Celebrating The Ageless Way with Karen Sands

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With Karen Sands, Connecticut 2015

Today I highlight Gero-Futurist, thought leader on the longevity economy, and wise woman Karen Sands on the eve of the release of her new book, The Ageless Way. I’ve known Karen for over a decade and watched with awe the amazing work she has done to advance the “positive aging” possibilities for Baby Boomers who are ready to reshape their role in the world. Karen has also built a network of like-minded change agents and visionaries, some of whom are offering bonus gifts to those who purchase the book on September 30. I invite you to explore Karen’s work here. As I said in my endorsement of the book, Karen “sounds a clarion call to ditch denial and embrace the power of positive aging.” The book is “rich in resources, expansive in scope … an inspirational bible of feminist benchmarks and practical primer on how to leave the same old “old” in the dust.”

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Can You Imagine Living Life and Leading with More Presence, Clarity, Boldness, Vibrancy, Abundance and Ease at every age?

It’s Yours for the Taking ~ The New Ageless Story Will Show You How!

More of us than ever before are ready to reshape the chaos of our lives and planet, to change what aging means while transforming our lives and our world. The old story of aging no longer applies – if it ever did. We have more to give, not less, with each new year. Why deny age when we can transcend it? We can live beyond time, beyond age. We can be Ageless.

Join me in an exploration of past, present, and future stories, from the ancient oracles to modern trends in everything from entrepreneurship and the economy, science and technology, health and beauty, community and politics-stories and trends that lead to one extraordinary conclusion: We are on the cusp of the new story of our age, as individuals and as a planet, a story in which multiple generations have an opportunity to redefine age and reimagine the future together, and in doing so, transform the world in visionary ways. It’s time for us to illuminate this new story about what it means to age across our life course, a story in which we step forward to be not who we should be as we age but who we can be.

Let the old story go. Let the new story begin.

The Ageless Way is being referred to as a resource and reference for the ages. A book that you return to again and again . . . not only in regards to your own life, but to better understand how every gender and every generation can co-collaborate to change the future entirely.

Because aging is not about who we think we should be . . . it’s about who we CAN be.

As heartfelt as it is insightful and provocative, The Ageless Way uses myth, science fiction, personal anecdotes, practical information, fairytales, inspiring stories to cover important, paradigm-shifting topics like:

  • Positive and Conscious Aging
  • Ageless Women
  • Ageless Attraction and Beauty
  • The Longevity Economy
  • Encore Careers & Ageless Reinvention
  • Letting Go
  • Elderhood
  • The Generational Divide
  • An ‘Ageless Future’

If you want to be free of whatever is holding you back from true Agelessness and start living and leading as an Ageless Visionary with wrinkles that you know is within you, you’ll want to read this book.

Your story is not over. In fact, it’s only just beginning.
The Ageless Way is your personal invitation to make it one worth sharing.

To purchase the book and receive your 50+ bonus gifts go to: http://www.karensands.com/taw

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Karen’s work. How do you feel about aging? Do you see changes in our society at this historic moment in time when we are about to elect our first woman president, one who is 68 years old? Do you agree that “70 is the new 50”? as a column by Gail Collins in the NY Times asserted today? Let’s join Karen and bring this discussion mainstream!

 

Four Eyes-A Flash Memoir

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I read about a person’s “master status” when I took a sociology class long ago. I suppose there are several that might fit me: woman; Caucasian; Baby Boomer. But I also lay claim to one that has brought blessings, perhaps, while eliciting a kind of incredulous insensitivity on the part of children and idiots. And that would be my membership in the class of people who are “visually challenged; “four-eyes”; “blind as a bat”; burdened with “Coke-bottle” lenses; “rabbit-eyes”…in short severely myopic to the point of being legally blind.

Back when I would allow vanity to make me suffer, I could hide my infirmity. From 16 to 50, I wore contact lenses. What bliss not to have to hear another joker tell me something I already knew: “Wow, you have really bad eyes.” What good riddance to requests to “let me try them on” followed by revelatory exclamations of “you really are blind.” What joy to to run and flip and handstand myself silly; to forego the sharp knock of hard plastic against my nose when making a clumsy move; to kiss a boy without a fog of hot breath forming before my eyes.

