Category: encouragement
Aging With Passion
Posted by : Bettina | June 21, 2016
How fitting that I should be writing about aging in the first few weeks of entering a new decade. Fitting, maybe, but not a topic I particularly want to dwell on. I still feel young and am still fairly healthy. I only just turned 60 and I am okay with that. Why do I want to think about aging even more? What is aging anyway? Simply put, it is the process of getting older. More definitively, it is the accumulation of changes that happen to us over time, not just physically, but also psychologically and socially. You may think that this topic does not yet apply to you but most likely you have already begun to age. The human body peaks around age 28, after which it begins its slow decline. Aging, then, is a lifetime process not just left for the, well,
No More Should!
Posted by : Bettina | April 30, 2016
There was a day this past winter when I was housebound by a blizzard. Driving was dangerous, schools were closed, and events canceled. I couldn’t have gone out anyway as persistent winds kept blowing the snow into deep drifts across my long driveway, despite the repeated returns of the snowplow. An unexpected day with hours of uninterrupted time invitingly stretched out before me. I thought of all the enjoyable things I could do; reading by the fire, baking cookies, sorting through pictures, or even some Netflix binging. But then I remembered the cluttered basement with boxes scattered randomly across the floor
May I have a word?
Posted by : Claudia | April 30, 2016
I set out to write the definitive, morally indisputable stance on SHOULD, but the truth is, SHOULD is as slippery as it is stubborn and as seductive as it is convicting. It’s both bondage and opportunity, both albatross and eagle—the kind of SHOULD that lovingly encourages me like a grandmother to explore and live well but also the kind that compares and defeats and sits devilishly on my shoulder with its claws in my neck. SHOULD is, on the one hand, a narrative that binds me. It is the Miss Hannigan to my captive soul, ordering me about with its wiry and graying hair, ill-fitting skirt and torn stockings.