Life Is So Damn Much Life

I teach people how to get their emotions in order - what are they, how to get through the hard ones, how to get to the good ones and not have the hard ones always be in control. As a result their lives and their feelings about themselves change drastically and dramatically - all to the good.

So what happens to the teacher when she is having one of "those" days? Well, I'll tell you. I'm pissed off that things aren't how I want them to be. I can neither sit, stand, walk or lay down totally comfortably for very long - and it's been months - and it's really gotten to my head today. Not only that, the bank made a dumb error that I have to call them about and several other "first world" issues that I feel too embarrassed to publicly moan about. But Damn! Life is so hard sometimes.

And I don't even feel like being spiritual about it (but I will sneak in and say that Someone has played exactly the song I needed to hear this morning, the Beatles "Because" and put exactly the right book into my hands, Steve Jobs biography, and had me turn on a documentary about very emotional, very creative Isaac Mizrachi all of which reminded me that a) fame and success is no barrier to feeling upset, b) even people who have lots of emotional difficulties contribute greatly to the world and c) because the sky is blue it turns me on). But, as I said, I don't feel like being spiritual or grateful today. 

I just want to scream, complain and be downright annoying. I want to be a little baby again. Just like I was in the picture sometime in 1943.

I know tomorrow will be a better day and if I go clean my dumb kitchen, I'll feel better.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Married and Sex

Senior Sex Drive

You've probably read or heard stories like I have about how much sex seniors have - in retirement homes, in movies. Anyway, somewhere I picked up the idea that my senior sex drive would be strong because I love and am attracted to my husband. And that's me. And he's a man. Need I say more?

Well, it just ain't happening that way. When we were first together I think we stretched the "all you think about is sex" part of our relationship to about 5 years whereas the old adage is "put a bean in a jar for every time you have sex in the first year of marriage and then it'll take the rest of your life after that to empty it if you take one bean out for each time you have sex". (I just noticed how exactly opposite these two tall tales are.)

The way it is happening is, over the past 2 or 3 years, we don't have a lot of sex. First it was upsetting to talk about with a bit of blame, guilt and responsibility floating around for each of us but, as is our way, we don't let things like that stay problematic. We keep dealing with them until we're satisfied that we are on the same page about it. We are on the same page about it. We are both in consternation and desire to have it be different.

So yesterday we were having a conversation about it - a thing we do often on the weekend - and I think I realized something about it. I need you to imagine a line drawing here. Imagine a line across the lower part of the page and imagine that that is the level at which I lived. It basically represents at what level of happiness and fulfillment I lived in my life - particularly the intimate relationship part. Now along comes the Martian and that level sharply rises. Now one could think that the level of not too much sex represents the level at which I live but that isn't true. If you've read this blog or know me, you know I live at a very high level of fulfillment and happiness. So I'm thinking that that big jump that I made when the Martian came into my life which was out-pictured by the intensity of my sexual experience is now the level at which I live.

So maybe I'd have to have another gigantic spike in energy to give to sex but our lives are so full of other things and our love isn't new. It's deep but we are used to it.

I think at the point we currently are, people who don't have really fulfilling relationships or lives, probably put all their energy somewhere else. Often with another person. Neither of us is about to do that.

So we'll keep talking and having sex when we do in the loving way that we do.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Having a Mindfulness of My Age

Law of Attraction and Aging

With our human mind's penchant for assigning meaning to things, we have all assigned meanings to certain ages. I know you will easily be able to imagine a 2-year-old, a 22-year-old, a 70-year-old. Easy, you say. You may all have a different picture of each age because your mind assigns it one "look" and mine assigns it another but it'll be close. I'd guess that this is somewhat societally and/or culturally influenced also. But if we could draw what we imagined, we'd probably often have a similar picture.

Other places on this site and other things you might have read have informed you how we create our lives. We have a thought; the thought creates feelings; our feelings create a certain vibration; our little super highway in our brains, our neuronet, keeps thinking the thought and we keep creating the feelings which create our predominant vibration and - voila! - it (whatever we've been thinking about over and over) is created in our lives. So over and over and over we think and picture and feel about being 35 or being 60 and when we get there to that age, there we are. We created just what we thought of over and over and over.

I am 71. My mother died at 57 so I don't really know what a 71-year-old woman looks like in my family - and that's a good thing (not good that my mother died so young but good that I have no picture of it). So I just look like and feel like a person who has woken up each morning for over 69 years, breathing and in the same body.

So to me any age means how long you have woken each day and fulfilled the requirement of breathing through that day . That's all it means.

So what does age mean to you? The thing is, you are free to choose.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

What I'm Learning (& Why I Hate It)

For many years I've had weird symptoms which I finally learned in November is radiculopathy from spinal stenosis (Spinal stenosis is narrowing of the spinal column that causes pressure on the spinal cord, or narrowing of the openings (called neural foramina) where spinal nerves leave the spinal column.) I hurt a lot and often and big time at night.

I also teach that every situation has one or more gifts or blessings and so I pretty much have to look for those gifts and/or blessings myself.

BUT FIRST I HAVE TO COMPLAIN.

That is one of the things I am clearly seeing. I do need to be heard about how hard this is but, taking the advice from my Wise Fairy God Mother, I really try to keep it to no more than 15 minutes a day. If I go on about any longer, I chance being stuck in a negative, feeling sorry for myself place all day - and that just adds to the burden.

