Falling In Love at 49

January 8, 2017September 3, 2023 / Laura Lee Carter / 10 Comments

To celebrate the 12th anniversary of the day Mike and I met, I decided to run this popular post from my now defuncted “Midlife Crisis Queen” blog. This is one of the first posts I wrote after starting a blog in 2007:

“Love is lovelier, the second time around. Just as wonderful, with both feet on the ground…” — Sammy Cahn

And so it is. Falling in love later can be quite the challenge, but when it does happen, it feels just like a miracle. To me it felt like winning the lottery, and in a way it was! When I think back to all the reasons why Mike and I should not have met, it boggles my mind that we did. Although we only lived ten miles apart, without the Internet we most certainly wouldn’t have met.

Our backgrounds were very different, and we shared no social networks. I was also getting plenty gun shy from meeting new men online. The men kept vaporizing after our first date.Yes, I was beginning to feel mighty hopeless.

Then there was the fact that we didn’t really match up on paper. I came from a background with an emphasis on academics, and Mike went to the Navy instead of college. His specialty is mechanics and electronics, mine is counseling, research and writing, but what we had in common turned out to be much more important!

Mike and I felt an immediate camaraderie of spirit, which I have never found in another human being, a feeling we had both been seeking forever, but had somehow missed until that day.

From the very beginning our souls spoke to each other in a unique and unusual way, a spontaneous familiarity, a synchronicity of body, mind and heart. And even more amazing, we both realized and appreciated that fact immediately. No backing away from it, no denying it. We both decided to trust our inner wisdom and simply go with it.

We spoke for ten hours on our first date, and then took a short trip together less than two weeks later. Reminds me of that great line at the end of one of my favorite romantic comedies:

“When you finally meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible!” – ‘When Harry Met Sally.’

We both had been through so much, and so we recognized immediately when something unique and wonderful fell into our laps. I also learned about a key component of compatibility that I had never thought about before. Besides the usual requirements, the deal breakers, etc., I learned how important it is that your partner process information at the same rate. Mike and I think at the same rate, and often come to the same conclusions simultaneously. This is quite a gift in a long term relationship!

My own theory of love and attraction came through loud and clear when I first met Mike, that is you get what you are in love. As much as you have worked on developing into your best self, that is the kind of person you will attract to yourself.

So keep working on self-love and self-respect, feel daily gratitude for the life you now have, and read good blogs and books. Why not try mine? How to believe in love again.

Never give up on love if that’s what you want!

My favorite poet Marge Piercy said it best:

“Love is plunging into darkness toward a place that may exist.”

Want to know more about finding love later in life? Check out my book: How to Believe In Love Again: Opening to Forgiveness, Trust, and Your Own Inner Wisdom.

Please feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

A New Years Idea for Change: Change the way you see, judge and treat yourself!

December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

This was my ONLY New Year’s Resolution from 2015, and I do believe I have made a bit of progress on this one! Such marvelous writing!

“I resolve to accept the idea that I need not change anything about myself this year (or maybe ever) except the way in which I judge myself. I need not change anything about myself except the harsh criticisms I chronically unleash upon myself. I need not change anything except the warped lens through which I watch my every move. I need not change anything except the fun house mirror which I carry with me everywhere and whose distorted reflections I believe are real.

I resolve to accept the idea that my main problem is not my face, body or résumé but my frame of mind. Granted, that’s a pretty big problem, as this frame of mind affects every aspect of my life and might be making me too depressed right now to even realize that I’m depressed, much less able to imagine changing. Anything. Ever. At all.

But this is the great thing about holidays: They’re temporal gateways, urging us collectively to enact virtual rituals. Today is not just any random day. It’s a shift, proclaimed around the world. And into that gaping chasm between old year and new, that crevasse over which we now walk a short bright temporary bridge, we can hurl those warped lenses and fun house mirrors, all of us. Down that gap we can yell our last harsh words about ourselves, and hear their echoes dissolve into gibberish then ebb into that vast, inviting silence as we hasten, set free, to that smiling, untried other side.”

HAPPY NEW YEAR & GOOD LUCK!

An excerpt from: http://spiritualityhealth.com/blog/anneli-rufus/whats-one-and-only-new-years-resolution-people-low#sthash.UKyIsWIo.dpuf by Anneli Rufus

You cannot control how others receive your energy

December 27, 2016January 2, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

Perhaps I will always remember this holiday as the one where I finally accepted the truth about other peoples’ reaction to me. Ah, if I could have totally accepted this truth decades ago, my life would have been so much easier:

You cannot control how other people receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever they are going through at that moment, which is NOT ABOUT YOU.

Just keep doing your thing with as much integrity and love as possible.

This includes everything I write about here and in my books. Just because I have chosen to learn enough to understand the psychology of midlife transition or passive solar technology, and appreciate the freedom this knowledge has given to me, does not mean anyone else has a clue what I’m talking about.

