WILDLY FREE ELDER
The Artistry of Aging
Being And Becoming Elders
Seal Elders hanging with the rocks in the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, Pacific Grove, California USA
New Wildly Free Elder Spotlight and Offerings/Holiday Specials
“Born in the British Isles, FireHawk came to the US as a very young man – to study and to find his way in the world. He spent his early professional years immersed in theatre arts and large-scale communication projects, using multi-media, emerging computer graphics tools, and his burgeoning love of photography (which continues unabated to this day)
He says that meeting his teachers, WindEagle and RainbowHawk, 28 years ago helped him to find something that he had been seeking”…..READ MORE HERE ABOUT FIREHAWK
Listen to the story of how Firehawk’s name came into being; engaging with his personal story (hear attack and wildfires) of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual challenges and transformations within aging and becoming/being an elder; and exploring “eldering” as a verb.
Also enjoy our ending with Gaye once again not able to find the “Stop Recording” button. We were simply having a great time together and didn’t want it to end! (purposefully did not trim this part off) PLAY!
HOLIDAY SPECIAL SALE: “Inclined Elders” by Ramona Oliver
This Book Will Be Invaluable If You:
- Have a desire to continue living a purposeful life, no matter what your age.
- Are interested in learning how to maintain a positive attitude from adulthood to elderhood.
- Want to learn how to create a living legacy and serve as a role model for future generations
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER HOLIDAY GIFT SALE PRICE
As a gift for you, your family, and friends, I’m extending a discount on both paperback and e-book through my self-publishing partner, BookBaby, – direct link https://bit.ly/3dpLrzN
PAPERBACK
Regular Price: $14.99
Holiday Gift: $9.99
Coupon Code: IEGIFTPB
EBOOK
Regular Price: $9.99
Holiday Gift: $4.99
Coupon Code: IEGIFTEB
Apply the discount code at checkout. You can use the codes for one or more books and the code is valid from November 1st through December 31st.
NOW…WHAT?
Join Us in Ceremony Online
On Saturdays November 14th, December 12th, January 9th, and February 13th 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM PST
| Dear Ones, This year, we held both our Spring and Summer Ceremonies online. As we move towards winter in the Northern Hemisphere, we warmly invite you to once again come to ceremony in the Digital Realm, so that we may be together in a sacred way, dream together and support one another in imagining “Now…What?” Simply click the button below to find out all of the details. |
| We are excited about the possibility of spending time in each other’s company in ceremony, exploring, co-creating, and playing a part in each other’s ongoing learning and growth. We send our love to you – stay safe… FireHawk & Pele |
Bare Bones
Written on 11/4/20 by Gaye Abbott
As I sit with foot elevated on a pillow with an ice pack upon it, the U.S. election results still not decided and a nation divided, and the results of a skin biopsy a few days ago that came back as a superficial squamous cell carcinoma – I feel stripped to the bare bones of the question, “where do I place my attention?”
In fact, I feel stripped bare period.
This is a particularly vulnerable space to inhabit. There are no sheltering or hiding places in transparency. It is simply raw and real – exposing the parts of us that we haven’t had the courage up to now to reveal to anyone other than those closest to us. And even then do we really share our deepest concerns, for fear of revealing to ourselves that we really don’t know who we are anymore in this chaotic world we live in.
Or perhaps with all that we have grappled with and are experiencing, we know, accept and love ourselves even more?
We are supposed to “have it together” and know what our next step will be. Yet there doesn’t seem to be external markers any longer that direct us to where our attention should go. We may feel lost or at best caught in a whirlpool of others expectations and cultures rules of order, lost in the chaotic pull of so much grabbing for our attention. Lost in the “pitfalls” of aging in a dominant culture that denies they will ever die.
Simply to confess to myself I don’t have the answers, nor do I know where I am going, feels to be an exercise in surrender.
There is too much moving in the wholeness of intimate interconnection to make grand plans or expect any more than simply placing attention on the present moment in which my foot hurts, but is very slowly healing; the election will be decided in a few days and will no doubt be revealing; and I will have a procedure next week to scrape away any residual cells on this Southern California sun marked skin.