ANOTHER THING I'M LEARNING IS ONE PERSON, NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY LOVE ME, CANNOT KEEP HEARING MY COMPLAINTS AND NOT BE EFFECTED.

My husband is a lovely and loving man. No one has ever cared about me the way he does. And he has been called to act on "for better or worse" a whole lot since October or November. I had reached the place where I could hardly walk and needed much care and errand running - even in our small apartment. But he is not impervious to the emotional space that I am in and he needs love and attention too. So I am going to start journaling my "stuff" first thing in the painful morning and relieve him of some of my complaining verbalizations.

I THINK I'VE ALWAYS BEEN COMPASSIONATE ABOUT OTHERS PAIN BUT NOW I REALLY UNDERSTAND THE MINUTE-BY-MINUTENESS OF IT.

Physical pain is hard to ignore. Nerve pain is hard to ignore. It has often made sitting and sleeping hard or near impossible.

My husband was telling me the this morning that because I'm a born teacher (look around the site), I will be helping people with this and that teachers who teach by example (which I am), must experience things in order to not just be spouting information but really getting to someone else's heart.

I'm sure there is more and I'm sure I'll be writing more as I journey through this new adventure in my life. And to end on a positive note, I have found treatment that I believe will work and has already shown some positive results.

Exercise - Taking Care of My Aging Body

Exercise!

Well, when your reputation is staked on being able to find the good and learning from everything, you can't just start becoming a victim of either your aging body or any beliefs about what aging means. So my adventure here on Planet Earth at age 70 is like this and this is what I'm learning:

An aging body will sure teach you to take care of your body. The results of not doing it can be felt almost immediately. I pretty much got through my life doing a very minimum of exercise still looking OK and being able to move rather automatically.

Can't get away with that any more. It doesn't matter whether I have issues and want to take my time getting over this, it will not cooperate. If I don't exercise frequently - like daily - I feel not great in my body and my balance and strength dwindles perceptibly even though I eat very, very healthy and have done so for years.

OK. I WILL LOVE MYSELF ENOUGH TO TAKE COMPLETE CARE OF MY BODY. NO EXCUSES!

The only One Who Knows It All is not making house calls today.

Accepting Life on Life's Terms - or Not

I go to meetings in rooms where one of the watchword phrases is about "accepting life on life's terms". Sounds good and very spiritual - and often it is but sometimes it's not.

Nineteen years ago I was told that I had early stages of breast cancer. I was unwilling to accept what was and is commonly used for treatment - chemotherapy and radiation. When I look back I see it was a bold step since that is what "everyone" did and what all the doctors recommended and on top of that, it is what my mother died of at age 57. I was 51 and chose a different way. I chose a metabolic diet, supplements and detoxification. I am well and have none of the aftereffects of the harsh treatments prescribed regularly.

Well, last week I was told I have spinal stenosis which is a narrowing of the spinal column caused by osteoarthritis whose emotional component stems from abuse in childhood. The prognosis could well be bladder and bowel malfunction and a wheelchair.

It certainly sent me into a tizzy. I have weird leg pain and other sensations, knee stuff, a foot that goes to sleep, sore hips and I'm 70. Should I just accept life on life's terms? If I did that the way others do, I'd be at doctors' offices, getting MRI's, etc. Well, that is not my way.

So I'm doing acupuncture and have researched what my diet and supplements should look like, going to learn tai chi and if that doesn't work I shall continue accepting life on my terms until the day I die and have accept death on its terms.

I really want one person that I could find that knows it all but that person doesn't exist - no matter how extensive their education. They know what they know and it is up to me to cull out the best of it, the parts that make sense to me both intellectually and intuitively. The only One Who Knows It All is not making house calls today.

Life Is a School - New Lessons at 70

I am lying on the couch waiting for my husband to finish some school stuff so we can re-watch a fantastic series from 2007 called "Life". Very spiritual although it's a cop show.

Anyway I have basically overexercised my foot and I can't really walk much until it heals (quickly I pray). It's really hard to not be able to do everything for myself because my husband, God bless him, has a very big and very time-consuming job for someone of any age and Friday he'll be 79! and also, he is not great at household stuff. Always willing but sort of a clutz. I figured out that he could bring me simple things to the table I hobbled over to and cut tomatoes, scooped cottage cheese onto a plate and added a few olives. I forgot I really like simple food and even boring cottage cheese was good (thing learned).

Also, it's amazing to find the words "overexercise" and "Maia" in the same sentence. I've always resisted and had to force myself and now just when I'm good with it, I have to really watch it because 70 year old bodies (or at least this 70 year old body) is fairly delicate (thing learned).

Sometimes it kind of pisses me off that I have to practice what I preach. I teach that there is a gift or a blessing or something to learn from everything that happens. Sometimes I get mad at God for not keeping things smooth for me, after all, I'm such a good person, but God apparently has a sense of humor and a unique way of teaching me what I have to learn.

So I learned:

1. Eating cottage cheese and veggies is good food.


2. Protecting my body is a good idea. It's not being a baby. It's really being realistic.

And, BTW, I know that lots of older people break hips and things from falls. Well I fell in my own house on Wednesday and I just took if very easy and I have nary a bruise or a hurt anything. So #2 is subheaded "protect my body and know that it's a good one."