I am not resigned ...

 

By JoAnne Young

 

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

 

This Gloria Steinem quote was taped to my desk at work for thirty-six years. It reminded me every morning of what I had to do that day as a reporter at the Journal Star. Seek the truth as a woman. Seek out women’s issues to report on. Seek out female leaders and sources to add to my  stories, because women frequently view things differently.

 

Gloria Steinem came on the scene when I was in high school and she solidified her position in my consciousness beginning in my college years. She helped to change my life and those of many in my generation. Because of her and others like her, I knew I could have a career, that I could fight to be a visible member of my community, state and country. I knew that women’s rights were within our grasp. That I should not fail, ever, to vote. 

 

In a fairly recent interview Gloria Steinman talked about how many of us who grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s had mothers who could not be fully be their own talented, autonomous independent selves. In some ways, she said, many of us are living out the unfulfilled lives of our mothers. 

 

My mother had been a registered nurse, like her mother, until she married and gave up her career to be a military wife and mother to two daughters. I’m sure I got my love of science and all things medical from her. As a little girl, I would sit on her bedroom floor and drag her American Journal of Nursing magazines from under the bed, flipping page by page. As I became a journalist, my interests turned to politics, medicine, hospitals, health and human services, prisons for the paper. I watched every medical show I could find, from Dr. Kildare to St. Elsewhere to Grey’s Anatomy to The Pitt, and now volunteer at Bryan West’s emergency triage area. 

 

As Steinem said, the sorrow is that our mothers should have been able to complete their own lives and continue with what they loved. Many just didn’t.

 

Steinem came to Lincoln several times to speak and lobby and rally women. In 1991 she spoke to 2,300 women and men at the Lied Center, telling them it was clear they had the makings of a revolution right here in Nebraska. 

 

It was true. Somewhere in that decade I remember going to Misle Chevrolet, a couple of children in tow, to look for a new used car big enough for two adults and three kids. We walked onto the lot and a young man greeted us. I told him what I was looking for. His first question to me was: Does your husband know you are here to buy a car? I looked at him for a few seconds, trying to gather my composure, turned, and I and the children got back in our car and left, never to return. 

 

Yes, things are better now. A woman is mayor of Lincoln, women’s sports are taking the country by storm, a woman sold me my new Subaru last year and another woman handled my one-year service check. 

 

Still, there are men in power today, and some women supporting them, who would drag us backward, out of the workplace and into the role of trad wives. You women must, they tell us, have more babies. Many babies. They want to take money out of funds for subsidized child care for working mothers and give it to stay-at-home moms. 

 

So this is no time, Gloria Steinem, for you to be taking leave of us. But I know you have fought the good fight and now it’s time for others to take up our cause. The problem is, there are a lot of good, important women we need who have also left us. That’s the way this works. Our bodies can take so much. They start looking for an exit, before we are ready, while we are still needed. 

 

These women leave a legacy, but is that enough for our granddaughters who never saw them in action. They can read their words, watch interviews, but they don’t have that comfort and encouragement knowing Gloria Steinem, Jane Goodall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dolly Parton, Toni Morrison, Leola Bullock are in this world and we can ponder, what will they be up to next? 

 

There are those they may never remember, like physician and researcher Marthe Gautier,   because a male colleague took credit for her work in identifying the extra chromosome cause of Down syndrome. She had cultured the cells, prepared the slides, looked at them through the microscope, counted the chromosomes and shouted “Yes!” on her discovery. Dr. Jérôme Lejeuneautier offered to get pictures made of her slides, and then he proceeded to offer the findings at scientific meetings and journals as his own. 

 

“The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.” 

 

Keep these women in your thoughts, and in your words to your daughters and granddaughters. 

 

I offer these words, this Dirge Without Music, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a brilliant poet and feminist, who left us before I could ever feel her presence. 

 

“I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

 

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

 

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled

Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

 

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.”

