What’s not to love about this lifestyle?

May 17, 2016October 11, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

The fog just engulfed our hilltop. I’m listening to The Poozies, another incredible group of musicians introduced to me by our first friend here, Bob the landlord. If you love Irish and Scottish music, you will love them! I’m baking banana bread while I write this.

Cloudy with occasional glimpses of the mountains!

So what’s not to love about this lifestyle?

The past few days have been wonderful for me. At our writing group on Saturday I met a new member who made my day! She’s been a major player in the Aspen arts scene for the past forty years, but burned out on that and is ready for something completely different. She warned me about telling too many about this beautiful place, so keep this under wraps, OK?

I have also found an exercise class I like for “older women.” It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for, so I bought a membership at Two Peaks Fitness. After winter and my post-construction slump, I need to get moving NOW! I hike up the hill behind us a few times a week and explore my new neighborhood. At 7,000 feet hiking is quite different than our old neighborhood in Fort Collins. Slowly but surely….

I am finding so many friendly people lately, especially in La Veta, and I’m finally feeling some sense of belonging here. Such a nice feeling!

And then there is my home life. This photo is a good summary.

Everyone’s happy and getting along here!

I am filled with gratitude that I can now live like this forever. Please go learn more about our move from Fort Collins to here in my new memoir!

“Our deepest human longing is for BE-longing; for belonging to our true selves, for belonging to all others…belonging to the whole universe…and belonging to that unfathomable mystery …” GRATITUDE with BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST

How Prince Made My Life Better

April 27, 2016April 28, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

I don’t remember how I first heard about Prince. In the early 80s I had recently returned to Boulder Colorado, lost in severe depression. Imagine sitting in Taipei, Taiwan, certain that I needed to leave or lose my mind. But where to go next?

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After a disillusioning and devastating seven months studying Chinese at the Stanford Center in Taipei, I felt like I knew how miserable some missionaries to China in the late 1800s had felt. There was nothing I liked about my life, and I had previously come to the conclusion that my future included a PhD in Chinese history.

What next, as I turned 30?

I returned to Boulder because it was the closest I had ever felt to home. Luckily I had friends there who put me up for a year or so. I wasn’t even sure if I had enough mental health left to work, but I got a half-time job in the Personnel Office at CU-Boulder Library. There I met a few welcoming positive and supportive women, most notably Cathie. (Thank you for your special kind of love and understanding Cathie!)

After a while, I got a perfectly mindless job in the Cataloging Department. Does anyone out there know about working as a “Retro Jet”? The job is simply editing OCLC records online as quickly as possible to match the book we have in our collection.

So we sat on the computer editing OCLC records for hours on end. Luckily we were allowed to listen to our walkmans while we did it! Somewhere in the great camaraderie of retro jets, I was introduced to Prince, the perfect music to listen to for this particularly boring job! Yes, the people I met through my retro jet job, and the music I was introduced to made me feel great for the first time in years!

There is something about Prince’s music that took me out of my busy, worried mind and freed my soul for some sort of positive future. At the time I had no idea what that might be, I just knew I needed to find my bright side again SOON!

I’ve always been one of those Boomers who was searching for where I belonged in society. I went on to complete an M.A. in Third World History, and then turned to my first love, psychology around age 35. But as it turns out, my real love is NOT LIVING IN CITIES.

My life has taken such a circuitous path, partially because I had certain goals stuck in my head early, that I would eventually need to let go of. My most recent discovery about myself came from moving away from all cities and building solar.

Come to find out, I don’t “belong in society” at all! Who knew?

I belong where I feel free...

Morning in “Be-Here-Now” Land

March 31, 2016August 26, 2022 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

After almost two years living in the foothills a few miles west of Walsenberg Colorado, I still struggle to find a way to help you understand how living here is so amazingly different from the suburbs of Fort Collins. Possibly you can imagine, this has been culture shock after culture shock for a couple of city people.

