My earliest memory precedes language. I was about 18 months old when I heard my mother crying for the first time. [Read more…]
Domestic Abuse is a Life Sentence for the Victims
Boomers and Separate Bedrooms
Remember these two? There was a time when TV censors wouldn’t let you portray a married couple sleeping in the same bed. That was around the time we Baby Boomers were children.
Then we grew up and boy, how things changed. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, baby.
But now we’re getting older, and things are changing again, particularly in the bedroom. There’s a lot more snoring going on, from both sides of the bed. More tossing and turning. More sensitivity to temperature, noise and movement. More aches and pains everywhere. Sleep is becoming more elusive.
Well, that’s okay, we used to think, because older people don’t need as much sleep. Right?
No. We now know that isn’t true. Older people need the same eight hours as any adult. It’s just harder for us to get it, largely because we produce less melatonin and whatever else it is that brings on sleep. And that’s a problem, because we’re learning that sleep is more important than we’d ever realized.
For example, did you know that your brain cleanses itself during certain sleep cycles? Not having a lymphatic system to carry out the trash, our brains shrink during the night, allowing spinal fluid to wash the area and remove the detritus of the day. When we don’t sleep well, this process, one of many, doesn’t run optimally.
And getting up in the morning after an unrestful night is depressing. Nobody wants to do that. As a result, in a highly scientific survey consisting of asking myself and several friends, I’m learning that some of us are moving away from the customary one bed/two people construct. For example, my friend and her husband agreed to have separate bedrooms. She even went out and bought herself a brand new bedroom set. He got her old one. Hey, he’s happy. He still has visitor privileges.
Mom and Dad moved into separate bedrooms, when Dad began tossing and turning and snoring and getting up to use the restroom a hundred times a night. Mom’s a light sleeper, and she had trouble going back to sleep once she was awake, so that solution worked for them.
Then there’s the option of changing rooms in the middle of the night. I do that sometimes if I get restless or achey. I’ll go sleep in the guest room just for a different mattress. It’s wonderful. I’m trying to make sure I get as close to eight hours of sleep each night as possible, and it’s a joy to wake up and see the clock reading six a.m. What a luxury! I couldn’t do that as a younger person, and if you’re still raising kids or working fulltime, I feel for you.
For more information on the power and necessity of sleep, click here.
A Boomer’s Painful Retrospective
Kathleen Pooler, Author
At this age, many of us are evaluating our lives, wondering why we made so many bad choices.
In her brand-new memoir, my friend Kathy Pooler, nurse, cancer survivor, and all-around-good girl, comes to understand why she married two abusive and borderline-dangerous men. It’s a great narrative which reads like a novel. As I read, I felt like screaming “NO!” Of course, it’s easy to say that now, having earned better judgment after living through my own bad decisions.
In the following interview, edited for brevity, Kathy refers to “magical thinking,” a phrase popularized by the great Joan Didion. In general, this is when you cling to the hope that something will happen to magically change your spouse from, say, a philanderer to faithful, or an addict to drug-or-alcohol-free, if only we love them enough. If only we put up with enough. If only…
Why did you write Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse?
I started out writing a different story about a cancer diagnosis and watching a beloved son spiral downward into substance abuse but realized I could not write about that until I wrote about getting into and out of two abusive marriages…It is possible to climb out of the abyss of poor decisions and go on to live life on your own terms.
Was there any one person who was your inspiration for your main character?
Me. I was driven by the question: “How does a young woman from a loving Catholic family make so many wise choices about career, yet so many poor choices about love, that she and her two children end up escaping from her second husband for fear of physical abuse?” It was time to answer the question that had been asked of me my entire life by those who loved me.
In the book, you say “a loving family, a solid career and a strong faith cannot rescue her until she decides to rescue herself.” Why do you feel that way?
One of the lessons I learned when I wrote this book is that…I only needed to claim and honor my own inner strength. I was the only one who could do it for myself. It sounds so simple, but it took me years to realize this.
What’s the most important thing readers will learn from Ever Faithful to His Lead?
Three things come to mind:
- One does not have to sustain broken bones or bruises to be abused. Emotional abuse is harmful and the impact on the children of mothers who are in abusive relationships is far-reaching and damaging.
- Abuse impacts all socioeconomic groups. I was a masters-prepared nurse from a loving family and yet I got into two emotionally abusive marriages.
- Denial and magical thinking can keep one from recognizing abusive behavior and taking action.
Lynne here. Whew. I’m no stranger to domestic abuse – grew up with it and married into it, twice (but I must clarify that, as with Kathy, we are now in loving, gratifying marriages). But this memoir took me back. On a lighter note, I enjoyed the references to Growing Up Boomer, since Kathy and I are the same age. Ever Faithful is an enlightening book, one that younger women would benefit from reading – before they choose life partners.
Let’s switch gears and talk about the writing life. I asked Kathy:
When do you write? Is it easier to write in the morning or at night?
I don’t have a specific routine. The muse can strike early in the morning, in the afternoon or late at night. I’ve had times when I’ve awakened up in the middle of the night to write because the thoughts swirling in my head would not let me rest until they found a place on the page. I do know that if I do not get my quota of writing done during the day, I often end up staying up late.
Who’s your favorite author?
