People like to say bad things about women competing with each other, and stabbing each other in the back. Every fiber in my being resists these petty stereotypes.
But.
Backstabbing Women, Part 1
Boomer Achieves Lifetime Dream
After wishin’ and hopin’ and plannin’ and workin’ and prayin’…
After earning a self-created, home-cooked degree in How To Write A Novel (with a minor in How To Build a Platform)…
After writing and throwing away hundreds of pages that just weren’t quite good enough…
After years of answering my friends and family: “Almost!” and “Pretty soon!”
Two big things happened.
I discovered a passion for the topic of aging powerfully, and
On July 17, a date that would have been my mom and dad’s 63rd wedding anniversary,
I published my very first novel!
Dakota Blues is about:
- midlife reinvention,
- the quest to find meaning and empowerment in the second half of life,
- the need to feel a connection with our ancestors,
- dealing with the issues that hit without warning as we age,
- whether we’re too old at a certain point to start something new,
- whether it’s selfish and ungrateful to want more, and
- finding the courage to change later in life.
Or, putting words into pictures, here’s what you’ll find in Dakota Blues (available now in paperback, and on Kindle in the second week of August, +/-):
I can’t tell you how much this means to me, to have reached this goal, and to have done it at fifty-eight. This is a time when many of us are rethinking our lives, and wondering whether to break through the age limitations placed on us by an earlier set of beliefs.
This is what we’re supposed to be doing, folks: chasing our dreams like there’s no tomorrow, excited as kids, refusing to lie down and let the culture of low expectations steamroll us. This is how to live in the second half. This is how to live, period. That’s what my character, Karen Grace, struggles with, and that’s what Dakota Blues is about.
I hope you buy a copy, and if you do, I hope you love it enough to add a rating to the Dakota Blues page on Amazon or Goodreads. Ratings mean everything in this online, digitized society, where there’s far too material to sort through without help.
Thanks for standing by me while I struggled. I hope I can do the same for you someday.
PS Today is the fourth anniversary of my father’s passing. I hope he can see what I’ve done. I miss him more than I can say.
Love,
Lynne
Getting Old is Fantastic!
Anna Quindlen, Author
Anna Quindlen is 59 years old, and she thinks the same way I do, so today, I’m going to borrow from her new book to make my own points about age. [Read more…]
Wok This Way
Anthony Bourdain, Celebrity Chef and World Traveler
Tony Bourdain was recently in Penang, Malaysia enjoying street fare with a guide. The guide, a woman, looked to be around late 40s, early 50s. She seemed very wise, with a fun sense of humor. They watched a street vendor cooking a blazing stirfry in a time-seasoned wok. The guide said these woks are heirlooms, very prized and highly valued. They can be over a century old and are handed down from family member to family member.
Street scene in Penang
They’re prized because they’re old. The new ones don’t cook the same. They can’t take the heat. You have to cook more carefully with a new one because if left unsupervised it will burn the meal. On the other hand, the old ones cook evenly and they tend to caramelize the food, adding their own extra layer of flavor.
Boomer Broad Scores! (and you can, too)
A few weeks ago I wrote about saving $50 because I took a chance and negotiated, even though I’m not that kind of girl. [Read more…]
A Contemplation on Mortality
Just before dawn on a cold October morning in 2008, I boarded a puddle-jumper out of North Dakota after my father’s funeral. Mom, my two siblings and I were returning to California, and it felt like we were abandoning Dad. As I listened to Rainbow by Jia Peng Fang and looked out the window at the dots of light representing isolated farmhouses of South Dakota, then Wyoming, then Colorado, the song burned a powerful memory into my mind. Every now and then I hear it, and it reminds me, and I’m flattened, stunned stupid with grief all over again. So then I wonder,
Why the hell did humans have to get stuck with knowing they’re mortal?
It’s such a burden, and it’s a special gift to humans alone. Animals have no concept (although sometimes I wonder about elephants). Think how comforting it would be to have the limited consciousness of a dog, for example. You eat, sleep, poop, and watch for opportunities. You don’t think about your eight missing litter-mates or parents.
And then this is amazing: we humans adjust. I can go a whole month or two without feeling bad about Dad. What an underrated coping mechanism! We not only get used to the idea that we’ll lose our loved ones, but once we do suffer such a loss, we adapt and move on. The drive to survive wins out over grief, and even allows us to repress the knowledge that some day, we’re going to deliver that same blow to our loved ones.
Recently I noticed Bill was moping around. He was missing his parents, he said, but when I tried to comfort him, he declined. “The pain reminds me of the love I felt for them. They were good parents.” Bill, who doesn’t believe in a God or afterlife, believes he will live on through the people he’s influenced positively.
I get fearful sometimes in the wee hours, when the arithmetic seems more stark and life more of a crap shoot. Like you, I’ve survived tragedy; I’ve dealt with situations that made me feel almost mentally ill at the realization of a horrendous truth, or some kind of great loss. Sometimes it seems we humans know too much. One way to alleviate that burden is a form of denial: you stay busy and productive, enjoy the sun on your face and the fragrance of new-mown grass, and try to ignore it.
I finally told Bill about my existentialist woes. I didn’t want to bum him out, because he’s always such a Pollyanna and I didn’t know if he could handle my dark side. He shrugged and said, “Life is wonderful, but it IS a ticking bomb.” Cracked me up. I felt relieved. We know we will die. The choice is what we do with that knowledge.
I’ve pretty much decided to ignore the fact in favor of energetic productivity, and let the chips fall where they may. What about you? What’s your strategy for dealing with this?
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