Pat Taub
This week I’ll be a guest speaker for a Zoom class of older women, addressing what makes for a meaningful aging. For my presentation, I came up with these guidelines for growing into a wise older woman, which I’m sharing here:
Honor Your Failures
Reframe your “failures” as risks you took where you stuck your neck out. Examine them for the lessons they presented, and move on where you promise yourself to stop obsessing over your past.
Practice Compassion
Compassion is our better nature. It ushers us into the light. This election season the big compassion challenge is to find compassion for those with whom you differ. Don’t overlook self-compassion. When feeling blue, treat yourself to an orchid plant, a luxuriating herbal bath, or a queenly food, like lobster.
Tend to Your Soul
Develop a spiritual practice that calms your soul. Meditate daily, if only for 10 minutes to start. You might want to join those women who meditate in front of their home altars, featuring candles, flowers and keepsakes, like family photos and a treasured poem. Seek an online spiritual community that speaks to you
Practice Gratitude
Another calming practice. Develop a morning ritual where you accompany your coffee or tea with a reflection on what you’re grateful for in your life. Maybe it’s something as simple as watching a bird from your kitchen window.
Journaling daily gratitudes can be a calming practice
Ask for Help
During Covid, when loneliness strikes, call a friend or arrange a Zoom call with a few close friends. Reaching out is difficult for many women, but once you do it a few times, it gets easier, especially when you find empathetic friends at the other end.
Volunteer
Research findings on what makes for a meaningful life stress the importance of volunteering to help others. Volunteering generates positive feelings in the volunteer. While Covid has restricted volunteer activities, needs exist, like delivering food to shut-ins or joining a phone bank to drum up support for those facing home evictions.
Laugh and Smile More
Laughter releases feel-good endorphins, helping to reduce stress. Watch zany films; dig into classic humorists like James Thurber, or make-up a silly story for a grand. “She who laughs, lasts.”
Marx Brothers films deliver plenty of laughs
Cultivate Your Close Relationships
Call a friend for a socially distant walk or outdoor latte meet-up. Take advantage of more time at home to write letters to distant family and friends.
Take Naps
I love my 25-minute power naps. As a friend once remarked, quoting Shakespeare: “Naps are nature’s nurse.”
Get Outside as Much as Possible
Thankfully Covid hasn’t restricted outdoor time. Many people herald the benefits of a daily walk to reduce Covid-induced anxiety.
Be a Citizen of the World
Our shaky nation needs all the concerned citizens it can garner. Join a phone bank to get out the vote, an online climate action group, or an organization working for racial justice. If you can afford it, give money to causes dear to your heart. Be an engaged elder by supporting young protesters, like teens in the Sunrise Movement, working for a Green New Deal.
Being a responsible elder could take the form of supporting youthful climate activists
Don’t be Paralyzed by Fears of Death
As we age, the Grim Reaper lurks nearby. Death becomes less scary when we prepare for it. Have a “do-not-resuscitate” order in place. Talk to loved ones about how you want to be treated when you are dying. Educate yourself about the services of Hospice and of Death Doulas, trained professionals who offer caring, spiritual guidance at the end of life.
Reach for New Horizons
Shake off those ageist sayings that regard old age as stagnant, when in reality aging is a state of continuing growth. Slower bodies do not equate with diminished creativity. Rather than approach the forthcoming winter lockdown with dread, view it as an opportunity to let your creativity blossom. Dust off drafts of stories you filed away; take up a new hobby like watercolors or learning to play the guitar.
