October, 2011
Question for 2011
How can I enjoy becoming a Wise Older Woman?
Start by letting go of what you no longer need or want.
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MOTTO for 2011
We have enough!
We do enough!
We are enough!
And what other people think of us
Is none of our business!
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WOW! Wise Older Women® Welcome:
Greetings to all wise, wild, older, outrageous women! I especially welcome all the women who have found their way to our website and added their names to our newsletter list. This cycle we add women from:
Baldwinsville, NY,
San Antonio, TX (5)
Wheaton IL
Beaufort
Grapevine, TX
North Carolina
Neveda City, CA
Cantonville, MD.
Amsterdam, Nederland
Sta Cruz, Tenerife, Spain
Tyne and Ware, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Western Cape, South Africa
I am delighted each of you have found us. Remember, we grow faster if you tell all your friends about us.
Most of you know I live in San Antonio, TX. We have experienced the hottest summer on record this year. Usually, my old bones love the heat, but even I have a limit! To add to the misery of the heat, we are on track to receive the least amount of rainfall ever recorded in a one year period. I am so grateful that we have moved from the 100’s to the 90’s in temperature—such a welcome change. Then yesterday morning I woke up overjoyed to the sound of rain!
Despite all fears, fall is arriving in Texas! Such welcome relief! So it is with this time of life—the fall of life—it too brings relief. We relax into fewer obligations, more delights and great gratitude that we are here to enjoy it!
Enjoy each and every day of this fall!
WOW! Wise Older Women!® is now on Facebook. That gives us a way to communicate and share with one another in-between newsletters! When you are on Facebook, search for WOW! or Wise Older Women and then click on the"'Like" symbol. You will be able to write on our wall, post photos, videos etc. Give it a try!.
All these improvements are possible because of, Jane Downs. She is taking the lead with the website, sending the newsletter notice to you, setting up and managing Facebook. I couldn’t do it without her expertise. You can email her at jane-downs@sbcglobal.net.
Remember, WOW! Wise Older Women!® would not/could not exist without you. Together we stand strong enough to change the paradigm for all women in the second half of life to one that honors our authenticity, our integrity and our wisdom.
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WOW! Wise Older Women!® Quotes:
“You cannot walk the second journey with first journey tools. You need a whole new tool kit.”
Richard Rohr
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
WOW! Wise Older Women® Topic for the Month:
You may have noticed that I’m varying my usual practice of using quotes from several women. I chose only one quote and it’s from a man—granted, a wise, older man. Please humor me.
What, I wondered, new tools have I added since I began this second half of life journey? What new tools have you added? Anyone answer, “Botox”? That’s good for a laugh, however, it probably only helps our denial that we are growing older.
Carl Jung seems to be agreeing with Rohr when he said, “One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will, at evening, have become a lie.” That brings another question: What is of importance in this evening of our lives?
The wise authors I read repeat that answers we need in this second half of life are different from the first half and, they go on to say, that the answers are not easily found because they are hidden within each of us. The answers I seek are not necessarily the answers you seek.
Hidden inside each of us? Yes, and what makes it even more difficult is that we can only find them by looking into our past—especially into the places we have stumbled, the places where we have fallen. Richard Rohr says: “The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. Living in such deep time, connected to past and future, prepares us for necessary suffering, keeps us from despair about our own failure and loss, and ironically offers us a way through it all.”
That’s what we want, right? A way through it all, if possible with some amount of peace and joy!
Peace and joy have been awhile coming to me. I don’t know about you, but I have given my failures and losses a considerable amount of despair—probably way too much. Eventually, I moved from despair to acceptance. Now I can see the lessons and the gifts.
Sometime, somewhere, (If I could remember, I would certainly give the appropriate credit.) I read about the birth of a chick. There comes a time inside the shell of the egg when the chick is starving, its nourishment already eaten. It is cramped, much too big for its confining shell. Only when the chick is near death, does the shell start cracking.
Have you been there? Thought life or your world was ending? When you think about that experience now, do you see the gifts? The tools you gained? Or the wisdom? Only with the perspective of the Big Picture, the one we have from the second half of life, can we see our terrible, awful experiences as bringing new tools and wisdom.
For me, each loss, each failure compounded into my learning to trust the process of life. When I saw my life from this perspective, I gave up shaming and blaming myself. While I wouldn’t choose any of those bad times—I still have regrets—I am grateful for the gifts, the relief and the wisdom they brought.
Mark Mepo says, “. . .we must trust that the power to life and land for us, is in revealing what we hide. Once revealed, these tender things become our wings.” Fly high, my friends.
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WOW!Wise Older Women® to WOW:
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WOW! Wise Older Women® Books:
You can support WOW by Visiting Amazon.com right here to find every book you ever wanted .. and that's not all! You can now order any and every other thing you've ever wanted from Amazon. When you do, WOW! receives a small percentage while you pay the same small price!
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Nancy's Note:
Thanks to all our WOW! Wise Older Women!®WOW! who forward our newsletter and send us emails and other fabulous and fun information.
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Closing Notes:
It’s easy to start a WOW! Circle in your area. Email nancy@wiseolderwomen.com
Your creative efforts, astute comments, lavish praise and short criticisms are encouraged and appreciated. Send them to nancy@wiseolderwomen.com
Copyright© 2011, all rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy or distribute this newsletter as long as this copyright notice and full information about contacting the author are attached.
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WOW! Wise Older Women®
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Celebrating Our 10th Anniversary!
Changing the Paradigm for Women in the Second Half of Life.
®
From: Sue Haarala
As soon as this happens....retire with dignity.
How do you know when it is time to
"hang up the car keys"?
I say when your dog has this look on his face!
From: Robin Miner
From: Shirley Haight
This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh MY memory. Some women won't vote this year because - Why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
Conferring over ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at National Woman's Party headquarters, Jackson Place , Washington , D.C.
Left to right: Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right)
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.
Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Lucy Burns
Dora Lewis
Alice Paul
