Chasing Midlife Dreams
"What happens to a dream deferred?" wrote Langston Hughes, "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" No, says Laurie Gottlieb, a professor of developmental psychology at McGill University in Montreal. A "dream deferred" is likely to haunt the dreamer all her life.
Gottlieb, and co-author Deanna Rosenswig (a commercial and corporate banker), talked to over 100 women from four different countries for their new book Dreams Have No Expiry Date. The women ranged in age from forty to eighty-five.
Whether capping a successful career and seeking a new challenge, emerging from the home and looking for a new start in today's workforce, confronting retirement or a life after divorce, the authors found women asking: "What will I do with the rest of my life? And what's next?"
"Midlife is about taking stock and taking charge," say Gottlieb and Rosenswig. And the best way to take charge of your future is to have a dream. Dreams give you a sense of direction. They provide a road map for the journey. Recovering an old dream, or forging a new one, can make the middle years the best years of your life.
In the early years, many people veer off the path because of practical problems, the opposition of parents, or their own lack of conviction.
But life visions established in childhood and adolescence pack a powerful punch. A study by Patricia Weenolsen, a psychologist specializing in life-span development, reveals women who fulfilled their early dreams were overwhelmingly satisfied with their lives even when fulfillment came late in life. On the other hand those women who did not follow their dreams regretted it--even when they had successful careers and marriages.
Of course, chasing dreams means taking risks, but as psychologist Eda LeShan reminds us: "When we don't take chances, we end up half alive and miss out on what might have been great moments in our lives. Such decisions are the ones we most regret."
Dreams Have No Expiry Date is published by Random House Canada.
Scientist Sees Growing Acceptance of
Faith-Health Link as Evidence Piles Up
Today medical schools across Canada and the US are offering courses in the humanities in response to demands by patients to be treated as persons, not as medical diagnoses: "The aneurysm in ICU" or "the liver in room 365." Additionally, more faculties of medicine are offering courses in spirituality and medicine.
Research conducted in the 1970's by Dr. Herbert Benson, director of Harvard University's Mind/body Medicine Institute suggests that what happens in a person's mind could be as important to health as what happens on the cellular level. Further, his studies reveal that 60 to 90 percent of all visits to doctors' offices in the US are related to stress and mind-body effects that do not respond to medical intervention.
Today the medical literature worldwide records more than 1, 200 recent studies on the health and religion-spirituality relationship. For example, neurologists are studying the biological effects of meditation and prayer on the brain.
Over the past two decades, Dr. Harold Koenig, the founder and director of Duke University Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health, has published twenty-five books and over 200 professional journal articles detailing the connection between spirituality, faith and health. Now, in The Healing Connection, Koenig, a practising Christian, lays aside his researcher role to comment on the current findings and the implications for the medical profession and faith communities.
Among Dr. Koenig's findings related to the health-faith connection are the following:
- People who attend church regularly have lower blood pressures and are less likely to suffer from hypertension.
- Regular church goers live longer, an effect that is equivalent to wearing seat belts or not smoking cigarettes.
- Better mental health, greater social support, and healthier lifestyles among members of faith communities translate into better physical health.
- Even when depressed over difficult health problems, people with a deep faith recover more quickly.
Koenig believes the time has come for the medical profession to pay attention to the whole human being and to recognize the existence of a spiritual component in dealing with illness.
A recent suggestion by a panel of the American College of Physicians that doctors take a spiritual history from seriously ill patients appears to lend support. Now in an article published on-line in The Annals of Internal Medicine, Professor Stephen Post provides an example of a spiritual screening tool consisting of the following questions:
- Do you consider yourself spiritual or religious?
- How important are these beliefs to you, and do they influence how you care for yourself?
- Do you belong to a spiritual community?
- How might health providers best address any needs in this area?
In a success-driven culture that finds little meaning in experiences of frailty, suffering, and dying, religion can provide an alternative vision for individuals and their families.
Further, Dr. Koenig believes the current research and an aging population offer faith communities unprecedented opportunities for new models of ministry to aging members and their families.
The Healing Connection by Harold G. Koenig with Gregg Lewis is published by Templeton Foundation Press.
Grooving with Postmenopausal Zest
For many women today menopause marks only the midway point in their lives.
Rejecting the trend towards increased medicalization, women are claiming menopause as a natural process - a life transition offering opportunities for physical, emotional and spiritual growth.
"How you define something will profoundly affect the way you experience it," says Marian Van Eyk McCain, author of Transformation Through Menopause.
Not surprisingly, as women view menopause differently, their approach to the aging process is changing too, opening up new avenues for finding peace, creativity and postmenopausal zest.
Still Peddling the Back Roads of the World at 73
For her tenth birthday, Dervla Murphy received a bicycle from her parents, and an atlas from her grandfather, and decided, there and then, she would, one day, cycle to India. Twenty-one years later, she climbed onto her bicycle and started peddling. The diary she wrote along the way became her first book, aptly entitled Full Tilt.
