Insanely Great
Sadly, Steve Jobs passed away last week at the age of 56.
Steve Jobs
In 2004, when Jobs was just shy of 50, he was diagnosed with a form of cancer with an average survival rate of about five years. He was an intelligent man, and clearly faced the fact that the statistical second half of his life was likely to be far shorter than he expected.
Jobs didn’t stand down. As he battled the disease, he also continued to follow his personal vision. He continued at the helm of a company that, in the time period, since his diagnosis, introduced a series of “insanely great” products that have helped to shape our lives even if we don’t use them ourselves. The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the iPad in 2010.
As we age, and particularly when we pass the 50th birthday threshold, we know that we are statistically in the second half of our lives. We, too, are facing or will face difficult challenges, whether they are health, work, or family-related. Jobs’s passing reminds us that none of us knows how long our timeline will be.
But, like Jobs, we should not stand down. We have many “insanely great” experiences ahead of us that are up to us to define.
Donna Nelson, Co-Founder, Women Starting Over After 50
Running Away from A Problem
You probably thought this post would be about not running away from your problems. That is, of course, the conventional advice.
Nope.
This post is about a remarkable woman athlete who literally ran away from her problem to become a renowned extreme distance runner. She was profiled in the 2010 Trail Runner article excerpted below, and more recently in an interview broadcast by Radiolab. A link to the podcast containing the interview is below the article excerpt.
Her story is inspiring, and a good one to think about when you are in the throes of struggle with a difficult personal or medical problem.
Diane Van Deren
At 50, Van Deren is still setting personal records at the world’s toughest races, and colleagues suspect she has yet to reach her prime. In 2007, after winning two 100-milers plus a 150-mile trail race, she was named the Trail Runner Trophy Series Ultramarathon Champion.
Here’s the short version. She was already a competitive athlete when, in her 20′s, she suffered the first of a series of seizures while carrying her third child. Remarkably, she found that when she felt a seizure coming on, she could stave it off by going for a run. The runs got longer and longer, but then the seizures caught up to the running, and recurred regularly. Eventually she underwent surgery to remove the part of the brain that caused the seizures, and the operation worked. But she was left with deficits in spatial and time perception. Now in her early 50′s, she literally gets lost in time and space when she runs. But she’s learned to cope, and runs hundred mile and more endurance races as a top competitive athlete.
I must say I like her personal style:
From Van Deren’s Sedalia home, downtown Denver’s lights glisten on the horizon. It’s 8 p.m., and we’re having a late dinner of take-out baked chicken and salad from Whole Foods. “I don’t cook, sweetheart,” she says. “I once boiled an egg for two and a half hours. Scott’s deactivated the smoke detectors because I kept setting them off!”
Here’s the link to the Radiolab podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2011/apr/05/in-running/
Journaling Your Transition – Keep It Simple
$5.12 at OfficeDepot
I can tell you from personal experience that keeping a journal is an excellent way to chronicle and process a transition period in your life. Studies show that journaling can be a stress reliever and can even improve some medical conditions.
A blank sheet of paper can be intimidating, but it is also completely liberating. You can put on it whatever you want. It’s completely up to you, a universe that you can completely control. Maybe that’s why it’s such a stress reliever – most of us live lives in which relatively little is completely under our control, especially when we are in transition.
How can you get started? It’s easy, get out a pen and a piece of paper tonight and write out what you did today. If you are trying to establish an exercise program or some other good habit, note in the margin whether you accomplished the plan that day. After you’ve written your list, describe some of your feelings about it. Nothing fancy. Aim for a half a page. Do the same thing tomorrow night.