Then let all that go.
For I realize the next moment offers an invitation into the bare bones of this last cycle of embodied life as an elder. Where so much passion, optimism, laughter, creativity, wild and elemental nature wisdom, and love reside amidst the challenges and the vulnerability.
A poetic improvisational way of living where I am part of the whole, intimately connected with life evolving.
It is when I go this deep, into the often messy bare bones, beauty and mystery of existence and rest there, that I am free….
Gaye Abbott, Natural Passages Consulting, 11/4/2020
I Don’t Know
Guest Blog Post by Tania Carrier of Advivum Journeys
I feel I’ve done something wrong.
My normal response to most questions – “celebrating the holidays?”… “shall we go for a walk tomorrow?”…” is the business hanging in there?”, is a quick scan and a definitive answer.
These days, however, I am heard uttering uncertainty.
“I don’t know” is a definite blip in the system.
The reverberations fill me with the same feeling I had when I once got lost hiking in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands. Completely turned around and surrounded by tall trees that hid the horizon, I had nothing to show me the way, nothing to suggest a direction, safety or an outcome. No amount of staring at the map or down the path revealed the “right way out.” I did not know.
I feel that same prickly feeling down my spine now as I wonder what the future might hold.
Am I headed in the right direction? I don’t know.
When will this all end? I don’t know.
Should I be doing something differently? I don’t know.
Will I handle being cooped up all winter? I don’t know.
Will Covid bring the incubation time for a new creative start? I don’t know.
Admitting “I don’t know” isn’t socially acceptable.
All my schooling was about being on that hallowed ground of certainty, answers so definitive that they could be picked out of a multiple choice. The whole system applauded every right answer. A great predictive model of my future was based on the number of things that I knew.
Society hasn’t prepared me to admit, let alone live in, “I don’t know.”
At best, it is an unfortunate but transient state which immediately precedes humbly asking Google to rescue me.
And yet, here we are.
I did a quick poll amongst my friends; it seems we are all feeling a little “I don’t know,” and we don’t like it, not one bit. Most of us confess to bluffing an answer or projecting bravado where there is none.
But what if not knowing isn’t a cause for worry?
Isn’t it the truth that we never really knew?
Nothing is missing; certainty was never there in the first place.
The confidence and conviction I had about my life a year ago didn’t allow me to foresee what was to come. Any entrepreneur will tell you that knowing a business and predicting performance tomorrow is not the same thing. When I think back over the milestones that mark my life, most of them came without my foreknowing.
It is uncomfortable, but what if I accept my current reality as a state of wonder?
A place where scripts are rewritten, questions are playthings, surprises are frequent.
I remember the moment, clutching my map, I was able to calm myself down and take a 180degree turn away from panic and accept that I did not know where I was.
I sat in, “what is my next step?”.
No longer taunted by the questions I could not answer, I got curious about who I was as I experienced uncertainty. I pushed away the worrier and invited in the explorer. I moved into experimentation – what if I take this direction? I stayed present, noting the patterns of the trees and the greenery near the path. I celebrated out loud when I retraced my steps to the line on the map at the top of the ravine. I encouraged myself to stay levelheaded when I realized that it was not the line on the map at the top of the ravine. I noted the dropping sun and the nervousness that resulted and used it to metronome my steps.
I stopped trying to predict, to control, to foresee. Only then did I feel a little peace and the invitation to be where I was.
In the moment of uncertainty, there is an expansiveness of possibilities.
Innovation, creativity and unseen paths require comfort in the unknown.
Trying to predict how this pandemic will turn out is exhausting.
Certainty is an illusion. Prediction is wishing.
Acknowledging that I cannot see over the treetops, I feel lighter, relieved from the pressure of having to pretend I can foretell the answer.
Uncertainty has always been woven through life.
It is not more or less certain now; I am just more willing to acknowledge it, sit in it, play in it.
And accept that it has always been so (of that I am certain!)
And NOW For My Next Act…
Guest Blog Post by Donny Lobree
Having just passed to the far side of 60, I’d guess I’m one of the older techies you’d ever meet. I’m also a proud recent grad of Flatiron School. How did I get here and where am I going? Well, let’s see….