Murphy was born in Lismore, County Waterford in 1931. Now, forty years after that first trip, and twenty books later, this intrepid granny is still traipsing around the world.
She has travelled by bicycle or on foot to the far-flung corners of four continents. In the late 70s, she made the gruelling journey through the Andes with her nine-year-old daughter Rachel, and Juana, their beloved mule. Battling stifling heat, and with only the basics to sustain them, the formidable duo trekked from Cajamarca on the border with Ecuador, to Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, over 1300 miles to the south.
At age sixty, she embarked on a three-thousand mile solo cycle ride across sub-Saharan Africa, peddling from Kenya through Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia to Zimbabwe.
A decade later, she took a three-month-long bicycle ride through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo--on a route, notorious for some of the worst mountain roads in Europe.
Recently, she headed for one of the Earth's uttermost parts, Siberia. Her plan was to bicycle from Vladivostok to remotest Ussuriland, but a painful leg injury on the train from Moscow forced her to abandon her bike and settle for the slow Baikal-Amur Mainline train to Lake Baikal, a riverboat up the Lena to Yakutsk, and a 30-hour bus trip from Yakutsk to Tynda.
Despite her ignorance of the Russian language, Murphy hit it off with a colourful palette of Siberians who welcomed the maimed babushka (granny) into their homes. And as the bewildered Siberians, tried to understand what this privileged old woman dressed "like a pensioner" was doing in their backyard, she pulled out photo albums of grandchildren, terriers and cats and passed them round.
Like all her books, Siberia by Accident (John Murray) is the story of a land, its people and culture. In this seemingly bleak place, Murphy discovered breathtaking scenery, a culture rooted in an intriguing Siberian/Russian story, and a resourceful and hospitable people.
Forty years and many hair-raising adventures have not dimmed the dream of the ten-year-old girl. Still listening closely, and with an eye for detail, she reports meticulously on a world that she finds hauntingly beautiful and sadly bedevilled by rampant militarism and uncontrolled capitalism. Through it all, Dervla Murphy's sense of humour, stout heart, and irrepressible zest for life shines through.
How Resilient Are You?
"Moving to a new community at the age of sixty-three is the toughest thing I've ever done," Deborah Stanton told the members of her evening class.
But now a year later, Deborah is on the executive of a local women's group, a regular at the YMCA, and a member of various community groups.
"I like a challenge, so I didn't expect the move to be so difficult," recalls Deborah.
Suzy, another class member, knows the feeling well. Even after six years in her new community, she's still struggling to make friends.
Why the difference?
Among other things, Deborah may be more resilient than Suzy.
Researchers have found resilience may be a particularly important factor during times of transition, when stresses tend to accumulate.
For Deborah, it was more than the move. There was also her husband's retirement and the need to adapt to changes in lifestyle.
Resilience is frequently seen as the capacity to bounce back from adversity. Resilient people are thought to carry reserves of strength inside them--a sort of emotional contingency fund.
Recently some researchers have suggested that resilience is not a global quality. Rather, it can be compartmentalized into, for example, physical resiliency, emotional resiliency, or resiliency to change. Resilience in one area does not pre-suppose resilience in all areas.
Last January, the Kerby Centre at the University of Calgary enlisted seniors to research why some of them are more resilient than others when it comes to meeting the challenges of aging.
"Healthy aging is not necessarily tied to medical wellness," says Dr. Penny Jennett, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine and the study's lead investigator. "Someone who has a chronic disease or a disability might otherwise be very healthy and coping very well. We are finding that resilience seems to be tied to the kinds of relationships and support you have around you, the influence of your earlier upbringing, and perhaps even genetics," she says.
To discover how resilient you are, and boost your bounce-back factor, try the Resilience Quiz at www.thrivenet.com.
Leaving an Environmental Legacy
"Grandpa planted a small pine tree in the backyard for each of his grandchildren. My tree is there and it's going to grow up at the same time as me."
- Solange Lefebvre, "Grandparenting - a Revelation"
Today we all face a special challenge in restoring balance to our planet. If you treasure a special bond with the Earth's gifts, you may want to leave an environmental legacy to a loved one. Here's one strategy:
- Choose several of the earth's gifts that have special meaning for you. They might include a constellation, a pussy willow, a bird song, an old dirt road, or a favourite tree.
- Now draw, paint, take a photograph, or find a magazine picture of two of the gifts you have selected.
- Identify two heirs to whom you would wish to leave these gifts as legacies.
- Formalize your gift by writing on each:
"To________________, I wish to leave _________________because ____________________."
Adapted from Jubilee Time (Bantam Books) by Maria Harris
Wellness Information Tips
Check out these handy 4-page information sheets from Health Canada: Vision Care, Type 2 Diabetes and Foot Care.
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