Hello Fierce Ones,
I’m pleased to announce the next selection of the Conscious Aging Book Club: The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister. The discussion board opens today in the comment section below and culminates September 6 both online and in-person at 10:30 a.m., Parnassus Books, Nashville. This will give you plenty of time to read the book if you are interested.
To learn more about the Conscious Aging Book Club, click HERE.
–Carol Orsborn, Older, Wiser, Fiercer
p.s. If you’re the kind of person who can’t wait to open up gifts, skip to the bottom of the blog where I have some great things to share with you.
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I want to apologize, right off the bat, for all those years and years of lunches, phone conversations and long walks in parks together in which I complained endlessly about my mother. When she passed, my bouncing ball of litanies, mostly justified, just found new playgrounds to keep the momentum going. The only saving grace in all this is that I was a good listener, too. And boy, did you have a lot to say about your mother, as well!
From where I stand today, it can all seem to have been such a monumental waste of time. But there was value in it. Not only to have friends such as you who made me feel less crazy and less alone in the world, but to have shared our belief that by talking things through—however repetitively—we were getting somewhere. Glacial, perhaps, but even slow movement is progress. And perhaps it just took that many years to finally get a glimpse of the tiniest bit of perspective beyond the water we were born into. Here, on the far reaches of age, we at last get to experience the freedom beyond our childhood traumas and discover what it means to be liberated from kneejerk reactivity and to make fresh, life-affirming choices for ourselves. Here’s how Joan Chittister puts it, which is why you’ve got to love her book: The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.
“Now we are beyond the narcissism of youth, above the survival struggles of young adulthood, beyond the grind of middle age, and prepared to look beyond ourselves into the very heartbeat of life. Now we can let our spirits fly. We can do what our souls demand that fully human beings do. This is the moment for which we were born.”
But, Joan, with all due respect, there are the losses associated with aging, the erosion of ego, the marginalization, mortality, for heaven’s sake. So true, so unavoidable. And yet…I’m getting it, Joan. And so, I am happy to say, are so many of my friends. Over lunch, on the phone, on long walks, the conversation has changed—dramatically. Yes, the hits keep coming, but they are at last not always, necessarily and sometimes even rarely viewed through the lens of our original programming. Every slight does not automatically provide proof that we are unworthy of respect; every disappointment does not trigger the need to try harder to reassert control. In fact, the things that others to do us—the things that happen to us—no longer inspire at worst never-ending accusations and victimhood, at best endless self-examination and self-mortification. Joan calls it when she puts a hard stop to regret—one of the greatest temptations of we who are growing old—reclassifying it as a sand trap of the soul. Regret comes to us dressed up as serious introspection but ends up throwing us into a pit of emotional self-indulgence. What was done to us, the missed opportunities, the pain that was caused or inflicted—intentionally or not. Once any amends have been made, then what? What do we have to talk about with one another?
I’m finding out. And it’s delightful. It’s deep and moving. It’s passionate. And most of all, it’s unstuck. We are free at last to explore, to adventure, to give unselfishly, to appreciate and so much more. How about just holding hands with one another as we walk this patch of life together, singing our favorite songs?
So, I’m here to tell you that it is possible to get past reactivity to your past and the self-protective mechanisms you relied on to make your way through life but that you have outgrown, to be free. We can, as Joan puts it “come alive in ways” beyond our wildest expectations. Yes, there are losses. But there are also gains. Each moment of every one of our increasingly precious days, we are at a crossroads. Will you choose dwelling on the losses or anticipating joy? It’s not fate. It’s a choice.
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GET NOW!
Free Book
I’ve been invited to speak at an online Summit on the subject of my recently-published novel Angelica’s Last Breath. If you subscribe to any of my websites, you can learn the details of the Summit after August 6. (It’s free.) Meanwhile, in keeping with the spirit of my presentation, which is already in the can, I’d like to gift you with a free copy of my book available August 6 and 7 only on Kindle, but affordable even if you miss the free promotion. A paperback version is also available.
To get Angelica’s Last Breath, click HERE
Note: To retrieve free book, you don’t need to be a member of Kindle Unlimited. Offer is available through standard Kindle but Aug. 6 and 7 only.
For Your Grandchildren
And finally, here’s a great book to buy for your grandchildren: my son Grant Maxwell’s novel Beyond Plato’s Cave. Who wouldn’t want to go on a splendid adventure into alternate realities and multiple dimensions in time and space with a few good friends–and emerge with a working knowledge of philosophy to boot?
To get the book, click HERE
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Please support our local independent book stores, and to order your book club books from Parnassus Books, click HERE
To learn about the Conscious Aging Book Club, click HERE
For a free subscription to Older, Wiser, Fiercer, click HERE
To subscribe to our sister site Fierce with Age: The Free Digest of Boomer Wisdom, Inspiration and Spirituality, click HERE
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TO START OR JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS BLOG AND BOOK: You are encouraged to share your thoughts with me and our community at the bottom of this blog as it is posted below at CarolOrsborn.com.