I’ve been in retail, been a tax preparer, bank teller, airline worker, and ran my own businesses. I’ve taught yoga, Reiki and even became a Certified Massage Therapist. Somewhere throughout those decades I personally met Princess Diana in a hotel in Rio, fell in love and almost married a man in South Africa while traveling around the world more times than I can barely remember. I lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis in the 80’s and 90’s in San Francisco; lost a husband, Julio, and became a healer. Somewhere in all that, I learned to speak 10 languages and worked myself up to becoming a semi-professional violist. Did I mention I wrote and published a children’s story about my beloved stuffed bunny? I think my very greatest joy and challenge has been working off and on over the decades as a Midwife to the Dying–I help people die and I sit with the grieving. To balance it out, I took my shirt off and became Mr. July 2016 for an SF non-profit and helped raise funds for our community’s most needy.
All that being said, it was a couple of years ago when I asked myself, “Well ok, can we please be done now?” And the little voice inside of me said, “ Sorry, Hon. There’s just a bit more to go. And by the way, what are you really doing with your life, Donny?”
What indeed.
And so as I entered this next stage of my life, I began to ponder: how can I synthesize and bring together all that I have been? What do I want my next contribution to the world to be? How can I begin to compose a graceful “coda” to this life over these next couple of decades? How can I help ensure a comfortable lifestyle for myself and my 71 year-old husband, Kirk, as we both continue to gather, examine–and release.
I have always been fascinated by computers and coding, having been firmly grounded in the contrasting pre-internet era of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. “What would it be like to play with some HTML?”, I thought. And so I begin to teach myself HTML/CSS and make simple websites. The whole process reminded me of learning a human language with vocabulary and syntax. The ability of thinking out of the box came fairly naturally to me as a classical musician: playing the viola has a lot of structure to it, but allows you to be creative as you play “on top of” your technique.
My coding experience just kept growing over months. After HTML/CSS then came JavaScript. “So many fun things to learn and cool-looking technologies to try,” I would constantly observe. These days, I’m expanding my repertoire by learning Java and the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React and Node). I’m planning on tackling Amazon Web Services towards the end of the year.
I never cease to be amazed by the ability coding affords us to make something out of plain air. And not just any old thing, but maybe something that will be of use to people to make their lives better or bring them closer together. Therein lies the “magic” of coding.
However, I had no real path in coding or any particular goal as I bashed around with coding tutorials. Then one day a friend suggested, “Why don’t you let people pay you to code, Donny?” What a thought! So over the next few months as I worked with that idea, I realized I needed to put some form to all this new seemingly random coding knowledge I was collecting. That’s when I started investigating coding schools.
It took me well over a year to choose my school. I was on every email list for every coding school I could find and took many free and paid pre-code school prep courses. I chose Flatiron School in the end. Why? What stood out about Flatiron as opposed to several other really good schools?
Flatiron is the only coding school I found that really truly has a heart–and big one at that.
From my pre-school coding interview to the account executives; from the bookkeeping staff and, of course, down to my eventual teachers and post-graduation employment coaches, everyone unfailingly and without exception demonstrated care, generosity in addition to precision, excellent communication and responsiveness. I have never for a second regretted my choice of code school and, as I like to say whenever I get a chance, “I am a grateful Flatiron School graduate.
Today, as I bring in all that I have been, or “soft skills” as you call it in techie-world, together with my fledgling “hard skills”, I find myself looking for a job in this era of COVID-19.
Although it is not impossible for someone of my age to get a job as a Software Engineer, the truth is that it is somewhat harder. “Age discrimination can be subtle,” as one counselor told me. Perhaps the 25 year old lead engineer will be thinking, “Can I play ping pong with this guy?” Or it can be more overt in the initial stages of the interviewing process where I have been actually asked, “How old are you”, or “What year did you graduate from high school”. In both cases, I respectfully declined to answer the questions. Below, I’ve included some resources regarding the federal and state laws regarding age discrimination if you’re curious.
Today, much like some of my colleagues from school, I continue the job search. Maybe I’m just beating my head against the wall? Perhaps taking the coding nomad approach would work better.