In fact, I wake up every morning and wonder for just a moment or so, where am I? Then I look out my glass doors at this:

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…and I know this is no dream. This is one larger-than-life reality!

I try to explain to my friends who are still up in Fort Collins working, how this lifestyle change has changed me. But since they only come down for a day or two at a time, they cannot really understand how living here feels.

At first I was mainly freaked out. This world is so very different than what I’m used to that it scared me, especially since we had essentially put all our eggs in one basket on this one!

I see now why it was so hard for my original, stressed-out self to deal with this place. This is a whole world away from what most consider “life in America.” We have very few chain stores, and no reason to go shopping unless you need a few groceries. We have one movie theater showing one movie three times a week.

At times I feel like I moved to a different country (especially since this ridiculous presidential campaign started!) Now when I watch the national news I think, “Wow, those people are crazy… what a horrible way to live!”

Recently I heard someone down here say:

Most people don’t realize how much stress they have until they slow down enough to lose some of it.

That’s where I’m at now.

I get up most days and take a hike around our house, looking for interesting animal tracks. I’ve just started getting into bird watching, my cat is encouraging me. I have finally slowed down enough to have the time to think a lot about what I need to do before I die, and seeing the world is not on that list at present. I’d rather spend the rest of my life directly experiencing the American Southwest.

Although I’ve always had Buddhist leanings, I now feel more drawn to Native American philosophies. I imagine them travelling through the valley below us on their way to Bent’s Fort to sell animal pelts and get the latest news. I love to imagine someone from the 1800’s walking into our home now, and being shocked by the modern conveniences of today. But we should not let our easy lives convince us that we are more wise than those who came before us. Perhaps we are the idiots who will ruin the best life ever experienced on planet earth…I certainly hope not.

I am filled with gratitude that I can now live like this forever. Please go learn more about our move from Fort Collins to here in my new memoir!

My Beautiful Broken Brain

March 29, 2016April 22, 2021 / Laura Lee Carter / 10 Comments

“Within your own mind is a treasury, an ocean of pure bliss, consciousness, intelligence, creativity and love…” — David Lynch

**My Beautiful Broken Brain, a Netflix documentary**

Recently I viewed a fascinating new Netflix documentary which follows the life of a 34 year old woman after she experiences a severe stroke. Lotje Sodderland was a digital producer at a hip London creative agency when she suffered a stroke that decimated her language skills and threw her sensory perception into disarray.

Lotje found that most of the practitioners who tried to help her recover her abilities to speak, see properly, write and read, began by defining her by what she could not do after her stroke. She instead chose to focus on a few positive changes within her brain, ones which provided her with new skills and talents.

At the end of this film she offers advice back to those who have treated her brain injury, telling them to help the patient not only return to previous abilities, but also appreciate sometimes subtle changes in consciousness, which can benefit the patient. For example, Lotje experienced an amazing new ability to experience colors and sounds like never before.

I found this new take on brain injuries quite refreshing, much like the story behind Melody Gardot’s transformation following her brain injury. She’s an American woman who only discovered her unique ability to create and sing music after suffering a serious head and spinal injuries.

Initially prompted by her physician who believed music would help her brain injury improve, Gardot began writing music after her accident. Music is thought to help the brain form new pathways. At first, Gardot learned to hum and was eventually able to sing into a tape recorder. She made good progress and was eventually able to write her own original songs. She had no idea before her accident that she was a musician, but today she’s playing concert tours all around the world.

Both of these examples show the unique fragility of the mind, but also the limitless resources that can be found as those with brain injuries get used to their new brain, their new existence and their dynamic relationship with their own consciousness.

I have discovered a few major changes to my own brain and levels of consciousness since suffering a serious traumatic brain injury in 2008, and a concussion last September. Yes, these injuries have hurt my ability to remember many words and faces. I do find that quite frustrating at times. The benefits for me are a greatly enhanced ability and need to meditate regularly. My brain gets exhausted quite easily, especially after an hour or so of conversation.