Holy Ground

 

By Marilyn Moore

It’s late afternoon on the last Sunday in August.  There’s a quality to the late afternoon light…it’s more golden, softer in some way, than the late afternoon light in mid-summer. It’s still summer weather, with temperatures above 90, but the sun knows, the light knows, that summer is nearing its end, and autumn is approaching.  

It’s been a frantic week, with a near-declaration of economic war with our closest neighbor and most significant trading partner, Canada.  Court cases regarding executive orders on voting procedures leave me uncertain as to what the rules are, and who makes them…more on that in an upcoming blog, when/if I get it sorted out.  Cherry trees, a gift from Japan from decades ago, have been cut down to renovate a golf course.  The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, China is supplying Iran with essentials, Russia is bombing Ukraine, people are dying in Gaza, diplomatic efforts are nowhere to be seen.  The US seems to have claimed Venezuela’s oil, though the details are sketchy, and questions of legality abound.  A climate-change glacial collapse caused a flood unlike any we’ve seen, racing down the valleys of the Himalayas, on the border between Nepal and China; the death toll will not be known for days, likely months.  The videos are simply horrifying.

Fall is a busy time in Nebraska.  School starts, and I marvel again, as I do every year, how quickly teachers and students and parents and the community pick up the habits and patterns of going to school.  So many cute first-day photos…then on to the serious business of learning and building community and fall sports and choirs and orchestras and school plays and newspapers.  It’s an election year, and I’m already tired of the political ads, especially those that demonize the opponent.  (“Keep boys out of girls sports” must be this year’s must-use phrase…candidates for offices that should be far removed from deciding who plays on sports teams can’t seem to leave it alone. And that phrase, of course, is yet another stone thrown at our most vulnerable student group, teens and young adults who are trans, who just want to live their lives.)  There are many excellent candidates for public office this year; I’ve been to several campaign meetings, campaign rallies, campaign fundraisers, and I’ll go to more. I’m grateful for wise, compassionate, smart people who step forward in public service.  The amount of money required to do so, and the abuse heaped upon them, is daunting; they are brave, and I am grateful.  

And in the midst of all of that, Dolly Parton’s death gave the world a blessed one-day pause, focusing on her goodness and kindness and stellar talent, setting aside the greed and avarice and horrors of the week’s events. That day, that blessed day when the headlines were about a truly good human being, and today’s late afternoon light, a harbinger of autumn, call me to set aside, for just a moment, the frenzy of the past week, and breathe.  

A political writer who I read daily wrote this past week about the upcoming commemorative service at the site of the Twin Towers in New York, a service that is focused on the people who died, the people who tried to save them, the first responders, the families of the victims.  She likened that space to the cemeteries at Normandy, calling it holy ground.  I believe there is a human need to seek, and find, holy ground…spaces that remind us of what is deeply important, what it means to be deeply human, what it means to be in connection with one another, and with all of Creation.  

I breathe, and I think of some holy ground moments in the past couple of weeks.  Two eclipses…how can one person be so lucky.  The partial solar eclipse, viewed from the Douro River in Portugal, and the nearly-total lunar eclipse, viewed from our front lawn in Lincoln, Nebraska.  No photos of either; my phone camera doesn’t have the filter to safely photograph the sun, nor does it capture the disappearing moon.  The afterglow of the solar eclipse is beautiful, and calming…a moment of stillness.  The lunar eclipse played out in our skies for several hours, from a bright, full moon at shortly after 8:00 to a mere pinpoint of light, more like a smudge, three hours later, and then re-emergence of the full moon over the next three hours.  Holy ground…or holy skies….connections with Creation, with a universe that is vastly bigger than the planet we call home.

From the skies to the earth, Nebraska’s prairies are holy ground.  Willa Cather says, “As I looked about me, I felt the grass was the country, as the water is the sea…And there was motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.”  Time on the prairie is time on holy ground.  Much has been said recently about the importance of “touching grass,” as a means of maintaining presence, of connecting with what is real rather than what’s on screen, of stepping away from the chaos of the moment.   Walking at Spring Creek Prairie or Nine Mile Prairie is a holy ground moment, a breathing space.   

