Feel Gratitude While You Can!

November 20, 2020November 20, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Today I feel like I am seeing my world with new eyes. I am so glad to wake up this morning in such a beautiful place. In fact, I’m grateful to wake up at all! In a world full of death and grief, I do not find it at all difficult to isolate and wait for better days.

I have a warm, safe home with astounding mountains and cloudscapes outside my door!

On television I hear how difficult these times are for others, how different their lives have become. But when I look at my own life I see bright sun in the morning pouring through my windows, warming my home and my heart. I have plenty of time to enjoy the lovely silence, my avocations and my relationships with my family and friends.

When I see clearly, which is much more often since I got rid of my cataracts, I feel so much gratitude for it all!

Glow with gratitude and see how awe and joy make their home in you.

“Writers & Lovers” by Lily King, a review

November 17, 2020November 17, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Reading a novel is so personal, rather like watching a movie. We all relate to the story in different ways, depending on the various parallels between ourselves, the author’s life and the main character. My new favorite author is Lily King. Her life, her stories and my own life experiences coalesce in many interesting ways.

I already told you about her novel “Euphoria” ten days ago. This week I was lucky enough to be the first one to check out her new book from 2020: “Writers & Lovers” from the La Veta Public Library.

For me, this book is about the complexity and confusion of being an independent woman with goals and a dream, in a world where most are giving up their dreams as unrealistic. The main character, Casey, is a 31 year old writer who is as afraid of risking her dream of being a writer, as she is of falling in love. Along the way she provides what seems like casual, but enduring insights into counseling, dealing with the sudden death of her mother, and the mysteries of love.

Much like myself, Casey’s 31st year is particularly challenging, with the theme of “What am I supposed to be doing with my life?” If a woman does not follow the traditional path of marriage and children, what then? What if you are determined to follow your own unique path wherever that leads you?

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go…” -T.S. Eliot

My 31st year was one of my most difficult. Like a dream, I still remember particularly well one afternoon driving through Denver on I-25, certain that my life had absolutely no meaning, but also certain that I would eventually find out why I was here. I had always dreamt of becoming a writer and yet I did not have the confidence or courage to pursue that dream yet.

Lily King on becoming a writer:

“Then I understood how hard it is to re-create in words what you see and feel in your head.” pg. 270, “Writers & Lovers”

Lily King on counseling:

“You don’t realize how much effort you’ve put into covering things up until you try to dig them out.” pg. 168

Lily King on breaking up:

“I don’t normally have to break up with anyone. Usually they do it for me, or I leave the state or the country. I don’t have to spell it out very often.” (pg. 291)

These quotes all reminded me of my turbulent 30s, and in turn showed me how grateful I am to be past all of that chaos. I am now ensconsed in such a beautiful, comfortable, safe place. Lucky me! Those turbulent times resulted in enduring love & happiness.

Lessons in self-esteem: You do you. All the other roles are taken…

November 10, 2020November 10, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Two news items caught my attention this week. The death of Alex Trebek and the election of our first female vice president. Being a long-term Jeopardy fan, I was sorry to hear Trebek’s battle with cancer ended in death. Then I heard that he worked at his game show up until two weeks before his death. Who does that? Answer: My Dad!

Last night on the NBC Evening News, in the story about Kamala Harris’s election, they interviewed young girls and their mother’s about female empowerment. At the end, one of the mothers said, “When I look at my daughter I see a CEO or the president!” I followed her exclamation with, “but no pressure…”

But seriously, how wonderful and extremely DELAYED to finally have a woman as our vice president, especially an Indian and Black woman. Looking back over the mixed bag of white men we have survived in the Oval Office, I believe a woman certainly cannot do worse. My greatest concern is that the young girls of our country don’t feel bad or inadequate if they cannot reach their parent’s highest goals set for them.

I come from a family where there was extreme pressure to become something “semi-great” preferably in my Dad’s area of interest. That kind of self-imposed pressure, coming originally from parents, to become the best in the world at something, can be devastating if the child never reaches that parent-imposed goal, and even sometimes when they do. The confusion within the child when her natural proclivities do not match the dominant parent’s demands, can lead to a debilitating crisis in self-confidence and self-authority. In other words, it can be destructive for their entire life.

Is there an authentic need to find our true self?

“The human mind can imagine both how to break self-esteem and how to nurture it – and imagining anything is the first step toward creating it. Believing in a true self is what allows a true self to be born.” – Gloria Steinem in “Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

The distraction of feeling constantly inadequate, stands in the way of a person ever learning to love and respect their own natural intuitions and talents. How do we identify our natural interests? “The more regularly you create, the more you will notice an image often repeated in varying ways. This is your true self made visible.” (Gloria Steinem, The Revolution From Within)

In 2004, one of the best books I read to encourage this awakening within myself was “Revolution From Within” by Gloria Steinem. There I found my strong desire to finally find and be my true self is quite common among women in their forties and fifties. Most of us did not find any real encouragement to change until then. We were too busy living our lives…

Midlife Crisis Queen!

