Category Archives: 52+

52+: Lessons from Alexandra Epple’s 2,800 km life-affirming adventure

Alexandra Epple inspires me and challenges me. I introduced you to her in a mid-August 2019 post, when she was about halfway through her adventure of walking the Camino de Santiago—a pilgrimage path that runs through France and Spain—in search of what she needed for the next chapter of her life. Some 2,800 kilometers later, she arrived at her new home in December, and I’ve been waiting for the right time to catch up with her, to ask “Did you find what you were looking for?” I had high expectations that her answer, and the revelations she experienced, would blow my mind.

Photo courtesy Alexandra Epple.

Alexandra’s story began long before her boots hit the trail. She grew up in Germany, in a “super awesome and supportive family”, then went to college in Germany and England to earn her degree in business administration. “It was all about money,” she told me in one of our early get-acquainted chats, and she was quickly disillusioned by the future it presented for her. Determined to find her purpose, she set off on world travels, by herself, and explored Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and other countries and cultures until she followed her heart (and a guy) to America. “Although I never had any interest or intention of going to the US, I was looking for a new direction,” she said. “The time, situation, and person I was dictated the direction, and it was a ‘following of the heart’ [versus following what society dictates] kind of thing.”

That was in 1999 and, in California, Alexandra continued to follow her heart and her curiosity. An interest in stretching led her to a yoga class, which led her to pursue healing work. She healed herself, then she worked with women to help them achieve “radical body wisdom” through body work, yoga, and coaching.

Then, about 10 years ago, a small voice in the back of her mind got her wondering if she needed to move back to Germany. The whispers grew louder until fall of 2018 when intense anxiety and worries set in. “I’d wake up at 4 am, have a cry for an hour, and say ‘Holy shit, what do I do with this?’”, she told me. “I knew something big was about to happen, but didn’t know what it could possibly be.” On one hand, she welcomed the tears, which she felt were cleansing. “I was quite proud that I was able to just observe the tears, worry, and anxiety like a bird,” she said. “I just let all those tears run and emotions flow without being swept away by them.” On the other hand, she thought, “Life is too short to be this unhappy.”

Her moment of clarity, in January 2019, was a visceral experience, which she described as “There’s a knowing inside, that you just have to do this.” Listening to and trusting her body, which gave her signals through expansion and contraction, she knew “I’m just done. It’s not going to happen here.” She felt a strong calling to return to Germany. “Every cell said yes yes yes!” she said, and for the first time in months she felt quiet and at peace. Her next move, she said, was “inspired by my soul’s calling to be alive.”

For the next six months she “dismantled” her life by shedding physical things: house, car, insurance, a phone number. She packed up and shipped what she wanted to take with her, then, feeling the need for a transitional period, she decided to walk—seriously walk—to her next destination.

On the Camino de Santiago, Alexandra experienced a different kind of shedding. She let go of all past pressures—such as tasks related to marketing and building a business. She shed old identities and focused on what she needed in the moment, what brought her joy. “You just walk,” she said, when we talked recently via a video chat. “There’s no planning. You can’t ever stop thinking—that’s the job of the mind—but there is a simplicity that is so tremendously enjoyable,” she said. “Walking, eating, sleeping—there is nothing complicated about life. It’s the simple act of walking and being. What a gift.” In the process, she recommitted to her core values: freedom, inspiration, wisdom, sharing, compassion, and being joyful.

She chronicled her trek on her blog Spirit Journey, sharing sites and insights. Ancient churches, seashells, tenacity, awe, weather, boredom, socks, and blisters were topics of her engaging posts. She addressed the highs and lows, both altitudes and emotions. I had looked forward to talking with her after she reached the city of Santiago de Compostela (approximately 900 km in), to finding out what she’d uncovered and learned, but then she surprised me again. She felt the call to keep walking—all the way back to Germany. Finally, on December 20, four and half months after she took her first steps, she arrived at her parents’ house and treated herself to an epic bath.

How have you grown and transformed? What were the BIG CHANGES that happened as a result of this grand adventure? Have you figured everything out? What’s next? I eagerly awaited her answers.

“It was Life-affirming, not life-changing,” she told me. “I’m still looking for answers.”

What?! How can this be?

I wasn’t the only one baffled by this response. She told me about meeting a couple toward the end of her walk. Upon hearing that she hadn’t solved all of life’s questions on her quest, the man said to her, “But you’ve had five months to think about it!” The woman quickly corrected him with, “That’s not how it works.”

It’s hard not to feel frustrated when you’re faced with the so-called gift of a blank slate. Alexandra explained to me that while walking, she thought about the past, lived in the moment, and did not try to figure out what comes next. So her answer to my question was a legitimate “I don’t know,” and she further confessed, “At times, I judge myself for having such expectations of life.” She feels somewhat trapped by her excellent skills and past work experience. Does she return to her former business model? Will she devote energy to finishing 7 Secrets to a Better Menopause, her book on how to navigate menopause with compassion? Or is now the time to go after her dream of hosting a talk show about alternative health?

So, she returns to what she does know, that she will listen to and follow her intuition to take the next steps on her life path. “My basic needs are met right now,” she said, and “my journey of reinvention is ongoing.”

And that’s my takeaway from our conversation: The journey of reinvention is ongoing. “I got to this place in my life step by step,” Alexandra said. “Every opportunity I have, I ask, ‘Does this feel right?’” We ask, and when the answer comes, we follow our hearts and head in the direction that feels right to us in the moment, learning more about our authentic selves with each step. It’s more about the journey than the destination, I tell myself.