Even my parents, who taught me much of what I learned as a child, the ones I thought knew EVERYTHING when I was young, have no idea where I’m coming from with most of my ideas and thoughts today. They are living in their own reality and often do not appreciate mine, but that is not about me.

On some level I’m ashamed that it has taken me this long on this beautiful blue planet to appreciate this truth. But on the other hand, it is so freeing to let each of us be where we are right now.

We continue to search for whatever makes our lives feel better.

As another Christmas comes and goes…

December 26, 2016December 28, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Rasta, the MOST attractive being at our family Christmas!

Why oh why does Christmas go from exciting and FUN as a child, to challenging? Probably because I’m not as good at being around “family” as I used to be. But seriously, after spending almost no time together in the past 50 years, why should we get along well? I don’t know about you (obviously) but this holiday celebration completely wore me out.

The only truly notable adventure we had was driving south on I-25 yesterday evening south of Pueblo. The wind was blowing pretty crazy off the Rockies to the west. We both saw the wires on the power poles blowing sideways. At that point I said, I wonder if those poles ever break in half.

semi-truck-on-side

In only a few more miles we were stopped by an accident ahead for a few minutes. As we came up to the accident we saw one semi truck lying on its side beside the highway. It turned out that a pick-up towing an old RV had blown over onto the highway.

As we approached that accident, we saw old wooden power poles on our right, broken off halfway and blowing in the wind. It was AMAZINGLY windy! A bunch of cars ahead of us got off at the Walsenburg exit after seeing that!

We were just so pleased to get home in time to watch the Broncos lose, and celebrate the passing of another family “holiday”in our own way, with champagne of course.

Family History Comes Full Circle

December 17, 2016December 17, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

Deep in the silence of a Colorado foothills snow storm, I see how the generations of my family are now coming full circle. Soon after Mike and I moved down here, in the foothills halfway between Walsenburg and La Veta Colorado, my father told me his father’s retirement dream was to move to the tiny town of La Veta to set up his own barber shop.

This is a man who had always cut hair in Turner, Kansas, outside of Kansas City, Kansas. Grandpa Carter occasionally drove out to Alamosa in the San Luis Valley to visit relatives. Along the way he found La Veta and loved it. Unfortunately my grandpa died just weeks after his retirement from the railroad in 1968.

I guess it is now safe to say my husband Mike had to do some fast talking to convince me to move down here from busy, expensive Fort Collins, Colorado in 2014. He loved the area, especially for the reasonably-priced lots with their own water district, pinon-juniper woodlands and great solar exposure. I love it now too.

This year my estranged brother John, who lives his own version of a Thoreau-like existence outside of Sedona, Arizona, decided to come up to visit us a few times after no word from him in years. In fact, we weren’t even sure he was still alive a few years back. He lives on the land, and a kind forest ranger finally convinced him to contact us. We have all now renewed our relationships with John.

John has not attended our family Christmases in decades, but he is making a point of it this year. My parents are in their eighties and now live in Denver. We will be taking him up there soon.

I feel somehow certain that John would not have come up to visit us if we were still in Fort Collins. He loves the natural setting of our new home. He sits out on the ‘veranda’ every chance he gets, watches nature and plays his guitar, enjoying the lovely silence.

What are the chances that we would all wind up in this lovely place, so close to the town where my Grandpa Carter wanted to wind up? So many synchronicities or “meaningful coincidences” can only be seen in retrospect.

Are you moving towards your life goals?

December 2, 2016December 3, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

When was the last time you put some serious energy into contemplating your life goals? Not what needs to happen in the next year or two, but what needs to happen for you to feel satisfied in the long run.

After I lost my job and 25 year career back in 2004, I spent months contemplating my life up until then. After decades of work as an academic librarian, I was suddenly set free to consider every option. This was a wonderful gift, well disguised as misfortune.

My first book Midlife Magic: Becoming The Person You Are Inside is a summary of the feelings I went through at that time. Here I share my own story of transformation from divorced, unemployed and miserable, to my best life ever, explaining how midlife change, changes everything.

Yesterday I went through a list I made back then, a list of my new priorities after I stopped and considered my life at age 49. Here are a few things I wanted more of before I died: love, acceptance, appreciation, access to pure silence, to be surrounded with solar warmth, natural beauty, music, wildflowers, peace, contentment, relief from guilt and shame, and respect for my own integrity.

Such a wonderful feeling to know that I have somehow brought so many of these blessings into my life through my own stubbornness and courage. The way I describe this transition now, on the “About The Author” page of my new book:

Midlife crisis queen header gold

“Her midlife crisis began with a divorce and then progressed to the loss of her library career, misfortunes she now finds supremely fortuitous, as everything wonderful in her present life flowed from these difficult experiences.”