From grasses to the earth’s water….  A little more than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, creeks, rivers, lakes, seas, oceans.  Essential for life, fearsome and awesome in its power, the site of miracles and rituals and ceremonies in many of the world’s religions, and the setting for stories of exploration, danger, adventure, starting anew, and finding home.  I’ve always been intrigued by the mouths of rivers, that space where the river empties into a larger river, or an ocean, and becomes a part of something larger than itself.  Whether in reality or as a metaphor, that space is holy ground. Looking ahead at the point where the Douro River would empty into the Atlantic Ocean was a holy ground moment, a breathing space.  And at the same time, I thought of all the persons whose hearts and souls have compelled them, across countless centuries, to leave the river that they know and set out on the ocean that they don’t, in search of something bigger, some place better, perhaps, to call home. 

Those stories are holy ground, too.  The stories in There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, one of this year’s finalists for One Book One Lincoln, are holy ground moments for me.  Three characters, spanning two centuries, two continents, and set on the Tigris River and the Thames River.  Their stories intertwine, as do the drops of rain and snow that fall on them and find their way to the rivers.  The Yazidi grandmother, telling the family and cultural stories to her granddaughter, wisely knows that stories are holy, that they must be kept and preserved and told again and again and again, because the life of the community depends on its story.

In a day or two, I’ll reengage with all the reality of the world…I cannot leave the anguish and the conflict and the very real dangers alone for long, nor can I ignore the courage and bravery of those who step forward to be the helpers and the leaders.  But for this evening, in its golden light, I pause, I breathe, I give thanks for holy ground.

In light of an eclipsed world, balancing clarity and bamboozlement

 

By Mary Kay Roth

I started dreaming about cruising down the Douro River in Portugal almost a year ago when my friend discovered a river boat journey specifically featuring views of the summer solar eclipse. We signed up.

Lo and behold, several weeks ago we set off, flew to Porto, then languished in the beauty of the country and life on a river boat. We hiked, kayaked, strolled cobblestone streets of Portuguese villages and sat atop the boat’s top deck watching river vistas pass by.

The morning of the eclipse dawned clear as the crew passed out solar glasses and invited us to a special eclipse presentation. Late afternoon, passengers filled the top deck, gazing skyward while temperatures dropped and skies grew dark. As the moon began gobbling up the sun – like Pac-Man – we all oohed and awed. We reached perhaps mid eclipse.

Then the entire solar event disappeared behind a mountain.

We gasped, a boatload of disappointed – sometimes angry – passengers who were left wondering what had happened. We never saw the rest of the eclipse. We never got an explanation. 

I was upset and disheartened, but mostly just down-right confounded. 

The cruise line had advertised this journey for a full year.  And nobody had figured out there would be a mountain in the way?

Then again, I must admit, I’m confused a lot these days.  

Sure, I don’t understand people who can’t calculate the intersection of an eclipse and a mountain. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

I don’t understand the absence of common-sense to reach all kinds of reasonable conclusions: Protecting parks and forests for the future of the earth – honoring the significance and value of public education – battling the cruelty of separating migrant children from their parents.

I am bewildered by bitcoins and cryptocurrency. My son has a bank that has no building. A cup of coffee at one of my fast-food stops costs $1.09, but they won’t give me change anymore if I give them a dollar and a dime. So, doesn’t the coffee really cost $1.10?

I’m baffled by people who never use their turn signal.  Or why Harry and Meghan are coming “home.”  Or semicolons – does anyone really understand those? And don’t get me started on “six-seven.”

In fact, we now live in a mixed-up country where despicable people like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson radiate cult appeal. Where a vagina apparently prevents you from becoming president of the United States. And good grief, where people imagine the song American Pie is the work of the devil – and that the election of 2024 was rigged because a crazy man tells them so. 

