Fighting Something Off – Day 399

Cabin Run – Photo: L. Weikel

Fighting Something Off      

I’ve been off my game all day today. I woke up with a slight headache, and my equilibrium has been just a tad sketchy. I felt a little too cold at times and then a little too warm at others. That never bodes well.

And cranky doesn’t even begin to describe my attitude. Surly might be a tad more precise.

I’m hoping that the snowstorm they’re calling for tomorrow will bring the shift in energy I require to transmute whatever is trying to get a toe-hold in my system.

Solstice Arrives On Saturday

I’m making final preparations for my interview this coming Saturday. I’m pleased to announce that I will be participating in my 4thannual I AM Symposium, hosted by my dear friend Renee Baribeau.

While I’ll be announcing the event more formally in tomorrow’s blog post, I’m hoping you’ll be interested in joining me and the 16 other cool people who will be sharing insights and meditations, journeys and rituals on Saturday, December 21st, 2019.

My particular talk/interview will be taking place at 5:30 p.m. EST. I’ll share more tomorrow.

The format for this year’s chats will be 20 minute presentations. Different perspectives and unique suggestions to welcome in the new year and new decade in ways that resonate with you.

Become a Fire Tender

One way to have fun and feel part of a much larger community as we celebrate this shortest day of the year is to become a Fire Tender. By keeping a flame alight during the darkness of the Winter Solstice (with acknowledgement to our Southern Hemisphere siblings that they, too, are welcome to hold the light for us up here in the dark!) we share the hope that the light will return to us in these darkest of days.

It’s a big job – and hopefully many of us will take up the candle.

I’ll provide you with links to the I AM Solstice Symposium tomorrow night, including a link to become a Fire Tender. For those seeking community while maintaining a bit of introverted seclusion, this is a great opportunity.

In the meantime, enjoy these photos I took today of sunlight peeking out and glinting off Cabin Run, a tributary to my lovely Tohickon.

Cabin Run December sunset – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-712)

Missing My Walks – Day 220

Sunset – no filter – 18 June 19; Photo: L. Weikel

Missing My Walks

It’s been two days and I’m cranky as all get out.

I got home too late last night to take a walk. It was all I could do to eat dinner and write my post. And while I was tempted to do a quick ‘walk-around’ (which is our usual 2.2 mile trek – which I swear, we’ll be taking even after we’ve shed our mortal coils, we’ve walked it so many times throughout the 34 years we’ve lived here), Karl disabused me of that notion when he described how he and Spartacus got caught in a drenching downpour a bit earlier.

The air was so thick with mugginess when I walked from my car into the house, I could practically wring it out like a terrycloth towel. So no, I wasn’t inclined to risk it.

75% Chance of a Soak? No Thanks

Then tonight, even though I was tired, I was itching to walk. Missing one day is ok. Going two days without my time in nature doesn’t sit well with me. But again, the atmosphere was laden with moisture. It was gross, frankly, and while Karl said he was game for a ‘walk around,’ he checked his phone’s weather app.

“75% chance of a storm – right now,” he said grimly. “75% in an hour, too. And oh look! The hour after that it bumps up to 85%.”

Well, that put the kibosh on that idea. And now I’m kicking myself because I don’t think it actually ended up raining this evening (although it is now). In fact, I just checked again and we’re under a Flash Flood Watch from now until Friday at 1:00 a.m. – over the next 24 hours we could get up to 3” of rain!

So here I am. I may need to suck it up and walk in the rain tomorrow. It won’t be pleasant for the pups, but we may have to go for it anyway.

I’m sharing the photo below, which I took over the weekend, to remind us all of sunnier days. You have to admit, those are two happy, if a tad tuckered, pups. I took this after we’d taken the longer (4.1 mile) ‘walk-about,’ (as opposed to the 2.2  ‘walk-around’ – we need to keep our terms tight here, folks!) at one of their favorite places along our route where they always, without fail, stop, drop, and roll around in the lush green grass.

Spartacus & Sheila ‘chillaxin’ – Photo: L. Weikel

And the photo leading off this post is actually one I took last night as I was driving home from a session. (I was actually at a stop light. I wasn’t driving!) This was before I started encountering banks of fog along the river.

I just had to share. (And FYI, it took over 13 hours for Verizon Wireless to deliver this photo to my email! What the heck?)

Have a great day – here’s hoping for some Walk Time (or your equivalent) for all of us.

