Nancy Edwards: The Dancing Grandma

Highly Recommended Books for Mid-Lifers

I decided to add this category because in both my personal and professional life, I've come across relatively few really helpful books.  I'll offer the best ones, along with a brief synopsis of content, to my web site visitors.  Each one of these enhanced my view and understanding of relationships.

• Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix:                                      This book was written many years ago but is the "bible" of couples dynamics.  It offers a theory that the person(s) we choose as partners are an "Imago" match for us.  "Imago" means image in Latin.  Our primary caregivers early in life have both positive & negative traits which get "stamped" into the primitive part of our brains.  We all get wounded growing up, and these wounds cause us to seek out someone with similar or complimentary wounds as adults.  Human nature is such that we unconsciously try to recreate our childhood scenarios with a partner in order to overcome or master that which wounded us.  Hendrix believes that if we become aware of our wounds and how they play out with our partners, we can actually begin to heal in the present.

• I Don't Want to Talk About It by Terrence Real:                                   Real's take on what happens to most men in America is illuminating!  He describes how little boys are forced to leave their "emotional selves" behind by grade school while women are learning how to be in relationships with empathy and skill.  He believes this separation of mind & emotion create a covert sort of depression in men.  Most importantly though is the effect on men's wives and children.  Real offers a way out of this dilemma which softens men's hearts & allows them to truly become intimate after a lifetime of disconnectedness.

• Sex and the Seasoned Women by Gail Sheehy:                                      I haven't even finished this one before recommending it to women in mid-life!  It really isn't about sex as much as it's about how, once we've begun to launch our children, we have a whole new opportunity to create a "second adult life", filled with forgotten passions and dreams.

• A Woman With Round Heels by Jane Juska:                                        For all the mid-lifers who are widowed, divorced or single, this book is a stitch!  It's the true life adventures of a 66-year old woman who hadn't been intimate with a man in over 20 years and awoke one day suddenly wanting to change this reality.  She posted an ad in the NY Times which simply read "Woman about to turn 67 wants a lot of sex with a man she likes".  The book chronicles her trysts and coming alive sexually and emotionally.

• Loving What Is by Byron Katie:                                                         Quite possibly the most immediately helpful reads I've ever come across!!  Katie challenges some of our most unhelpful, life-deadening beliefs and urges readers to "love reality" instead.  I agree with her that our beliefs CAUSE our suffering and maintain distance in relationships we value. I was able to drop a few age-old beliefs of mine in days, freeing me up to really appreciate what is "real" as opposed to what I felt "should be real".

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Smoking 101

loved you in the morning, loved you in the evening, loved you at suppertime………be my little honey and love me all the time…………

My cigarettes were my closest friends for about twenty-five years. They helped me manage every kind of emotion: fear, anger, anxiety, confusion, joy and depression in general.

As long as I could “smoke” my feelings, I never had to face them or figure out their true origins.

Worked for me!

Smoking 102

As promised, there's lots more to say about having cigarettes control one's life.  This will be the advanced course on smoking........

In 1982, in my first of two efforts to quit, I thought I had it all figured out.  My mother had just had a stroke and was told to quit smoking immediately.  I told her I'd quit with her.

I then got a part time job at a smoking cessation clinic.  This is a story only those with strong stomachs can handle, by the way!  The program was based on "aversion therapy".  This meant making everything about smoking so disgusting that no one could stand to continue it!

SMOKING 103

As promised, this will be the third lesson on smoking. It won't be as funny, but it needs to be shared.

Four years after my aborted attempt to quit by becoming an aversion therapist in 1981, I once again decided to quit smoking.  This time, the impetus was having turned 40 and having the nagging sense that I had a choice to make:  continue smoking and see my life stay much the same; or, pull the rug out and cast my fate to the wind.

I didn't do this for the usual reasons of health or social acceptibility.  I did it because every fiber of my being told me that real growth and change could NOT exist inside this gripping addiction.