That’s a tough question because I read a variety of authors. But two of my favorites are James Michener for the rich detail of his historical novels and Ernest Hemingway for his sparse prose that says so much. And of course, Lynne Spreen! I mean, if Jim and Ernie were alive today, they’d want to know her secret for slapping a novel together.
Okay, I wrote that. – LMS
Where can we buy the book? Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, my website, Pen & Publish Press.
10% of the proceeds of the sale of Ever Faithful to His Lead will go toward the National Coalition for the Awareness of Domestic Violence.
The Human Experience
Sting is Jazzed to be Old
He had a serious case of writers’ block. For the past dozen years, Sting, aka Gordon Sumner, lost his creative mojo.
“I had no interest in tailoring songs for Top 40 radio, for 14-year-old girls or boys. I’m a 62-year-old man. Where is the arena to present my work?” he asked in an interview with Time Magazine (June 30, 2014).
This talented boomer was facing a challenge so many of us are going through right now. What had seemed relevant, interesting, or motivating in years past does not capture us now. Have we become jaded or less easily moved?
Actually, I think it’s neither. Per Barbara Strauch, who wrote The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain,
As we age, our emotions not only remain largely intact but are also considerably more robust than our abilities in other areas…”
So, what was Sting’s problem? I think I know.
We’ve been taught, raised, brainwashed, had it shoved down our throats that old age is irrelevant. It’s boring, stupid, a wasteland. Once you’re old, and you’ve moved out of interesting, vibrant, relevant youth, there’s nothing much else left to discover about humankind. We might as well shoot ourselves, we’re so pointless.
However, Sting, creative genius that he is, ignored the cultural mandate to disappear. Instead, he found another gear. He wrote a Broadway musical based on his birthplace of Wallsend, a port town in northeastern England. Entitled The Last Ship, it’s the story of a “self-exiled” man who returns home and finds his community about to vanish. They will build one last ship to show the world what they do and who they are.
Engaged in the project, his writers’ block vanished. Sting says 40-50 songs “just poured out of me fully formed.”
I think this is what he discovered: the new relevance of age. Sting found a whole new creative place from which to mine his art, and – good for marketing – a gigantic audience of passionately curious older minds that are fully equipped with deep emotional capacity.
When I published my novel, Dakota Blues, I anticipated that there would be a market for midlife art, because there’s so much material in the second half of life. My God, the things we go through, and the way we react and adapt, are so interesting. Not that the kids don’t have their own fascinating developments, but everybody’s writing about them. I’m only suggesting we older peeps shift our focus. Let’s dig down and find out what’s going on with our age group. Here are some of the issues that engage me:
- How are you different from when you were younger, and is that a good or a bad thing?
- What would you still like to learn?
- What ass-kicking talent or strength have you finally mastered?
- Is there anything you’ve given up on achieving? What made you decide that, and are you okay with it?
- Have you discovered anything about your life that you were doing wrong for, oh, say the last 30 years, and now that you know, you’ve decided to change it?
When Sting began to look back on his life and his aging hometown, he found a wealth of material that galvanized him. By all accounts, he’s electrifying audiences again. I would theorize that there’s an untapped well in the experiences of the second half. For artists, this is exciting news. For audiences, you may soon be entertained at a whole new level.
Open your minds, folks. Find another gear.
A Feminist Salutes Fathers’ Day
In honor of Fathers’ Day, I, a lifelong feminist, would like to salute fathers everywhere and, in particular, my husband, son, stepson, and son-in-law. They are all awesome dads.
Partly I’m motivated because of a weird backlash going on right now against feminism. Some people say it’s about hating men. Nothing could be further from the truth. The feminism I fell in love with, back in the 1970s, was about letting people fulfill their dreams and potential without regard to gender-related cultural conventions.
Like letting men cuddle and nuzzle their children, and cry if they felt like it. Stay at home with the kids instead of working. We were slow to realize it, but I think we’re finally coming to understand how critically important fathers are to their children’s development.
My own dad was a complicated guy. Because of my tough homelife, and seeing Mom trapped by her circumstances, I grew up vowing never to be dependent on anybody. I started working at a very young age, and had strong ideas about women being able to support themselves. A feminist had been born, and my dad, overbearing and dictatorial, was responsible.
In more benevolent ways, he helped me develop into the kick-ass professional woman I became. He was famous for saying, “Any excuse is a good excuse.” Which meant, of course, that no excuse mattered. Thus, as I matured, I became embarrassed to make excuses. I simply delivered, a useful trait in life and work.
As I came into my own, Dad enjoyed hearing my stories of the corporate jungle, and my increasingly clever vine-swinging. I was his business kid. He was my first mentor. Much of my success is due to him. I still have his monogrammed briefcase on display in my office.
Dad passed on in 2008, just before the Great Recession hit. Which was a blessing, because he lived through such a traumatic childhood during the Great Depression that, like many of his contemporaries, he still indulged in scarcity rituals right up until his death. Like buying food in bulk, and keeping a gigantic freezer packed with meat and staples, even though he was only feeding himself and Mom.
It’s been almost six years since he died, and I’m embarrassed to say there are days and days I don’t think about him, and many days I think about him without any pain at all. But sometimes, like when I hear Spanish Eyes, a great favorite of his and the last song to which he danced with Mom, grief comes roiling through my heart like a blinding, dark, smashing tidal wave. It seems insurmountable. Incomprehensible.
How is it possible I’ll never see him again?
Dad and Grandma c 1925
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