There’s no need to shell out a lot of money for a journal. I like to write in school composition books, they have good associations for me from grammar school. The lines are big and they’re easy to handle and they last forever. You can paste in photos or clips from articles that interest you. $5.12 at Office Depot. They have ones with different colored covers, and even some “fashion” colors if you want to get all girly. You can go a little higher end, too, say, a fuschia Italian leather journal from Barnes & Noble, only $39.95! I suspect that journals may get used in inverse proportion to how much they cost. I have had a few more expensive ones but I was always afraid to write in them because I worried about making a mistake. But it may be worth spending a few dollars if the beauty of the materials inspires you to write (and you are less neurotic than I am). There is at least one Web site that offers all kinds of cool materials for journaling.
Fuscia Italian Leather Journal $39.95 at B&N
If you’re the technology type, you can try out some programs or apps for journaling. How about “DayOne: An elegant app for writers.”
Some folks need a little more support to get started in journaling, and for that there are support groups and seminars. The ArtsCenter in Carrboro has six-week seminars in Creative Journal Writing starting in September and again in October. If you’re reading this and you’re not from this area, check out your local arts education source and you will probably find a similar class. There are also affinity groups for journalers, you can find them on Meetup.com. There are also a lot of online resources for journaling, try Journaling Life, lots of good information there on types of journals.
However you do it, the payoff comes a few months down the road, when you sit down and read what you wrote. Somehow, you’ve gotten from there to here, and reading about it may help you move on to the next vantage point.
Tracey Broome – Mother, Potter, Blogger, Woman in Transition
Tracey Broome
Tracey Broome is a potter in Chatham County, North Carolina, she does fantastic work, both handbuilt and on the wheel. When she isn’t doing pottery (or the many other things necessary to keep her household going) she blogs. She blogs about her triumphs and struggles as an artist, and her personal life as well. Most recently, she has written very eloquently about coping with the departure of her only child and daughter, who is attending UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.
I am so excited for my child and what her future will hold. It is strange here without her, but I am doing better than I thought. There is a little lump in my throat, and tears come unexpectedly, but I love where she is, I feel that she is safe and happy, so I have very mixed emotions. I am sad for the times that are gone and we will never have again, but I am so looking forward to hearing about her days at this unbelievable school and it is so interesting to watch my little girl become a young woman and use all the things that we have taught her over the years to become her own person. I have taught her to follow her heart, her instincts, to be mindful and take care of her spirit and her body. Her dad has given her the gift of looking at the world visually. He has taught her how to see things in a way I could never teach her. He has given her the confidence to be a strong woman because he gave her the stability of a family, no divorce, no absentee dad. He has been there for her every second of her life and they are so close, we all are.
You can see more of Tracey’s work on her blog, and follow her personal and artistic journey: Tracey Broome Check out her barns, especially:
New Census Show Impact of Divorce and Widowhood on Women
New census figures illustrate the impact of divorce and widowhood on women. These life events frequently represent not just a relationship change, but a financial change as well. And women over age 60 are particularly hard hit. An analysis of the figures by the Center for American Progress highlights the situation of many women over 60:
More than one in five (22.2 percent) women living in poverty are elderly women age 60 and older. Losing a husband to death or divorce can be devastating to women’s quality of life and greatly increases risk of poverty. Because the vast majority (95 percent) of today’s elderly population has married at some point, older women who are poor are almost all previously married. The new Census figures bear this out. Widows accounted for nearly half (45.6 percent) of poor women age 60 and older in 2008, and 65 percent of those over 75. An additional one-quarter (23.5 percent) of poor women 60 and over were divorced or separated. By the end of their lives, nearly all poor elderly women age 75 and older are on their own—more than 80 percent of poor women this age are unmarried and more than three-quarters of these live alone.
Women Starting Over After 50
Welcome to Women Starting Over After 50. WSO50 is a North Carolina non-profit organization dedicated to education and support of women in transition. WSO50 is about change, it’s about growth, it’s about finding your passion once again. Some of you are single, some of you are married, some of you are empty nesters and some of you have never had children. Some of you have a working history, and some of you have never taken that path. But we all have one thing in common…We are wonderful women 50 and beyond and starting our journey for the second half of our lives.