Let me close our time together with one parting thought. When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself the same question I ask myself: “What will I learn today,” and “How will I be of service?” Then see how far you’ll go!
Keep coding out your dreams!
Namaste,
Donny
P.S. I would love to connect with you and hear your thoughts. Find me here on Linked In:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donny-lobree/
*Here are some links to articles regarding asking an applicant’s age during an employment interview:
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0910/8-things-employers-arent-allowed-to-ask-you.aspx
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4037-illegal-interview-questions.html
Enough Is A Precious Feast
Artwork by Alex Grey
“In a gentle way you can shake the world.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
Attending to life is a sacred act of love.
Last year I visited my home town of San Diego, California in the beach area of Ocean Beach/Point Loma where I was born, raised and brought three sons into the world – with the purpose of spending time with family still living there.
It was like living my life backwards with so many memories arising as I walked my old haunts and the hard packed sand at the waters edge. On one of these walks I reflected on my entry experience at the airport a day before.
Since it had been decades since I flew into San Diego I found the airport not only larger, but more complex in an organized way. One of the improvements being that car rentals were now in one building in back of the airport. To reach this building one needed to ride the 11-minute shuttle to get there.
As the door opened for the shuttle bus I was to ride, a beautiful African American woman stepped down from the front of the bus onto the sidewalk with a huge smile on her face and greeted us all with an immense inviting and loving energy, calling us precious as she took our luggage and lifted it into the designated spots within the bus.
As another woman sat down next to me she turned and with a smile on her face said to me, “I’ve never been called precious before!” In just that one gentle way our bus driver had opened up and connected this woman to herself and to me.
It did not stop there! Once the bus was loaded and the driver had greeted everyone and stowed their luggage we were under way to the car rental building. As you know, travel can be stressful and sometimes the purpose of an individual’s travel can run the gamut from vacation to attending to immense challenges they may be faced with.
The driver greeted us on the PA system, asked how all of us were doing – waiting for our responses, and then proceeded to tell us a little about San Diego and what we were passing by on our short journey.
In the silence that followed this everyone on the bus all of a sudden started hearing oldies songs, like Moon River, that were whistled over the speaker system…..by our entertaining bus drive. And she was good!
Following that she invited us to sing children’s songs that she probably sang with her grandchildren, and which most everyone on the bus had sung as a child. We went the gamut from “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round & Round” to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and finally to “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” (with animal suggestions from her captive audience) .
Next on the agenda she challenged anyone who wanted to participate to say tongue twisters with her….and one man from New Zealand standing on the bus with a very large box took it on and succeeded with the most lovely accent!
At this point we were just about to our destination. As I looked around all of the passengers were smiling and connecting with each other. The entire energy on the bus had changed. We were connected and enjoying the few moments it took us to get to our destination, the stress of travel forgotten.
As everyone stepped down from the bus our driver handed us our luggage from where it was stowed with a huge smile. I thanked her for such an entertaining and community connected trip with a shared connected smile.
This woman had engaged us in the short moments we were all together and created something extraordinary from a job and 11 minutes together that could have been quite ordinary simply getting us to where we needed to be.
Enough was indeed a feast!
When we as elders question whether we are good enough, or simply enough and question our value – we are caught in the entanglement of either cultures expectations, or our very own patterns and perfectionism.
What would it be like to simply let go of those expectations, a diagnosis, labels or identities – and discover who we are as extraordinary, empowered and creative beings in our fullest expressions in any given ordinary moment?
Perhaps we shall find that in honoring our “being enough” – our innate value – it takes us from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
Shake the World and create a feast!
______________________________________________________________________________
Copyright by Gaye Abbott, 9/2019 from Wildly Free Woman
Love As Allurement – the Cosmic Creation Story
Guest Blog Post by Ann Roberts
This morning, a cup of tea in hand, I contemplated what to do with the day when my eyes glanced over to my bookshelf.
Books are a joy to me!
I take such pleasure in the commitment of the author to share their insights. It feels like a personal connection. I love how they have reached out to make a difference in my life by sharing what is important to them. I celebrate the diligence they have shown to bring the book into form.
