Mothers Over 50 Archives - Page 18 of 26

South for the Winter – Or Just a Week…

by Andrea Lynn

The girls and I are just back from Florida, where my mom and dad live three months of the year. Nowhere else are so many generations from so many cultures on display than Florida in wintertime. Our flights were full of families heading south to see Grandma and Grandpa. A few adolescents traveling alone, plenty of babies and toddlers, and in one case three generations visiting the fourth – great-grandma – in West Palm Beach. Everywhere I looked there were bulky boat-like vehicles, often American-made, with out-of-state plates and drivers who fail to signal. […]

Crazy, Loco Love

by Liz Raptis Picco

When it comes to loving my teenagers, Crazy Loco Love stretches me just shy of breaking point. At times, the connection between our children almost seems hardwired to snap, split, and break away while they reach for adulthood. They seem like strangers when they’re sheathed in snarky self-absorption. The plausibility of body snatching pods intensifies: I’ve stared into their eyes, just in case. […]

Six Heart-Healthy Tips for February, American Heart Month

by Brant Secunda and Mark Allen

February is American Heart Month. It provides a wonderful opportunity for us to focus on the organ that beats around 3 billion times, nonstop, in the average human lifetime. Your heart keeps you alive. It sends life-giving oxygen, nutrients, and natural medicine through your bloodstream to all parts of your body. That’s what your heart does for you. What have you done for your heart lately? Most women don’t think about heart health, until mid-life. Sometimes, once there, it can be too late. Why not take this month to pay attention to your heart’s health? Here are six ways to do it. […]

The Soapbox: In Defense of Older Mothers

by Caren Lissner

Dear Reader: Here’s a great piece in “The Frisky,” on new older mothers:

Magazines seem to love writing about women’s choices, particularly if they can inspire readers to conclude that we’re making the wrong ones. Just before the new year, a much-talked about New Republic cover story focused on women and men becoming parents at an older age. The piece was written by an author who is herself an older mother and was concerned about a steady increase in birth defects and autism in recent years, although it’s been difficult so far to prove a direct correlation.

Meanwhile, one of Boston Magazine’s cover stories that same month was about a growing breed of women who believed that it’s okay to have an “occasional” drink while pregnant. Yes, that was the language — “occasional” 00 yet the subject was so provocative that it warranted top billing. Let’s not forget the May Time cover of the woman breastfeeding her three-year-old son (she didn’t appear to be drinking wine at the time). Soon after came the story in The Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter that blared: “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” (The Atlantic has published at least three stories since 1995 about women facing diminishing marriage and pregnancy prospects if they wait; one of the most famous such pieces, “Marry Him,” from 2008, urged women to settle for “Mr. Good Enough” rather than waiting to have babies.)

To read the rest of the article, please go to:

http://www.thefrisky.com/2013-02-15/the-soapbox-in-defense-of-older-mothers/

Love That Rings True

by Jenilyn Gilbert

I met my husband swing dancing in Grant Park in downtown Chicago when I was 38 years old. We dated for a couple of years and I was one month into my fortieth year when I walked down the aisle.

I recall the time before I met him; all the first dates, sadness over not having a life partner and feeling so left out and so behind my peers. I attended so many wedding showers and weddings that I never thought my turn would come. When I attended a friend’s second wedding, I thought ‘that’s it, this will never be me, now they’re starting to run two circles around me. I will never get married.’ Now that I’m two years into my marriage I just want to be pregnant. […]

101 Affirmations for Children

by Evelyn Lim

I compiled a list of affirmations for children, recently, from a wish to help mine with self-mastery and positive programming. As adults, many of our limiting thought patterns can be attributed to childhood conditioning or having unconsciously adopted negative societal beliefs. While we look for ways to help realign ourselves, how about starting with a better way forward in our children? […]

on loving a teenager

by Karen Maezen Miller

They love us in a different way.

I said that when someone asked what it was like to have a teenager.

I feel like we’ve lost a daughter.

My husband said that after a silent and inconsequential Sunday.

Just shut up.

I said that to her after a ride in the car yesterday.

And yet, there is love, so much love between us and it has gone nowhere! I am standing on the high bluff over death valley, infinite openness in all directions, stunned dumb in the emptiness, but I know the space before me is pure love. Pure love. Life grows here, even when we can’t see it. Refreshed in a cool night, fed by invisible rivulets. A whisper of sea sails five hundred miles across five mountain ranges, and the whisper is this.

They love us in a different way.

They love us in the space, the space that is nothing but love.

Love is not a feeling, not a thought, nothing given or got, not more or less. Not a precaution or warning, not a push or a prod. Not a reminder, not a teaching, not a performance. Love is not what I say and not what you hear. Not how was school how was the test what about homework what are you wearing wash your face eat your dinner pick up your shoes I don’t like her him that when if what did you do what did you say what about your terrible wonderful failure success happiness sadness what about me what about me what about me?

Love is the space between us. There is so much space.

What will you put into that space today, I ask myself before I hear the roar of my own echo.

Just shut up.

Reprinted with permission […]

My Love Will Not Let You Down

by Ellie Stoneley

At this time of year, when the tills of florists, card shops and chocolate emporia go “ker-ching,” the world is suddenly filled with red heart-shaped helium balloons, and I’ve often been known to become a little cynical.

I love ‘love’, and I love being told I’m loved and I love loving the people I love, but, and it is a big, but, I do struggle with the huge amount of money spent at Valentine’s Day on meals that are that bit more expensive than they usually are and, well, the whole thing really. I used to love the idea of anonymous Valentine’s cards and remember trying to disguise my writing in them at school or trying to decipher coded messages to see if I could work out who a card was from. I also know and do remember the bitter disappointment when no card arrived, or if the rose that did come wasn’t a huge bunch of them. (Yes, I was that shallow as a teenager … and constantly disappointed!!!) […]

10 Reasons I Love Myself

by Ann Sheybani

image courtesy of flickr.com

I love, love, love Gala Darling. Her site is all about radical self-love. My favorite among her posts: 100 Ways You Can Start Loving Yourself Right Now. In it she says:

“Make lists of reasons why you love yourself… & write down (or keep mental lists) of the compliments other people give you. We’re so quick to believe people when they say nasty, unkind or “brutally honest” (ahem, cruel) things to or about us, & we discard all the times we’re told how amazing, beautiful or intelligent we are. Usually this is because our sense of self-doubt is stronger than our self-love. If you can build up the love side of things, this will begin to change.” […]

Interview with Josie Iselin, Author of Heart Stones and Sea Glass Hearts

by Cyma Shapiro

Dear Reader: Heart Stones is my most favorite Valentine’s Day book, ever. I own and have given several of Josie’s books for presents. MitM is honored to feature her, for Valentine’s Day.

Q: Josie, your first book is called Loving Blind/Seeing Red: A Mother’s Decade. It features a series of images with connecting anecdotes about life with small kids which was inspired by your earliest path through motherhood. As the mother of three children, now ranging in age from 15 to 20, they appear to be your driving force, motivation and inspiration. Please tell me more about your journey with them and how it has contributed to your finding your life’s work.

I had my first baby (20 years ago nearly today in fact!) at midwinter break in the second of three years of an MFA program and when done, I thought I would be teaching pretty consistently. But teaching in the arts is initially a transient thing…The reality was that the best economic model for our family was for me to be home with the kids…and it was a gift to us as a family and to me as an artist. My studio is just downstairs (through the backyard) from the kitchen and my work and life are intertwined, physically as well as psychically. My kids and my husband always inspire me to do better work. […]