(T-891)

Disappearing – Day Sixty Two

Disappearing

Over the past several days I’ve had a recurring experience, albeit in different areas of my life and involving completely different people and encounters.

But I was struck today by the thread between all of these situations and I didn’t like the feeling.

Of course, it could just be unique circumstances adding up to me feeling that there’s a pattern here. Or, I really am disappearing.

It’s not only been creepy. It’s been infuriating.

A Pattern in Our Society

And yeah, I’ve read articles about how women who reach age 50 or so tend to just start blending into the wallpaper of other people’s awareness. Most of those articles seem to emphasize invisibility in the context of men and being noticed by or considered attractive to men. And while I’m not making it my life’s mission to actively become a hag, I’d also say I’m assiduously not into primping. Never was. Never will be. And lucky for me, I guess, Karl knows that too.

But there is evidence that the invisibility arises within other contexts as well. Contexts in which it’s patently stupid and an obvious loss to both society in general and in whatever industry or profession women work throughout their lives. Everyone loses when women are rendered irrelevant and unseen, muted and ignored, simply because they’re no longer of child bearing age.

And I have to say, I never thought I’d experience this attitude being directed toward me. I guess I thought I was immune because I’ve never cared one way or another about ‘looks,’ beyond, you know, basic personal hygiene and wearing eclectic clothes.

And then there’s the hair

And I haven’t changed in that regard. I’ve also not given one shit about going gray. Indeed, I love my gray hair – and the thought of putting poison on my head and letting it seep into my scalp, so close to my precious gray matter, makes me recoil in organic horror.  (Why would I go out of my way to avoid ingesting gmos, pesticides, and other stuff that’s bad for you and then deliberately let poison soak into my scalp?) Because I’m afraid to be my natural self?

Dumb. (For me.)

Yes, I’ve watched people close to me feel compelled to color their hair by the realities of our obnoxiously youth-worshipping society. You know – so they won’t become invisible. Because ‘old’ equates, for women, to ‘invisible.’ And I understand their fear in the corporate or professional world, but it makes me wonder: how do we change that culture if we continue to acquiesce to it?

Which is another reason why I refuse to do it.

But all of this is superficial. All of this is yackety yack about the packaging, and making the product (me – or us) look like something it is not.

Why? The Perennial Question

And I guess that’s what has always been at the foundation of my refusal to consider that I might actually be disappearing. I’m only starting to hit my stride! And my confidence in myself and in what I ‘do’ has been earned. By years of doing. Of experiencing. Of enduring.

Why the hell should I feel compelled to gussy myself up like some 30 year old when I’ve been there already? I’ve raised three kids (with Karl), headed my own law office, worked for a major feminist legal advocacy organization, made dinner every night, and managed to get to most soccer games, musicals, plays, and track meets. Doing all that wore me the hell out.

And I know, I know, it’s a tired old trope, but damn – men (who have not in the main had to ‘do it all’ in order to think they were bad-ass, but only had to ‘do their job’) can become gray and a little thicker around the waist and they are considered distinguished. Not me. Not us. If we don’t color our hair and Goddess-forbid do even more heinous things to our bodies, we become dismissible. We’ve ‘let ourselves go.’ We need to look in the mirror.

The Crux of This Post

Up to now, this post is not addressing what I initially set out to write about. Because what I experienced this week was an invisibility of a different kind.

It may have been related to how I look. But I don’t think that was it.

It was simple disrespect. It was being blown off. Why? I have no idea.

Not only did I feel like I was becoming invisible this week, but I also felt like I was standing behind a glass (soundproof) wall. People may have seen my mouth moving, but they sure as hell weren’t listening. Even when I repeated myself, over and over. Gently at first, thinking they perhaps hadn’t heard me. Then more forcefully because, damn it, I meant what I said the first time, but having to repeat it sixteen times made me a little cranky. Like – stop poking me.

And what I was saying might have been important. It just may have had some validity or at least been worthy of consideration. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend my time saying it. Time and a lot of hard-earned experience (a lot of which has turned my hair gray, I might add), are pretty much all I have to give.

I’m not saying everything I say is correct, necessarily, nor a pearl of wisdom. Whether it was my opinion on where to stop or what to eat, or a question with a bit more heft.

If you ask me something, then at least respond as though it has registered.

You know – so I don’t feel as though I should pantomime my response or act it out in interpretive dance.

Otherwise? I realize I’m disappearing.

And I may or may not go gently into the night.

(T-1049)