I also appreciate the people that helped them. I always savour the Acknowledgments Page of any book I am reading. This is where the author says ‘thank you’ to the people that supported them. It is a window into the author’s life and the co-creative process they engaged in.
————
Today my eyes rested on a book called ‘The Universe is a Green Dragon‘ by Brian Swimme. I am inspired by how he weaves his knowledge of the Universe’s nature with his understanding of spirituality. He presents complex ideas in a simple way, and the joy he brings to what he is sharing is so infectious.
The Cosmic Creation Story
The book is a conversation between a youth and a wise elder about the Cosmic Creation Story. It is wonderfully illustrative of how the Universe came into being.
It is also a beautiful example of how conversation across the generations takes place. In the book, the youth asks lots of questions, and the elder responds in an evocative way that invites even more questions. The interplay between them is such fun to follow. It feels like there is a twinkle in the elder’s eye.
————
I took the book down from the shelf and sat with it closed on my lap for a couple of minutes. Looking out to the hills here in Scotland, I said to myself,
“Ok, what is the message for me today?”.
I often do this when I feel challenged or when I am looking for inspiration. I find the message offers me new ways of looking into what is happening in my life. So, I let the book fall open and my eye flow over the revealed page, and, to my delight, it was all about the universal concept of LOVE.
Love as Allurement
The elder says, “At the heart of this Creation Story is Love. It is not human love but a primordial quality that enables the Universe to be the creative force that it is.’
The youth asks, “What is love?”.
The wise elder smiles and replies, “Love begins as allurement – as attraction.”
This description of love as allurement is a beautiful sentiment, and I found myself thinking really big and then really small as I thought about;
- the love galaxies have for one other so that they are ‘called’ to be in relationship,
- the love one oxygen atom has for two hydrogen atoms that gives us water,
- the love of a bee to a flower, how they dance in beauty,
- the love a human has for a beautiful piece of music, how it touches the soul,
- the love of us humans for the natural world that brings us healing.
- the love of an adult for a child that seeks to nurture them into their fullness.
Oh my, I am waxing lyrical today!
My questions for today
As I write this, my optimism rising. So, as I sit here on a misty Scottish morning, I reflect on how I can tap into this allurement. Not only with my immediate family but with everyone and everything I encounter. What will be the quality of my connection? I imagine it will be fun.
————
I like to finish off each newsletter with questions for you, and I wonder if there will be an allurement in my words that leads to a deeper connection. I hope so. Here I go.
- Have you looked up at the sky today to connect with your love of the Universe?
- Are you looking at your life through the lens of love today? If so, what are you experiencing? If not, what might be needed?
- Are there any blockages to the flow of love where you can bring healing?
Reprinted from The Sunny Optimist: Ideas, information and inspiration to brighten your day. By Ann Roberts
Master of Pauses
This morning, turning onto the two lane winding country road I live on, there were no cars coming either way until within seconds, after the turn was made, I looked in my rear view mirror and a SUV was suddenly right at my back bumper. Where the heck did they come from? Would they stay urgently kissing the back of my car, or would they back off a little and give me some breathing room?
More importantly might they miss the gentle Fall morning light filtering through the leaves of the trees down onto the road we traveled, wrapping us in beams of a day just beginning. Or perhaps give some time to simply take a conscious inhale and releasing exhale of fresh cool morning air from an open window, releasing the grip on the steering wheel and the busy mind chatter about everything other than the preciousness of the moment happening now.
I remember those days of going from one thing to the next, hardly breathing, caught up in a mindless rush set in place by a culture and expectations from others that did not take time to pause. Most of us simply did not know how to stop, and if we did felt rather guilty that we weren’t doing anything productive. We were caught up in the challenges of other stages of life.
But in the captivity we may not have honored that we did have choice, even amidst the challenges of life. Our own physical demise was not even a thought for most of us, and pausing meant that we weren’t getting things done in a manner either self imposed or demanded from others.
No one taught me how to take meaningful and life giving pauses where possibility, well being and creativity reside. It is just in recent years I have learned the value and rewards from doing so.