I was so right.

SMOKING 104

Hi dear readers!  If you're struggling with giving up cigarettes, this final post on smoking may either help or hinder you.  Be forewarned.

Previous posts on this have been somewhat humorous:  this post will take a more serious look at this heinous addiction and how it impacted my life.  The primary reason I wanted to quit was not liking knowing that anything, especially something inanimate, could control my every waking hour.  Smokes
determined who my friends were; which classes I took in grad school (smoking allowed); whether or not I could even sit through a play or a movie; and so much more.

The reality that cigarettes had played a major role in managing all my emotions for 23 years hit hard when I finally gave them up...

Update

The Startribune is running a feature in its Sunday "Signature" section on February 19. The regular column is called "How I Got This Body" and will chronicle my one-year loss of almost 40 pounds and 10 dress sizes through dancing free style. The reporter interviewed me last week and there was a photo shoot two days later. When she came to interview me, I tried to get her to dance with me - to no avail - but at least she tolerated a few minutes of watching my antics! She later emailed that watching me dance brought the story to life and enabled her to really "get" what this is all about.

50 Today...

This is a poem that I wrote on the day I turned 50. Like many other women, I was dreading that day and wondering what my life would become afterwards. It's not easy to grow older! And so, I sat down that day and the words just came out. I'm putting it up here on my website because I want to share what I felt like before this dramatic rebirth. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt this way.

I am fifty today
My heart muscle is flabby
My stomach lies beside me on the bed like a deflated basketball when I
lie on my side
I see no reason to shave my legs anymore
or get a new hairdo or use make-up or paint my nails
or get out of bed

Life has recently given me way too much free time
to ponder what I'm even here for
To review my defeats
obsess over my mistakes
grieve my losses
To feel whatever pain still remains burning at my core
and to wonder if there is a future worth living for me

I don't know anymore what I want to be or do or have;
everything is at a complete standstill except
that I feel like I'm in an ever-expanding sinkhole
which gets harder and harder to climb out of.......

Why is it that my life must be emptied out again
before I can figure out how to fill it up?
I swear I'm not depressed though.

My dancing instructor...

My 12 year old granddaughter has taught me many of her moves and happily shared her own joy of dancing with me. My 10-year old grandson, Conner, has also provided feedback by copying every single move I make perfectly and laughing at me! I don't mind....after all, how many grandmas free style dance with their grandkids anyway?

After A While...

I love this message, don't you? - Nancy

AFTER A WHILE YOU LEARN
THE SUBTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
HOLDING A HAND
AND CHAINING A SOUL
YOU LEARN THAT LOVE DOESN’T MEAN LEANING
AND COMPANY DOESN’T ALWAYS MEAN SECURITY
AND YOU BEGIN TO LEARN
THAT KISSES AREN’T CONTRACTS AND
PRESENTS AREN’T PROMISES
AND YOU BEGIN TO ACCEPT YOUR DEFEATS
WITH YOUR HEAD HELD UP & YOUR EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD
WITH THE GRACE OF A WOMAN
NOT THE GRIEF OF A CHILD
AND YOU LEARN

TO BUILD ALL YOURS ROADS ON TODAY
BECAUSE TOMORROW’S GROUND IS TOO UNCERTAIN
AND FUTURES HAVE A WAY OF
FALLING DOWN MIDFLIGHT

AFTER A WHILE YOU LEARN
THAT EVEN SUNSHINE BURNS IF YOU GET TOO MUCH
SO YOU PLANT YOUR OWN GARDEN
AND DECORATE YOUR OWN SOUL
INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO
BRING YOU FLOWERS
AND YOU LEARN
THAT YOU REALLY CAN ENDURE
THAT YOU REALLY ARE STRONG
AND YOU REALLY DO HAVE WORTH
AND YOU LEARN
AND YOU LEARN
WITH EVERY GOODBYE YOU LEARN.

-Author Unknown