The older I get, the more astonished I am at the power of personal issues, apparently resolved long again, which - at the most unexpected moments - rear their Medusa-like heads, Zap! in a moment, transformed into whatever disempowered self you most feared.
The older you get, the more this experience can take one of several, very different paths. The best response is to see it for what it is, recognize the emotions as phantoms from your past, recognize whatever served as trigger, file it away in your mental filing case so you can (hopefully) recognize it next time (there always seems to be a next time) it rears its ugly head, then step out of the emotional goo it leaves in its path & move on. That's the ideal, yet rare, response.
A more common response is to emotionally engage in discussion with one or more of the writhing serpent heads, which can lead to a sorry end if you don't realize what's happening. If you are able to catch on to that the Medusa head has now turned into a tar baby, then you can go through something resembling the steps above. If you're not, then you are headed for...
Being stuck in a place you do not want to be, that has no good outcome for you. Sadly, this the sorry fate for most people facing ancient, unidentified issues rooted in the distant distant past.
This is true for people of any age, from toddler through centenarians. And when you get multiple generations doing their best to help & support each other through challenging times, that dichotomy compounds difficulties & frequently obliterates advantages.
So, where am I rambling with this? It is often easy for us to forget that people of all ages face these same challenges. For people with older friends & family, it's especially important to always hold this awareness close to your heart, to realize that just as this difficult reality affects your older friends & family, it affects you too. If I interacted with my own mother or am with a current day "grannie client," it is important that I am mindful of when my triggers are being touched off and to ever mindful of really listening sensing relating to what the other is saying or feeling. The results can be surprising.
My mother & I worked together on e-mail postings that she wrote during her last 18 months. Usually, each writing session - Mom dictating, me tip tapping it online - was a joy. Occasionally, she'd something unexpected would trigger a deep response & she'd be face-to-face with her Medusa. That always astonished me. And every time it happened, we'd face it together & inevitably she came out if it with more understanding of an ancient wound, with one less snake hissing at her.
It feels to me like an ideal way for most "ancients" (Mom's term, not mine, for anyone up there in years) to deal with these almost always mythological horrors from their past is through friendships with younger people, people who care about them, are interested in engaging with them, learning about & from them. And that, in this current culture, is rare.
The all-too-often-missed reality is that older people are in a position to see things in a different light, but my guess is that most of them don't realize that funky fact. They have the accumulation of years & the hard-won perspective & the TIME to see things differently. Mind you, I've had lots of friends & acquaintances & even client's families who don't see this, who experience their older loved ones as entrenched in their opinions, unwilling to see a different possibility. All I can say it that's not my experience IF you get them involved in an engaging discussion peppered with questions.
How do I get older friends to open up to me? I don't try. If opening up to me was my goal, I'd fail. My advantage is that I'm genuinely interested in & engaged with them. It's not unusual for an incident in my life, shared younger woman to older friend, to help them feel at ease - safe - bringing up something from their own past. We might talk about stories or we might not. But they have someone to open up to, if they want.
It amazes me how personal stories lead into seeing personal myths lead into unexpected moments of clarity. And clarity coupled with compassion cuts Medusa to the core!
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