More recently, the pandemic has forced most humans to take a pause. After letting go of resisting the restrictions and facing the anxieties, challenges and fears, many found they were pregnant with potential and had time to explore where their curiosity took them. The “pause” was filled with creativity and awareness and a “coming home” of sorts. New pathways opened up.
As elders we are innately teachers of the pause.
That is if we see the value in pausing and practice it, when ordinarily we might jump in and “raise our hands” or get diverted by old patterns of being. Relationships can thrive within the pause, conflicts resolve, innovation and artistry is birthed…..and nature breathes.
We simply have more wisdom to recognize when we need to get out of our own way…..pause…..and allow the unfolding spaciousness to provide more possibilities than we could ever see if rushing forward into actions, opportunities or even words that cut off or hinder something or someone else emerging.
Shall we share a pause together?
Hidden In Your Heart?
“There is within each heart a hidden voice that calls out for freedom and creativity. We often linger for years in spaces that are too small and shabby for the grandeur of our spirit.”
John O’Donohue, To Bless The Space Between Us
Engaging With The Wild
“The payment now is the sacrifice of certainty and control that comes in engagement with the wild. That is what renews the world.”
~Charles Eisenstein
“Engagement with the wild” inside, and outside, seems to be something we have forgotten how to be and do. As elders becoming it is an integral part of the initiation.
The wild in this case meaning inhabiting a space of being that holds no certainty, control, or what we have called “normal” within our patterned ruts deeply grooved in the matter of our brains.
The question we are all faced with right now. Do we adventure into new territory engaged through a courageous leap, stepping over the threshold of curiosity, into the heart of our own wildness?
Perhaps fitting in and belonging is more important right now. I understand the lure in such uncertain times. But haven’t they always been uncertain?
As Charles Eisenstein says, it is “time to devote ourselves to love rather than safety, beauty rather than growth, participation rather than control”. And perhaps, I say, be more inclusive rather than dismissive.
Imagine a large circle with 5 concentric circles within gradually reducing in size until the last one is simply at the center.
As humans we are prone to focus on two ways of thinking and survival. The outermost circle is focusing on the complexity of life through solving a problem or banishing a symptom which is a never ending loop of chasing after the next one that emerges. It certainly gives the mind endless jobs to do!
The second circle inside the first outer layer involves functions of mind, body heart – the operating systems if you will – which is a little more expanded, but still contained within the boxes of what is presently known about these operating systems and can endlessly be broadcast as mainstream and cultural dogma giving you that assumed sense of safety, certainty and control.
The next two circles and the very center are steps into engaging with the wild.
Engaging, innovating, imagining and creating new stories for ourselves, and by default all that we are interconnected with. And have fun doing it!
Moving out of “function” we enter into the energy of all life, where we are aware that the whole is always where we belong. Within that energetic space there is so much more room to play and let go. To practice our artistry without the restraints of external complexity and old operating systems theories clouding the playing field.
It may seem too vast in those first fall on your face moments to sense everything as energy flowing, but the next circle entices with expanded awareness and creativity, where embodied life just seems to increase in diversity and possibility for transforming old structures into new landscapes for fluidity, creative renewal and collaboration.
At the center of it all is ESSENCE. This is where the core of our being resides and holds court over our lives if we choose to live from that place of wholeness. We bypass the analysis and complexity of functions and go straight to the deepest cause of what may be blocking our way to engaging with the wild.
Like the wave above that has taken its own journey onto the beach away from the other structured molecules of water and minerals, we have the opportunity to finally come home to our unique offerings. Some part of that renegade portion of the wave will undoubtedly commune with sand, air and sun transforming and renewing its very being.
What wild engagement awaits you?
Gratitude to Mingtong Gu of Wisdom Healing Qigong for the image of 5 concentric circles in the Pure Consciousness foundation.
.
Interview with Andy Kidd, Brisbane, Australia
We invite you to listen to Wildly Free Elder, Gaye Abbott, as she interviews Andy Kidd talking about Life Lessence individualized personal and group legacy books; mentor Jim Ede in Scotland and the lessons he taught a 21-one-year old young man; and what it means to live well. Enjoy!!
WILDLY FREE ELDER 