Imagination & intuition

A friend's mother, a woman edging toward 94 years & experiencing memory challenges, painted this during a creativity workshop at her senior residence.  Am not at all surprised that her daughter was reduced to weeping - it's not that the painting is so remarkably expressive but that it so remarkably expresses Anne!  That is her mother on the canvas, her love of sky & clouds  & colors.

In tribute to Tamar, who connected my dear friend with the workshop, am sharing a link to a terrific article on the effect of the arts on the elderly. 

What a thrill, realizing that I've met Anne Basting, the woman who wrote the article!  It was Thursday morning, at the post-NCCA Conference event at the Kreeger Museum.  Realizing that Anne was there & not knowing who she was, I asked the ever-resourceful Greg Finch to point her out.  Later, I made so bold as to go up & introduce myself.  

The name was familiar, even before I saw her work with The Penelope Project.  Last year, Anne directed a post-conference workshop on Timeslips, which "opens storytelling to everyone by replacing the pressure to remember with the freedom to imagine" (alas, I was across town at the Corcoran, enjoying a workshop with Anthony Hyatt).  Recently, I spotted online mentions of her Penelope Project, which aired recently on PBS.  

 

T'was bliss spending five minutes talking with her about how the arts touch our imagination & intuition, leapfrogging over the parts of the brain affected by dementia et al - the very thing she discusses in the article!  

Life amazes - this a.m., a friend sent a link to a site about Green Houses which irled me over to Dr. Bill Thomas at Changing Age then onward to Next Avenue which got me thinking about Anne & the painting that so beautifully expresses her deepest loves, her truest self.

The arts stir our imagination, touch our intuition, untouched by dementia.  I am reminded of a client of John's, an elderly woman in her mid-nineties, beset with advanced Alzheimer's.  She might only hold a drawing pencil in her hand for a few moments, might only draw a line or two, but her whole being relaxed, her facial muscles lit up. It never failed to astonish him, however fleeting it might have been.

   

The opening of Anne Basting's article goes straight to my heart - "When you receive a serious medical diagnosis, it can feel as though that diagnosis replaces your identity. I am no longer myself — instead, now I am cancer, or heart attack or dementia.  ~  But even when we carry a diagnosis, we also continue to live our lives. We are more than our diseases and care plans.

That is what so many of my older friends dealing with Parkinson's or dementia or other apparently limiting conditions that too often beset the elderly - we are more than our disease, our true imperatives are ignored by care plans that consider our body & ignore our mind, our spirit.  

My friend's art workshop touched HER.  Bravo to her senior residence for offering it, to Tamar for getting her to it, to the art therapist who helped my dear friend blossom, and especially to Anne for releasing such beautiful work for the rest of us to enjoy.  Imagination & intuition - the dynamic duo.

Closing with more words from Anne Basting:

You don’t need to be an artist to use the arts for expression. These tools are available to everyone. Over the last 20 years, I have worked to encourage care partners to communicate with people who have dementia through creativity. The shift from expecting and correcting memory to opening and connecting through imagination can be profound, especially for family members. After years of distance, the arts can help families rekindle an emotional connection. 

 

Challenged

Finding myself facing a challenge many of my older friends deal with as they stretch up there in years - the things that clamor for my attention now are different from the ones that loomed large in my earlier years.  What calls out for doing now tends to get crowded out by what's familiar but doesn't really serve much, if at all, any more.  

My mother was a master of dropping - without apparent qualm or question - parts of life that she'd outgrown.  She just released them in order to lay hold on something new.  Catch & release, catch & release - Mom lived life as a continuing adventure, not as an increasingly limited experience.  

It's strange amazing bodacious - to do what means the world to me requires that I model the very behaviors long promoted to my older friends.  Recognize the parts of life that never have worked & ditch 'em.  Appreciate the parts that once worked yet don't now & bid them a grateful adieu.  Recognize the parts that work but that get in the way of doing things that work even better, say my thanks, then my farewells.  Notice the parts that work really well, but don't spark joy - embrace them, let them know how much they brought to my life, then leave them in yesterday.

This is NOT easy to do.  The familiar is comfy & assuring & safe.  But my reality is that there is so much out there sparking my joy, calling for my attention energy action, that its time for things to go.  Things that defined me.  

 

This morning, am finding myself relating big time to something Mom wrote in July 2000:
ME is changing so fast it is hard to keep up at times.  It feels like more bubbles up to the surface than ever before - well, since I fell in love, married and became a mom for the first time.  We are even trying to  put together my very own web site, which seems ... well, I do not know what  it seems, but it does.  

Talk about "the times today are a'changing"  ~ who'd  'a thunk that I would set foot anywhere near a meeting of people considering  the role of women within the General Church, but there I was Monday evening,  feeling right at home, sitting front and center, and enjoying it immensely.