Unfortunately, it took me until my late-40s to begin this long journey. It was only after I had been forced to give up on living an average and basically inauthentic life, that I began to explore what was authentic within me. What was crying out for personal expression? Eventually I began a writing career, something I had always dreamt of, but felt inadequate to pursue. I also started a blog in 2007 naming it “Midlife Crisis Queen.” In my mind this title was humorous, but it caught on more than I ever expected. (I removed this blog from the Internet in 2014.)

Finding true self is the liberation of finally giving yourself permission to be all that you are inside. It is also the only path to finding positive love relationships with others. There is so much more in Gloria’s book about how our connection with nature reinforces our connection to true self and how patriarchal religions suppress power in women.

To young women I say read this book and see if it speaks to you. Don’t spend most of your life searching for wholeness and rightness outside of Self.

All that you are seeking is within…

“I think the truth is that finding ourselves brings more excitement and well-being than anything romance has to offer, and somewhere we know that. Think of the joy of self-discovery: solving a problem, making a bookcase, inventing a dance step… all by reaching within for a vision and making it real.”

Need some distraction? Try book bingeing with “Euphoria” by Lily King

November 6, 2020November 9, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

So glad I had a great book on hand to distract me from the amazing inefficiency of our elections these days. How is it that Colorado can finish counting ballots in 24 hours and nobody else can???

Anyway, if you like an adventure novel that consumes you from the very first page, try “Euphoria” by Lily King. This is the story of three tormented anthropologists who come together doing tribal fieldwork in the jungles of New Guinea in the 1930s. Although a work of fiction, Lily King acknowledges that she was inspired by the work of Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bates.

I was one of those college kids who just couldn’t choose a major. That perhaps explains why I changed schools four times before I completed my B.A. One of my first majors in college, along with psychology, was anthropology. Why didn’t I pursue these interests? I didn’t think I would do well in a jungle doing fieldwork. I also hated the fact that I might work my whole life and still never know if my theories were correct. These are the same issues that haunt our three main characters. How do you approach isolated native societies and interpret their behavior? Are they better or worse than us? Who decides?

This novel includes mystery, adventure, and much discussion of life and purpose. But for me the best part was the study of the psychology of these characters and their indepth discussions of ethnography and ethnology.

The central aim of ethnology is to understand another way of life from the point of view of the person experiencing that way of life and as such, always implies a theory of culture. Ethnography takes a step away from the sort of research that describes subjects and behaviors and focuses on actors and actions.

I also enjoyed the various tools the author used to help the reader understand the deepest feelings and interactions between these three characters, using anthropological notes, letters and personal notes.

This was a book I didn’t want to end, and especially when I turned the TV back on at the end, and Pennsylvania and Nevada still couldn’t find a way to GET THEIR VOTES COUNTED!~

We can send a man to the moon but we sure can’t count votes in a timely manner… Please don’t give me the COVID excuse. Colorado has the same problems as everyone else.

“Make yourself useful!” A post for overly responsible boomers

November 1, 2020November 5, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

Two themes have been competing in my brain for decades:

Do we need to “make ourselves useful” all the time? Or is it OK to simply relax and enjoy our lives?

Let me begin by acknowledging that I was brainwashed as a child that everything we do should be “useful.” Laziness was not allowed, and laziness was very broadly defined. Pursuits like games, art, music, cinema, anything that was simply pleasurable and not academically motivated was a waste of time. Productivity was key, but only certain types of productivity. Now I find some of these same strict definitions among my fellow Boomers, who are having trouble getting comfortable with aging, illness and retirement.

First of all, I have studied the psychology of American boomers for years. One conclusion I came to is that we have been identified unfairly as an extremely self-centered and irresponsible generation. The boomers I know are now taking care of their parents if they are still alive, environmentally aware and responsible, and feel a strong need to feel useful in this world. That flower child, druggy image does not stick. Perhaps we are more self-aware than our parents, and more aware of our impact on this planet, but totally irresponsible, no.

Speaking for myself, I grapple daily with guilt over my own idleness even though I also struggle with hypoxia and the long-term affects of a traumatic brain injury. Besides the usual, “Why me?” questions, I feel lazy if I cannot complete at least a few household chores every day. Guilt feels like a permanent companion to my illnesses. Luckily my husband Mike is the direct opposite of my inner critic. He encourages me to feel good about simply still being here, and helps me make the most of it. He keeps our vehicles and home running smoothly…

while encouraging me to focus on hobbies that give me pleasure like photography,

gardening,

cooking and writing this blog.

Mike also understands my struggle with every day guilt, partially because he was not raised that way. He believes that retirement should be joyful and guilt-free. He believes we earned it “after slaving away our entire working life!” I can learn a lot from him.

What it looks & feels like to be SNOWED IN in the Colorado Foothills west of Walsenburg

October 26, 2020October 31, 2020 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

As many of you already know, I am pretty obsessed with weather watching! I have been reporting daily precipitation to COCORAHS and the Weather Service since the Fort Collins Spring Creek flood in July 1997.

But last night was a lifetime record for me!