Then of course, please explain how citizens of Nebraska can vote for a variety of initiatives, then state legislators have the ego and audacity to override them. Or how our state senators can transform a group of trans individuals into villains, when they are simply humans trying to live their true lives. 

Explain how an awful creature like Elton Musk can be the richest man on earth – with $873 billion – while a hard-working family of four is barely able to cover increasing costs of groceries, lodging, utilities. 

Or, why on earth is your god better than mine?  And vice versa.

Sometimes I wonder if all these misunderstandings are a function of age and that I’m simply becoming a curmudgeon. My dad worked for the telephone company for decades, yet never figured out how to use a cell phone.  He kept waiting for the dial tone.  

Still, on these sweaty, late-summer days, it seems there are new horizons of bamboozlement.

True confessions, I can’t really tell you how wifi works. Or dry cleaning.  Or mahjong.  Or black holes.  I’m muddled by commercials that never tell you what they’re advertising. And the elusive strategy of Lincoln’s street repair.

This week I read the United States currently carries a record $40 trillion in national debt. I’m at a loss to wrap my arms around that number.

How big is $40 trillion?  Google tells me that $40 trillion is more than the median value of every single-family home in America. Forty trillion dollars is twice as much as the combined net worth of every single billionaire on earth – in fact, it would take more than 50 Elon Musks to equal $40 trillion. And if you stacked 40 trillion $100 bills, the pile would be about 27,000 miles high (enough to wrap around the globe).  

I’m told the national debt has reached $40 trillion because the federal government consistently spends more money than it collects in taxes, a debt that includes all money owed to others, as well as – believe it or not – what the government owes itself.

Owes itself? 

Last I checked it was pretty risky to borrow cash from myself. And when my car loan is overdue, I barely have time to come up for air when I am warned to pay up.  

The world befuddles me. 

The richest 10 percent of the global population owns roughly 75 to 85 percent of all personal and household wealth worldwide – leaving the bottom 50 percent of humanity with roughly 2 percent or less.

Yet we are boosting the national debt by building gilded ballrooms, ensuring luxurious tax cuts for the rich and funding ridiculous wars – at the same time a family without a home cannot qualify for a reasonable loan and we can’t cover basic health care for our population.  

So, at this point in my rantings you may wonder if I’ve written this blog to see how many synonyms I could use for the word, “confused.”

Yes, I am flummoxed by why manual cars now cost more than automatics.  I am perplexed that my new refrigerator will never live as long as my trusty old one which survived three decades. I am bemused by $500 blue jeans and the money we spend poisoning our front yards.

But this blog is about more than synonyms.

I suspect many of you are just as confused as I am these days, taking plenty of deep sighs and aspirin.  So, I’m thinking this is a most important time to clearly identify what does NOT confuse us.  

Bottom line, I’m not confused about grandchildren.  Grandchildren are gold. 

I’m not confused about the importance of protecting our most vulnerable against cruelty and inequity – about remembering to stand up for those core values of kindness and empathy.

Honoring scientific conclusions does not confuse me: The necessity of childhood vaccinations. Sheltering our good green earth. During COVID, using treatments recommended by wise medical officials. 

Frankly, I’m confident honest politicians still exist – along with election commissioners who stand firm.  I’m surely not confused about the absolute and essential necessity of voting.   

And though I’m a little confused about cappuccinos, lattes and frappes, I’m not confused about the delight in a simple cup of black coffee.

I’m completely clear about Bob Marley’s song, Three Little Birds, which will consistently and always make me feel better. And, apologies to Judy Collins, but I do really know clouds – they’re grand. 

I’m not confused about the rightness of public education.  I’m crystal clear about the importance of continuing to read and finding good sources and resources.

