Tag: making peace with ourselves

Finding Beauty in Autumn: Life Lessons from Nature

It has been a while since I have written anything here and now Autumn is upon us. We had a very long and often hot summer. I was surrounded by luscious green lawns and beautiful gardens filled with rich colours that made my heart sing.

Now I am watching the life force in the plants slowly return to the Earth. Leaves are turning colour and gently falling to the ground. Orchards are filled with people picking fruits from the trees. Farmers are harvesting corn, squash and pumpkins from the fields. Those who love to can and preserve are making chili sauce and various jams and jellies. The farmer’s markets are loaded with fresh produce from their fields and gardens. Those of us who live in small apartments gain from the bounty of their harvest. There is nothing like a pan of fresh roasted vegetables to warm the heart and soul.

I spent a good deal of my time alone this summer and took the opportunity to do a life review. Looking not just to the past or out into the future but at the here and now. Where am I now? Where are we all at this moment in time. I am in the autumn of my life. What does that mean exactly? To me it means capturing the life force within me. Finding the fruits of my own labours. I am sharing what I have discovered over the years. I pay close attention to the lessons learned from poor choices made along the way. No one gets through life without a few hard knocks now and then. Still what I know for sure is my life is full of examples of Love leading the way.

I have always been a peace maker/keeper at heart. I lead with my heart and speak sincerely from what I know to be true for me. I have lived with a hearing impairment for over fifty years. I have also learned to listen with my whole self, not just my ears. I pay attention to body language, physical surroundings and follow my intuition when it gives a clear message. I also use my head to carefully analyze a situation when required before making any decisions or comments. The last piece of advice my mother gave me before she left this world was “Follow your heart.” But she also said, “Don’t lose your head!” She always thought I was too soft. She believed I was wishy washy and sat on the fence. She advised that I should state my opinion strongly like she always did. Her favourite saying was “I mean what I say and say what I mean!” Sometimes what she had to say was mean and still she stood by it. Mostly, though she was right more often than not.

Still for me, I see great value in seeing all sides of a story. Finding the common ground is important before expressing an opinion. My style of leadership is to listen twice as much as I speak. If I don’t have anything to say that will add to the conversation then I just listen until I do. This is particularly true now that I am living in the autumn of my life.

The beauty of autumn is that all the rich green of new life matures. It becomes vibrant colours of brown, orange, yellow and red. Eventually, it joins the Earth to break down and enrich the soil with its nutrients. This becomes fodder for micro organisms that work to break it down so that new life will emerge from it.

Our life experience becomes the nutrients that make up the wisdom of our elder years. We need to live long enough for it to build up. It must then be broken down into micro organisms of thoughts and knowledge. I am just now starting to glean the wisdom of my years of life experience. I see the beauty in living a long life. It allows me to understand what I have been through. I also see what I learned from it. Now is the time to nurture that and also to share it with others. That is why I write and tell stories. I offer what I can when I can. This happens when I am in conversation with family, friends, and others I meet along the way.

This is a wonderful time of year and time of life. It is not about losing life force energy. It is about the life force being transformed into a new form of life. This new form lives on in all its richness.

Posted on by Beth 3

Making Peace with an Aging Body

Photo by Skylar Kang on Pexels.com

Over the past few months I have spent countless hours meeting with medical professionals and discussing various aspects of my aging body. So many parts are showing signs of age and deterioration. Our bodies after all are not meant to last forever. It was discouraging at first and I found my energy got very low. Each thing on its own is not that bad still the cumulative effects of all of them together left me wondering how I was going to cope as things continued to get worse. I am on my own and manage everything in my life alone. I find it takes longer to do everything these days and there is always more to do than I have the energy for. I gave up having a dust free home and perfectly organized space long ago. Now I spend more and more time tending to my body. There is always something that needs to be checked or taken care of.

At the same time, my energy and desire to paint, write, create beautiful things is at an all time high. My mind is always developing new ideas. My Spirit is calling me out to be present and show myself though acts of kindness and spreading love in the world. I am finding even the simplest things take planning and managing. I spent most of my life working as an administrator and office manager and so am well equipped and familiar with time management strategies and ways of accomplishing tasks in the most efficient manner.

At this phase in my life I am not sure that accomplishing tasks is where I am heading. I am more interested in knowing how well we can live together. I am concerned about the state of our human identity and how we communicate with each other or don’t. I began to realize this past week that my body is communicating with me and letting me know where I need to focus my attention right now. All the aches and pains, weaknesses and strengths are part of the aging process. Coming to terms with that means also coming terms with my own mortality. I won’t be here forever. I have already lost parts of my body over the years through surgeries and still my body continues to function and compensate. So learning to accept and make peace with the changes that my body is going through is accepting the limitations that it is now telling me it has. No longer do I “push through” the pain and force myself to do more till I am at the point of exhaustion. I am learning to honour my body and be grateful for all that it is still able to do and the ways it is teaching me to move more slowly through life so that I can see clearly all the intimate details I once rushed by.

I look at myself in the mirror and see the soft giggly parts, the lines carved into my skin, the bags under my eyes and the soft round curves. I see the grey hair the missing eyebrows and the beauty in all of it. It is a magical process to look at the aging body and see it’s beauty and perfect design. It is serving me well and giving me all that I need to be able to enjoy life to its fullest. I am discovering that there is a intrinsic design in the body that allows for some parts of the brain to develop later in life which makes it easier for us to do things. I am learning how to make certain tasks easier by breaking them down into smaller tasks and doing them one step at a time. I have the time now to do that. When I need to rest I do. I have let go of the judgment of myself and just let myself be wherever I am in the moment. Each day is different. That is the beauty of life. Time flows from one day to the next and without any need to see it as a race to the finish line we can simply enjoy the journey.

Yes my body is aging and it is teaching me how to enjoy the simple things in life. To savour each moment and to learn how to play in new ways. Creating a life of pleasure and trusting that no matter how things change there will always be something to be grateful for gives me a sense of peace and satisfaction. My mind may not be able to remember things at times and yet my body has memories that are unique to me and me alone. Making peace with those memories also means making peace with and appreciating all that life has offered me. The more I am in touch with my body the more compassion and kindness I feel for myself and others. We all live in a human body and each one of us has to cope with the aging process in our own way. I am making peace with my aging body.

Posted on by Beth 2