I turned 80 in June. By some amazing coincidence, all four of us who live in a string of townhouses in our Prairie Hill cohousing community also turned 80 this year! Of the 50+ residents here, we are the only ones who were born in 1945. So we invited our whole community to celebrate our birthday year at a beautiful pond and cabin out in the country. It felt good, getting to that milestone together. However, I've discovered that it is not always fun being an "old woman". I never thought of myself as elderly until this last birthday. But culturally, I've stepped into a whole new category. My first negative old woman experience was with a young doctor. I had some confusing symptoms and called the 'nurse on-call' who instructed me to go to the emergency room immediately. She must have thought I was having a stroke. She even insisted that I go by ambulance, so I took my first ambulance ride, a bit of an adventure in itself. While in the ambulance, they did all kin...
It's been too long since I've written on this blog. I usually try to write something at least somewhat inspiring, something in the world that I've discovered and want to share. However, my last three weeks have been kind of a nightmare, and it has been hard to think of anything very positive. But it is definitely time to write something, so I guess I'll write some about my last three weeks, and hope that by the end, I will come out with something positive. I know we're all suffering through hard times just now, if not personally, then in the wider world. And we're all connected in this. Even if someone never watched the news, or lived deep in a forest with only deer and rabbits as friends, I think there is something in the atmosphere in this troubled world that would affect us even then. We've gotten off the healthy track, and everything is diminished. Here's how my tough last three weeks started. When you've grown a child in your own body, there is...
I have just signed off from our sixth session of the Resilience and Acceptance course. Last week, I must admit that I struggled with accepting the state of the world right now, accepting the reality that we are already heading for the sixth extinction, and that it is too late to prevent it. It felt so very sad, such a tragedy. This was not just a story, but something all the people living now will experience soon. I thought of my grandchildren, and of young people all over, just starting in their lives and having to tackle the unraveling of culture that has already started. All week I vacillated between being angry and being sad. And I didn't start our homework for tonight's class until this morning. However, it was just what I needed to shift out of that dark mood. The focus in this week's class was on indigenous wisdom. We saw video clips of many indigenous elders explaining their view of the earth, their guides for living, their long history and traditions, and their an...
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