And yet…my bespectacled state—leading to false assumptions as it could have had I not fit the bill—accurately presented the core of me to the world. I was a “bookworm”; a bibliophile; a reader; a girl early inclined to the intellectual, as evidenced by the long hours I spent poring over encyclopedia entries with zeal. When I think of the girl Jeanne, I think of a girl glued to her book. This has been one unswerving truth about me since I learned to read, and my glasses have been my badge of membership to an august, noble club since the age of 8. Further, having to wear those glasses kept me humbler than I might have been otherwise. Even when I turned to the rigid plastic eye scrapers that preceded gas permeable lenses, I could not in those days wear contact lenses round the clock without doing damage to the old corneas. So those who really knew me, knew me me for who I was and am, weak bunny eyes and all.

Cat-eyed Jean 1967
Cat-eyed Jeanne 1967

I did not get my first pair of glasses until, in 1964, an eye doctor came to Most Holy Trinity Grade School to give the pupils a rudimentary eye examination. Or maybe he just gave the exam to those of us students whose squinting, straining expressions and propensity to lean towards the blackboard  like magnets to metal clued the nuns in to our condition. However it happened, I was then sent home with a note to my parents reporting that I was in need of a visit to the optometrist.

A couple vivid scenes come to me now, of before and after the phenomenal event of that first pair of glasses.

Of the before stage, I remember at the age of 5 watching an I Love Lucy episode on a small, boxy, be-dialed television set perched on stiletto legs in the lounge at my mother’s place of employment—a small private nursing home. My face was perhaps 6 inches from the screen. It did not occur to me to question why my twin sister did not have to sit so close.

Of the immediate after stage, I remember being in the pew at the church to which the grade school belonged and putting my hand to my eyes to nudge the new prosthetic on the bridge of my nose. Like the good girl I frequently was not, I was facing towards the altar, and I realized that the blurred image of the priest was not the newly sharp and clear image the glasses had so recently revealed to me. What happened?

I was brought to dwell on the topic of lenses through another prompt from Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch. And while I chose to take the literal approach to the challenge rather than the lofty goal of pondering peace (decidedly challenging these days in America and the world), it’s been a good exercise in reflection. Here is the prompt:

September 21, 2016 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story using a lens. It can be literal, like looking at the world through rose-colored lenses or the need for spectacles. Or you can treat the idea like a perspective, showing how one character might see the same action differently from another. Think locally, globally, culturally. Is there a common lens by which we can achieve peace?

And here is my flash memoir, in which I capture that moment of adjustment to the new and sharply defined world before me.

Two Eyes

Father McHugh’s Irish brogue echoed through the vault. He was at the altar, the crucified Christ above him. I didn’t need to see him to know that.

Light streamed through the stained glass windows, illuminating the dusty-rose walls of the nave. So soft. So pretty. I wondered what the inside of a cloud looked like.

I looked towards the altar. Everything had looked newly sharp the day before, as if God had drawn lines around everything. Now Father was all fuzzy again. I squinted. I felt for the new glasses on my face.

My fingers jammed into my nose. I’d forgotten them at home.

 

 

September 7: Flash Fiction Challenge « Carrot Ranch Communications

Join me this week in more “Travels with Charli.” Reading her account of the sad goodbye to Montana, the trek south, and the landing on the Martian landscape of St. George, Utah leaves me pondering my mother’s feelings upon leaving Minnesota (the land of 10,000 lakes) for Phoenix Arizona (the Valley of the Sun) in July 1961. Wanderers we are…

Over yonder, where the cliffs diminish and pale in the slanting sun, is where we landed. How we left earth is a mystery. Perhaps it was a moonbeam we followed, thinking it to be a paved road …

Source: September 7: Flash Fiction Challenge « Carrot Ranch Communications

Labor Day Writing on Nature from Charli Mills

No doubt many of you have escaped the city this Labor Day weekend for inspiring vistas, the lull of waves or wind in the pines, the rejuvenating and grounding powers of Nature. If you haven’t (poor Jeanne has only her back yard for solace), or if you just love beautiful writing, you’ll be transported by this lyrical and evocative post on nature and saying goodbye from writer and blogger Charli Mills with two superb flashes to follow. Click on the link for the full post. You won’t be sorry.

And best wishes for a great break from your labors!

There’s a place on earth where cedar wax-wings dip low enough to know air and water amalgamate. High overhead the sky is blue as only sky can be; no jewel can rob its glory. Osprey fish the river and eagles hunt from higher above, sometimes stealing from the osprey. It’s as if this place can boast of paradise, whisper of dreams, vanquish the veil between those who sought shelter then and now. Animals, birds, humans in a circle of life, a beating heart of beauty. And I dared to name her parts.

Source: August 31: Flash Fiction Challenge « Carrot Ranch Communications