I LOVE the author, ANNE Lamott!! I love that my good, good friend Jan turned me on to this amazing writer!! I have been perusing one of my favorite books by her (not recommended to the easily offended) Traveling Mercies. I've been percolating some ideas in my head how best to use some of her thoughts on getting older...and vola', some pictures from our sisters retreat turned up on my computer yesterday, from Sharon! It was the perfect stimulus to get me started. Let me share some direct quotes from her book.
"I am trying to accept that I am actually m-m-m-m-middle aged. And even though I am a feminist and even though I am religious, I secretly believe, in some mean little rat part of my brain, that I am my skin, my hair, and worst of all, those triangles of fat that pooch at the top of my thighs. In other words, that I am my packaging. Even though both feminism and Christianity have taught me that I am my spirit, my heart, all that I have survived over the years and all that I have given, still a funny thing happened after I started liking a guy; I looked in the mirror, and sighed, and thought to myself, I will cut my eyes out."
Anne has her epiphany while watching a movie about gypsies. She compares the old gypsies to the younger gypsies and lovingly calls the old, wise gypsies-cronies. I too will admit that I have my ups and downs with what I will now call cronehood. There's good and there's bad. I have highs and I have lows.
But on the whole, I must confess that I have many more highs than lows. I have reached a point in life where I am comfortable in my wrinkly skin--for the most part. Again ANNE says it so much better than I could--
"Maybe it (being a crone) leaves me needing to consider how wealthy I am in the knowledge that the girl of my past is still in me while a marvelous crone is in the future--and that I hold both of these females inside."
"I want what the crones have: time for all those long deep breaths, time to watch more closely, time to learn to enjoy what I've always been afraid of--the sag and the invisibility, (oh how true!) the ease of understanding that life is not about doing. The crones understand this, and it gives them all kinds of time--time to get much less done, time for all these holy moments."
"So I've been thinking, realistically, I'm probably not going to lose five pounds before.... or have the little canopy above my eyes snipped off. And how what I am going to do instead is to begin practicing cronehood as soon as possible: to watch, smile, dance."
Ahhhh...Thank you Anne Lamott!!!
"I am trying to accept that I am actually m-m-m-m-middle aged. And even though I am a feminist and even though I am religious, I secretly believe, in some mean little rat part of my brain, that I am my skin, my hair, and worst of all, those triangles of fat that pooch at the top of my thighs. In other words, that I am my packaging. Even though both feminism and Christianity have taught me that I am my spirit, my heart, all that I have survived over the years and all that I have given, still a funny thing happened after I started liking a guy; I looked in the mirror, and sighed, and thought to myself, I will cut my eyes out."
Anne has her epiphany while watching a movie about gypsies. She compares the old gypsies to the younger gypsies and lovingly calls the old, wise gypsies-cronies. I too will admit that I have my ups and downs with what I will now call cronehood. There's good and there's bad. I have highs and I have lows.But on the whole, I must confess that I have many more highs than lows. I have reached a point in life where I am comfortable in my wrinkly skin--for the most part. Again ANNE says it so much better than I could--
"Maybe it (being a crone) leaves me needing to consider how wealthy I am in the knowledge that the girl of my past is still in me while a marvelous crone is in the future--and that I hold both of these females inside."
"I want what the crones have: time for all those long deep breaths, time to watch more closely, time to learn to enjoy what I've always been afraid of--the sag and the invisibility, (oh how true!) the ease of understanding that life is not about doing. The crones understand this, and it gives them all kinds of time--time to get much less done, time for all these holy moments."
"So I've been thinking, realistically, I'm probably not going to lose five pounds before.... or have the little canopy above my eyes snipped off. And how what I am going to do instead is to begin practicing cronehood as soon as possible: to watch, smile, dance."
Ahhhh...Thank you Anne Lamott!!!
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