Mom wrote, "Changing roles and changing identities can be rough on everyone."  What I'm discovering is how rough it can be on ME - how hard it is to let go of what was in order to make a space for what can be.  It takes letting go of the familiar in trusting expectation of what doesn't exist at this moment.  It's throwing a football to a spot where no one is at the moment it leaves your hand.  

The times today are a'changin' - Mom released the familiar to welcome the current moment.  What better way to pay tribute to her - and express trust in the me who is to come - than to embrace the challenge & do the same. 

     I

2nd time's the charm - 2015 Nat'l Ctr for Creative Aging Conference

An unexpected blessing of having attended the 2014 conference was the sense of familiarity I had with the main venue - Arena Stage - and the city.  

At times, last year felt (literally) like one long stumble.  I remember getting A LOT of walking in, turning up at the wrong spot twice.  And once while wearing my flimsiest shoes.  

Compounding my lack of awareness of Washington, D.C. was staying in the suburbs of northern Virginia - staying with Jerry & Deena was the highlight of a pretty remarkable event, but all the neighborhoods look alike, making it gosh awful tough getting around.  This time, I stayed with friends east of the capital, an area I've known since my high school days & one which seems still surprisingly family.  And the drive down couldn't have been easier - south on I-95, east on Rt 450, right on Rt 193, then keep my eyes out for the well-marked road on my left. 

Another big plus - normally getting up at 5:15 a.m.  Only once did I head out the door after 6:00 a.m., and even then I was on the road by 6:20 a.m.  Did I mention the end-of-the Metro line was just an eazy peazy 10 minutes, with great parking?

I was relaxed & feeling rested on arrival, slept soundly straight through each night, felt relaxed & rested as I headed back north on Friday.  May every seminar workshop conference  experience throughout the rest of my life be so open accepting uplifted!

 

Taking as long as it takes

 

Was it twelve or thirteen years ago that I crumpled to John, marveling at his continued good nature in the face of the improbable collapse of my professional - aka income producing - life & my struggles to get back to solid ground.  "It's taking as long as it takes," was my beloved's simple, straight-to-the-core response.

Let time be time.  Without the artificial constructs we humans place on it to feel more...  whatever.  John, in his answers, took seconds minutes hours days months years decades right out of it.  They weren't even mentioned.  Let experience roll out in its natural time.         

Twelve or thirteen years ago, and I remember it still.  Remember the calm voice he used, without a hint of concern or comfort.  No emotion, no editorializing.  Just reality.

It takes as long as it takes.

One of my mother's greatest graces was her forever awareness of that very fact.  She let time unfold, rather than measuring it by clocks or calendars. 

That was true throughout her life.  Mom never seemed to doubt that every moment of her life was meant to be lived to the fullest extent possible.  Yes, she benefited from having two younger people at her beck & call (and vice versa).  We took great pleasure in removing obstacles from her path forward, but that wouldn't have made any difference if MOM wasn't eager to press forward. 

"Semper Perge" - that was the motto on the her high school Class of '28 banner.  Always forward.  That is part of Mom's legacy, the awareness that there is always something up ahead toward which we should reach.  

Fifteen years ago, I asked Mom what she'd say to her graduating Class of 1928 or the Class of 2000.  Knowing what I know now, her answer makes  spot-on advice for my older friends, too many of whom feel like life's passed them by, who buy into the disengagement theory  & believe it's natural for them to increasingly withdraw from society as they edge toward 100, who don't realize that life - whether short or long - takes as long as it takes. That it's meant, from first breath to last, to be full of wonder learning joy.

Elsa asked me what I would say to the graduating Class of 1928 or 2000 for that matter, if I had the chance.  

 I would tell them what my father always said, "When you stop learning, you are dead."  

 I would tell them to continue their education, whether in college or not.  Some of the "brightest and best" people with degrees and advanced degrees know squat compared to less "highly educated" folks with a good sense of people and common sense.   

That they should welcome change.   

To not give themselves airs, to take themselves lightly.  

 In short, remember "Semper Perge" - -"always forward."

Loving the way we are, expecting more

 

Blessings on a friend for writing (about her mother-in-law), "There was no question that she loved her children just the way they were and that she expected more of them."

Loving people the way they are, yet expecting more of them.  I can't think of a better description of good parenting or being a good friend, spouse, even co-worker.  It certainly applies to working with my older friends - valuing them just the way they are, yet expecting more of them, however that might look or feel.  Reaching.  

Is there any greater gift any of us can give one another than our belief that others can do more, can reach higher, deeper?  True for the baby reaching beyond the edge of her world, every inch of her being reaching for the greater reality that only comes with rolling over, with crawling, with walking.

 
True for the grandfather learning to use a tablet, for the older friend overcoming embarrassment to use a walker, for the great-aunt daring to write a journal, an article, a book, a script.  

And true for ourself, as well.  Loving the way WE are, yet expecting more from ourselves.  Reaching exploring discovering the new.

Loving the way we are, expecting more.  

Pretty good motto for all of us.