I am absolutely not confused about friendship.  Friends are my salvation.  Or my dog, Pip – and the love of a rescue pup.  Or family dinners, the warmth and wonder around the table, even when we don’t always agree.

And, finally, believe it or not, I’m not really confused about remarkable celestial events. Just loan me a cool trillion and I’ll go find another solar eclipse.

The invisible GenX woman

By Karla Lester

Video killed the radio star by The Buggles launched MTV 45 years ago and changed things forever. GenX is the MTV generation.

GenX is the middle child generation between Boomers and Millennials. We had big hair and listened to Hair bands. We watched Brat pack movies like St. Elmo’s Fire, Breakfast Club and worked fast food. John Cusack, my favorite, held up his boombox in Say Anything, blaring In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. 

GenX made mixtapes for friends or their crush. The girls had big hair and the guys had mullets. Most of us weren’t Valley Girls, though we quoted the movie. GenX women had feathered hair and lots of perms. We put Sun In in our hair to make it lighter. Side ponytails were a thing and so was Madonna. 

Diet culture of the 80’s was really big. We were told to eat low fat and low calorie and marketed Dexatrim. It was never about health. Only about weight and seeking the male gaze. Jane Fonda started working out and the aerobics craze took off. Leg warmers and all. Food was convenient and not always healthy. Olivia Newton John sang Let’s get physical, which was about anything but fitness. 

GenX is smaller in population because of the introduction of the birth control pill in the 1960’s. The sexual revolution was stifled by the AIDS epidemic. We learned about “safe sex” and were taught to “just say no” to drugs by Nancy Reagan and her war on drugs. Some of us were Like a Virgin because we were more of the science olympiad and marching band ilk and others were navigating HIV risk and practicing safe sex.

In War Games, a teen hacks into a U.S. military supercomputer from his personal computer and accidentally simulates a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. We grew up in the silent fear of the Cold War, the Iran Contra scandal, knew all the words to Purple Rain, feared acid rain and Chernobyl. Though we had MTV, we were not watching cable news or following politics 24/7. Many call us the first tech-savvy generation.We were the first to have cable television and MTV and personal computers. We went from Atari to personal computers to iphones and now AI. ChatGPT did not write this blog, though they will likely steal it. 

The GenX woman is self reliant and independent. She is very achievement focused. The male centered life of their mothers didn’t always work out for them. Told we can’t have it all when we were just trying to make it work while working.

Sometimes, the forgotten generation or first generation of latchkey kids. There were more children of divorce, single parent homes, and dual income families. My parents got divorced when I was five years old, finalized in my first week of kindergarten. I was one of two kids in my grade with divorced parents and then over time, that grew. A lot of GenX women grew up in dysfunctional families that cared more about what people thought of them than what was happening at home. 

Between Saturday morning cartoons, School House Rock and watching Love Boat and Fantasy Island, we were marketed, “I can bring home the bacon. Fry it up in a pan. And never ever let you forget you’re a man.” GenX women said, “Gag me with a spoon.” 

The Equal Rights Amendment told us we could be a Girl Boss. We watched 9 to 5 and then went off to a very patriarchal workplace. More GenX women went to college and closed the gender gap in higher education, but the gender pay gap still exists. 

Work-life balance was the unattainable goal. GenX women were told to do it all, but we can’t have it all. GenX women were still doing most of the work at home. “The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home” by Arlie Russell Hochschild was published in 1989. I read it in a women’s studies class in college and was incensed to learn that women had been fed a bunch of lies. Women who go to work come home and work a second shift too. 

GenX women laughed off a lot of aggression, harassment and discrimination. We said sorry and still say sorry a lot for things that weren’t and aren’t our fault. 

Most of us drove not so nice cars. Some of us barely got access to really shitty cars that could be used only to go to work and then broke down on the way to McDonald’s where my Mom got me a job on my 16th birthday. That’s where Assistant Manager Barry shoved me up against the drive thru window, my fake topsiders dangling an inch off the ground, my polyester McDonald’s uniform and visor askew. “You and your Smart Ass mouth need to shut up.” I think Barry thought he was in Die Hard. 

