident something is bubbling up.

If you tried to comment before and couldn’t figure out how…
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Getting ready for something new - preparation - involves choices. You need to determine what you want and what you need to do to get it. “Taking a journey” is a pretty shopworn metaphor, but I am actually taking a vacation! So for me, getting ready involved not only “things to do”, but “things NOT to do”. Listen as we talk about it.

 

 What do I really need to do before I go away. [13:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Reporting on the more geekish side of this…
We’ve submitted the feed to iTunes and Podcast Alley!

We’re excited to get this show on the REAL road, not just to our own personal A list of friends and family.

Welcome world.

Getting the colonoscopy is on my “To Do” list for this year.  And yes, I’ve been putting this off longer than the American Cancer Society says I should. 

I’m not Katie Couric, so they’ll be no live streaming video here on this blog.  Also no photos or general whining.  And no vivid word pictures, either.  I’ll just check it off the list when it’s done and note same here.

It’s enough to say that I have now scheduled the colo for about 6 weeks hence.  I’ll be the first appointment of that day at an “endoscopy center” - never to be confused with an outpatient center at The Hospital.  Clearly colonoscopies (sp?) are such a growth industry that they have their own facilities now. 

This is, I suppose, another example of Baby Boomers and their endless contributions to a burgeoning economy as a result of our aging body parts.

I’m in California for a few days.  Things really are different here.  I watched my friend have a Thai massage and I got some interesting advice from the woman who did the work.

She says, “If you want to change, you will. If you don’t want to change, you won’t.”

So what is the magic pill, the button, the miracle, that will make me know that the change I’m talking about is necessary, right and good?  What will make me quit talking and do the thing?

We talked about that little sort of “mother tone” of judgment in my head –  that voice that really means “you better….”
But that wasn’t in her voice.  For her it was just a statement of fact.  People just do what they want to do. I do know that’s true, especially for me!

Her experience with aging parents gave her a glimpse into her future that did not include strong and independent people. She didn’t want that life. “I want to be able to open jars when I’m 90.”

In my experience old people (OK, oldER people – my mother would not want to be said to be OLD!)  Let me start again: the next generation of people in my family did what they wanted to be doing, pretty much until they died.  So  I don’t have her model of frail old people to use as an anchor in my future.  They won’t be the compelling picture that gets me moving toward change.

And while I have reason to believe that I’m  less fit now than I was 20 years ago, and I have reason to believe that without any change, I’ll be worse off at the end of the next 20 years, I don’t necessarily think that will be a bad place — even if it should be! Getting old does not seem scary to me.

So I’m thinking, maybe I don’t want to make my changes clearly enough.

It’s not about badly enough.. just clearly enough.  What really is on the other side of diet and exercise?

If I don’t know what I’ll get from changing my life, if I don’t even know what I want from changing my life, then why bother to do any work to make the change?

In terms of weight and exercise, if there is no specific reward on the other side of the experience, it’s easy to put off the doing. I’m guessing there will be no reason to maintain the adjustment.  It won’t stick.  And I hate doing work for no good reason.

So I’m working now on figuring out my own compelling reason for change.  What will I really get when I can trust my body to do what I want it to do?

I’m thinking  her reasons. That’s why her health things are working.. ok, maybe not the cigarettes.. but the other stuff.

This morning, I read the obituary of a woman I do not know. Edda M. Jakab.

It was the caption under her picture that drew me in.

“At age 17, she took a day off from high school to wed, returning to class the next day as a married woman.”

She died at age 61 still married to that man. Her husband said she was “fond of finding beauty in the ‘necessary journey’ – an Emersonian phrase that captured the long road she traveled.”

The moment of decision might well be an on or off sort of place, but the change I’m interested in is long term change — better diet, better health, better connection … for the rest of my life not just for this second.

I think we all understand, intellectually, that change is a process, a journey. And, yes of course, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step… right, right, right.

But, in fact, that’s just a beginning.

Change happens whether we choose it or not. We get older, things happen to us and to others that require adjustments. But that change might be more of the kind that gets me somewhere, just not necessarily where I want to be.

And I’m 50. I get to choose! For cryin’ out loud!

So what I’m struggling with in my personal journey is making the right choice about where I want to go.

My acupuncturist reminds me that I don’t have to make a single choice for all eternity. I just have to make a choice — from the hundreds of ideas I have –  for right now. Choose something for which I have passion and the rest of the stuff will sort of find its own place.

How are you figuring out where you want to go?

If you have even an inkling of an idea, I’d sure like to hear it.

Thanks.