Another change is in the intensity of my dreams. They are so real now, I can’t imagine forgetting them. They pop into my mind all day long, making me feel so strongly like I actually spent time with those I only dreamt about spending time with…

This experience sometimes leaves me wondering, like the Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu, am I a butterfly flying around dreaming that I’m a woman, or a woman dreaming that I’m a butterfly? This is what a conk on the head did for me!

How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate?

It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir!

Blogging Boomers Have Their Say!

February 29, 2016February 29, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

My lively group of fellow bloggers have never been known to be shy about having their opinions on, well everything, and I include myself in that lovely, well-opinionated group! I know, opinions are like a**holes, but what’s the point of being alive if you can’t say what you think?

This week Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist over at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, writes about the movies nominated for Academy Awards this year. Although she feels as though she’s watched hundreds of movies, Robison actually only saw 26 movies and 10 shorts. Here she writes about these movies, because she thinks movie makers put too many violent images on the big screen.

Traveling and sightseeing can be exhausting activities, as Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting found out after three weeks on the road. She took a break, enjoying life at a slow, enjoyable pace. Read about her day off at Retirees Take a Day Off.

Tom, at Sightings Over Sixty, brings up Three Silent Issues that the politicians have been avoiding. Go over and take a look, and then you decide — aren’t these the kinds of things we should be talking about?

One of my favorite online educators, Kathy Gottberg, over at SmartLiving365.com shares her personal thoughts about creativity and her amazing mother in her new piece titled: The Courage to Live Your Creativity With Stubborn Delight! Don’t miss it!

And as for myself, I have some very strong feelings about the choices we make everyday between playing it safe and taking big risks. As you can probably tell, I became a big risk-taker after realizing how little I really had at midlife. Now I feel, one of the most important lessons I have ever learned in life is:

Playing it safe does not get you what you want!

Where is your brain injury?

February 22, 2016April 24, 2019 / Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

Slowly but surely I’ve been fighting back from a serious concussion this past September. Some days are fine, others I just feel like sitting and staring off into space for hours. One thing is for sure, it is quite difficult for me to maintain a good conversation for more than an hour or two. My brain gets tired very quickly.

Today I want to share with you some new information to me. I was searching around the Internet and came upon this very interesting page from the Centre for Neuro Skills on brain function. I guess I did not realize how important it is to specify where your brain has been injured, in identifying what functions are compromised.

For example, my traumatic brain injury back in 2008 damaged my frontal lobe (in the forehead area). According to this documentation this section controls consciousness, how we initiate activity, judgments in daily activities, emotional response, expressive language and assigns meaning to the words we choose, word associations and memory activities.

After being unconscious for hours after my bike accident with a serious bleed inside my brain, I struggled for at least a year with judgment, my emotions, language, word meanings, spelling and memory. I never did remember my accident, just the aftermath, and then only barely.

As luck would have it, I had just decided to become a writer in 2006 so writing became my best brain exercise. I actually published my first book by the end of 2008! I’m nothing if not stubborn!

Yes, I got very slowly better and thought that part of my life was history until this past September when I fell backwards onto concrete and knocked a small hole in my skull and injured my left parietal lobe. This led to even more problems with spelling and vocabulary. I now need to ask my husband words all of the time, and that’s very frustrating to me. In fact everything mentioned on this list rings try to me, especially “the inability to plan a sequence of complex movements to complete a multi-stepped task.”

I see now that brain injuries on top of previous injuries are the worst in terms of trying to get things done. At first I could only stare outside for hours. Luckily the views are fantastic up here! Believe it or not, I think coloring my mandalas has helped my brain a lot. It’s so hard for me to “be here now,” but I’m working on it every day.

Not to make excuses, but I’m pretty sure this new injury is making it much harder for me to put together my new memoir about moving to this beautiful new part of the country to retire. Luckily I don’t have to go to work, but even my new volunteer position at the local veterans nursing home could be a challenge at times. At least I’ll be among understanding friends.