“Thanks for calling me smart, Barry. Sorry I can’t return the compliment.”

Barry should have been fired. But, every GenX woman knows there’s no way he would have if I had reported him. I quit, even though I just got a nickel raise to $3.35/hour. Next job I worked at a bank opening accounts, CD’s and got paid $4.50/ hour. Take that Barry! The VP of the bank was a short guy with darting eyes who wouldn’t stop staring at my chest, his eyes searching for something that wasn’t there. So sorry, Jeff. I just need to know how to change the printer toner. 

GenX guys didn’t always have it going on. 

“All the nerds love Karla,” my Mom, Barb, used to tell everyone. “It’s because she’s so nice to them.” 

Just to shut him up, I went out on a date with a guy who kept bugging me. He put his arm around me in the movie and I thought I was going to barf. I told him I had to go to the bathroom and I called my Mom on the pay phone outside the movie theater and asked her to come pick me up. She couldn’t, but told me to tell him I just want to be friends. He was leaning in for a kiss as I broke the news. One foot out the door, “Hey, let’s just be friends.” He was bragging about the gas mileage of his Dad’s Ford Escort the whole date. Boring was this guy’s first, middle and last name. 

GenX women don’t like disappointing people. Another guy I hung out with wore a trench coat, had a beat up car and spray painted U2 on it. He asked me to prom and I said no because I didn’t have romantic feelings (not that I would use those terms) for him. He didn’t go to his senior prom. I was a junior. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I stopped feeling bad about it when my own son asked a girl to Homecoming and she told him she wouldn’t have time to get a dress. They were friends and he was bummed. But, I thought good for her to say no if she didn’t want to go with him. 

Roe v. Wade passed in 1973. It’s been undone. Peri menopause and menopause hit GenX women hard and we didn’t even know we were in it. We were the generation of women who couldn’t have hormonal replacement therapy and are now past the window where it might be helpful. We lathered baby oil all over us to get tan and are now going to the dermatologist to get checked for skin cancer . 

Though we screamed until we lost our voices at concerts, our voices have often been silenced. We are invisible at times. We are non confrontational and have no clue what we are really feeling because no one was ever listening or asked us. We had the empowerment of being free range kids in the neighborhood and no one caring about where we were and no one asking or caring about our feelings. It’s time to get internal and to stop saying Sorry. 

GenX women can grind out a goal and become exhausted and burnt out. Like women of every generation, there is invisible labor that is layered on GenX women, many sandwiched and caregiving. Moving into the next chapter of our lives, GenX women can get intentional about what we want. Instead of self-reliance, GenX women can rely on each other. 

There is an authenticity, a humanity, a sense of humor that is GenX. Girls just want to have fun. Yes, and we also want meaningful and impactful lives and connection with people we love. 

Don’t stop believin’ that GenX is the best generation. For sure, the coolest generation. A rad generation of resilient women. Totally. GenX women, I see you. I hear you.

The Wisdom of Mature Women

By Chelsea Klinkebiel

I am 25 years old….well....actually, I turned 40 this year, but this seems to be my internal “default” age, the point in my life at which I had graduated from college and was in the beginning years of graduate school. Does this happen to others?  When I hear about international postgrad internships and postdoctoral fellowships, I think, “Ooh! That sounds interesting.” Somehow, I am permanently stuck in those exciting years when I was still designing my life and when a lack of sleep or a hangover didn’t derail me for days. However, all too often, I am quickly reminded of my age when I hop out of bed too quickly, go a day without supportive shoes, or eat exactly one donut hole and have raging heartburn all day.

In 2011, I got the opportunity to travel to Beijing for a week with my aunt Marilyn as a part of a Nebraska Educators Tour of China. I was the youngest member of the group by at least 10 to 15 years. In my 25-year-old naiveté and utter lack of research into our activities, I wore flip-flops and a skirt on the day we toured the Great Wall of China. I remember coming down to the hotel lobby and hearing the gasps from the more mature and much wiser women. I shrugged it off in the lobby, and I shrugged off the steep hike awaiting us when we arrived. At the time, I was training for a half marathon and climbed past the rest of the group for quite a while, ending up by myself with many Chinese tourists. I don’t remember pain or soreness that day or the following days, but I cannot imagine wearing flip-flops for longer than an hour at this point in my life.

I now fully understand the reactions to the flip-flops, and I am so grateful for the many things I have learned from mature women. I say mature rather than “older.” Many of the women whom I have learned from are older than me, but I also think of maturity as it relates to emotional stability and emotional intelligence, social and relational skills, and wisdom. 

The mature women I know could not care less about beauty standards. They are not concerned about the wrinkles and saggy skin that come with age. They are not chasing the latest diet or concerned with shape or weight. They are less concerned about what they look like and more concerned with what they are looking at. Mature women gave me the confidence to embrace my unruly, curly hair, and it has given me so much time back in my life. Although mature women could not care less about beauty standards, they care for their bodies. They nourish them with delicious and often healthy foods, walk religiously come rain or shine, practice yoga and meditation, and work to retain their strength. Mature women know that caring for themselves comes first if they will care for others. 

However, the mature women I know also do not center the needs and lives of men above their own. They have their own work, hobbies, volunteering, and friends. Along with these values, mature women value experiences over things, and people and relationships over status and possessions. I am so inspired by the women who give their time and resources while living simply. 

The mature women in my life provide authentic examples of practicing radical acceptance. They have experienced and are living with chronic illnesses, cancer, loss, the stress of aging family members and partners, disappointments that come with life experiences, estranged family members, the current events we are all living through (waves around vaguely). They allow those experiences to take up space in their lives and do not struggle against them. At the same time, they experience joy and hope, they seek out new experiences, they incorporate fun and excitement in their lives, and they keep moving forward. 

I do have to make one generational comparison as well. This is solely based on anecdotal evidence and my observations, but I think mature women make and keep friends well. As a millennial mom who has relocated many times, I have struggled with keeping in touch with same-age friends and finding a consistent friend group. This may be controversial, but I think my generation and the generations that came after ours have a tendency to expect perfection in our interactions with others, think more rigidly, and experience social anxiety. I think we have a hard time tolerating discomfort with disagreement and a tendency to disengage with uncomfortable interactions. From the time I have spent with mature women, I have witnessed their friendships in action. There is debate, disagreement, and clashes of personalities. I witness repair after conflict, and I also witness friends simply “moving on” and enjoying one another. Perhaps they know that it is not worth their time to worry and ruminate.

I am working on embracing this attitude in my quest to spend more time with friends. I am so grateful, though, that much of my social life involves working alongside and spending quality time with the mature women in my life. They have much to teach us.

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A gratitude drop-out

By JoAnne Young  

A doodad on our fireplace spells out Gratitude in an interesting shade of turquoise, with a little bell attached that seemingly would ring each time I am grateful, or each time a breeze would shake it to remind me of the message. 
 
If that’s not enough, a sticker on our bathroom mirror says simply: Grateful. 
 
It’s a gentle nudge, a heads up, that there are so many people, places and things worthy of acknowledging. 
 
But ... in these times there are equal numbers of miscreants, bad deeds and tribulations that make gratitude more of a chore. I’ve tried to combat these with a gratitude journal or a daily list of what I’m grateful for and have failed at it every time. I’m not sure why. I know it’s supposed to be really good for us, especially when we’re feeling mentally challenged. It works for a lot of people. 
 
I feel like a gratitude drop out, having to work so hard to make that list every day. 
 
Then I discovered a writer on Substack, Kate Bowler, who describes herself as a “human with big questions.” Last month she seemed to understand my dilemma when she offered up prompts to substitute when writing what you are grateful for “just isn’t going to cut it.” Just in case you are interested, I will share some. Feel free to join me. 
 
Q: What minor inconvenience has become your entire personality this week?
 
A: My television service with formerly ALLO, now DirecTV, has taken too much of my time  and brain space trying to make it work as it is supposed to work. ALLO, once for me a trusted local company, ended its TV service and encouraged all its customers to switch to DirecTV, touting that it would cost less and deliver the seamless entertainment I deserve. Maybe I don’t deserve seamless entertainment, because it is quite glitchy and has to be rebooted daily. After a multitude of phone calls to both ALLO and DirecTV and a change in equipment, the problem persists, and a woman in a faraway state told me that maybe our Samsung TV, which we bought in 2020, is too old for the Gemini device that is paired with DirecTV. That, I told her, would be an expensive fix. She chuckled and agreed. 
 
First world problem, I know. I’ve run out of solutions, and am now just disappointed with ALLO, and consequently untrusting of local companies I once had faith in. I’m back to thinking, 'well, that’s how our world works these days.' But also grateful that was my biggest problem this week. 
 
Q: What are you pretending not to care about?
 
A: That my country’s food inspection system has seemingly been dismantled and we’re going to continue to find out the foods we depend on in our grocery stores and restaurants may or may not be safe, depending on the day. What can you do but stop eating salads and raw fruits and vegetables and eggs and other foods amid the mounting recalls. I’ll just cook everything. And wine hasn’t been recalled yet, has it?
 
Q: What is something that brought you unexpected cheer recently?

A: An afternoon at the zoo with a best friend. The flamboyant crest of blue feathers on the peacock’s head. The spider monkeys racing around grabbing branches with tails, hands and feet. The young boy who was a butterfly magnet. They landed on his Under Armour hat and his shirt without him even trying. And the arguing flamingos at the water hole, and the one nearby that slept through it. 

 

Q: Name three things that are currently holding your life together. 
 
A: The people with whom I can share truth, insight, laughter and comfort. It’s important, as Anne Lamott says, especially when your mind is cranky, cringey and trying to figure out who to blame. Sharing what’s troubling me always seems to lessen it. 
 
Treats. I have a quote on a shelf I pass frequently by Irish writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch that says: “One of the secrets of a continuous happy life is continuous small treats.” A dark chocolate square. A top-spiral notebook with a Starry Night cover. A Pilot G-2 bold tip pen. Drinking my kombucha out of a Bodum double-wall glass, in which the kombucha seems to float. A brief talk with a stranger. A chocolate chip pancake. Fresh air. 
 
Books and writers. I’m reading an 18^th-century gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe an enjoying the way people talked and wrote in late 1700s England. “She immediately withdrew from the casement, and though much agitated, sought in sleep the refreshment of a short oblivion.” Ahh, yes. I could use a short oblivion. 
 
I also find respite in female essay writers: Randon Billings Noble, Sue William Silverman, Judith Kitchen and Suleika Jaouad. In the Isolation Journals on Substack, Jaouad, who is herself going through long-term cancer treatment, wrote about an older chihuahua she and her husband Jon Batiste are watching after. The dog, Nonna, was near death when she came to their house, and somehow through medical care and love, she lived on. Still, Jaouad knows this will be a short love story. 

 

“When time shrinks, everything sharpens,” she wrote. “... Earlier this week I sat on my porch and watched her have her best day yet. She tiptoed onto the dewy grass, froze, then decided to scamper across the lawn anyway. She investigated every dandelion as if it were a revelation. ... She’s even started to play. 
 
“I used to think love was proven over time” she wrote, “accumulated, measured in years. But this experience has me reconsidering. Maybe love has nothing to do with time at all. Maybe it’s the decision to show up fully for something fragile and fleeting even when you know it will break your heart. Especially then.” 

 

Gratitude. 
 
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