“I have to lean back and trust that the road is already there. I just need to start walking it even if I don’t have a map of the entire path yet,” Alexandra said to me. “It’s just like the Camino. You start walking it, and the path reveals itself.

I hope you’ll get better acquainted with Alexandra. To learn more about her Camino de Santiago adventure, and for updates on her book, talk show, and other evolving plans, visit her Spirit Journey blog and her Facebook page.

52+: Nudges as distractions

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Dear Nudgers,

I hope this finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. I am feeling extra grateful this morning as my husband, one of the “essential” people, is finally home with me for a few days of what I’m calling “shelter-in-peace” and getting much-needed rest.

While not a lot has changed for us (he still went to work, I still work from home), I have had more free time to worry. Up till yesterday, my primary coping tool was online Solitaire. Not the worst choice, but not great. Then I shifted to deep-cleaning the house and tackling projects that have been on the to do list for far too long.

Today I’m getting creative. It dawned on me that some of the nudges we’ve done together can be done at home, can feed my soul, and can distract me from panic-inducing news updates and social media posts. I might re-do them, or I might pull a few new ones from the bowl and double-up in the coming weeks.

If you are also in need of creative distractions, here are some past nudges for inspiration:

Go through one bookshelf

Learn how to sign a fun phrase in American Sign Language (or learn a phrase in French, Japanese, Farsi…)

Learn something new about my city’s history

Make a list of cities I want to visit, pick one to explore

Learn something from a YouTube video

Memorize a poem (or song, inspiring speech, uplifting passage from the Bible)

Thank a writer, artist, or musician (or nurse, police officer, grocery store clerk, delivery person, and every other essential person who is serving on the front lines of this crisis)

And finally, Open DNS wine, drink from Waterford glass. “DNS” stands for “Do Not Share” and refers to the good/expensive stuff we’ve been saving for the “right” special occasion. What are we waiting for?

À votre santé. (To your good health.)

xo Kathleen

52+: “Putting on the Gloves” by Chris Green

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As soon as I heard Chris’s story about how she stepped out of (or into?) her comfort zone, I asked if I could share it with the 52Nudges community. Read on for some “powerful” inspiration. — Kathleen

I am not a risk-taker. Nope nope nope. I stay in my lane, do what I’m told (well, mostly), and am definitely not breaking any laws. But when I was laid-off last fall from my job of 28 years, I decided it was time to light up my inner badass and try some new things. After all, if I was going to have to find a new job, I’d better get used to things that were new, different, and scary.

So I signed up for boxing lessons.

Now, I am not a particularly aggressive person. As the only girl in a family of four boys, I spent much of my childhood watching my brothers pile on each other (thank you, Three Stooges) while I just kept to the side, trying not to get hurt. But as I found through years of playing softball, I realized that I enjoyed the physical feeling of power – throwing the ball in from the outfield, crushing that ball for an extra-base hit. Seeing my body able to do what my personality didn’t always allow gave me a special kind of confidence that I have missed as an adult.

My gym is not a boxing-only gym, where Burgess Meredith would be simultaneously smoking and yelling at me from the corner. Instead it is cozy, well lit, and smells pretty good as far as gyms go. And the class is mostly women! This was a huge relief for me, as I am self-conscious trying new things. Most of the time women welcome and support each other and, sure enough, gym rat Julie welcomed me and helped me feel comfortable and ready to hit.

Photo by walking photographer

The actual boxing is fun! While I work on my technique and footwork, I hit the heavy bag and imagine my frustrations and anxieties crumbling under my gloves – my fear of finding the right job (or, honestly, any job), that annoying thing my husband or kids said the night before, my inability to keep to my diet and lose some of that weight. As Coach Vince gently corrects my feet or my weight distribution, I remind myself that since I can do this, I can tackle other hard things too, and deliver a solid combination that can knock out those things I’m scared of.

It is one helluva workout, and I emerge sweaty, invigorated, and ready to charge into whatever the day puts in front of me.

Turns out that the power doesn’t come from the gloves, it comes from what I put behind it. That knockout punch comes from ME.

52+: “Every day is a great day.”

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It’s true that I created the 52Nudges as a way to push myself into new adventures and experiences. So it’s especially gratifying when I learn that someone else has had success with one of the nudges.

I recently received a blog post from McClairie Group, in which executive coach Charmaine McClairie wrote:

After a holiday visit to Paris, my favorite of all cities, I am renewed and refreshed, and I’ve made an important decision. I’ve decided that every day in 2020 is a great day. Any day that I’m on this side of the earth? Yes, it’s a great day.

It’s a decision prompted by Kathleen Guthrie Woods and her 52Nudges, a wonderful initiative that encourages us to challenge ourselves weekly.

This Nudge in particular resonated with me – a Nudge to reserve time to just be. Be still, be quiet and do nothing. It reminded me of the hours and hours I spent in Rodin’s Garden when I lived in Paris earlier in my career. I would stop there on my way home from work, sit on one of the many park benches and soak in this incredible city. The art. The culture. The people. To sit and just be in one of the most beautiful spots in the world was truly transformational for me.

Thank you, Kathleen, for reminding me of the importance of sitting quietly and doing nothing – even in Paris.

Charmaine McClairie enjoying Rodin’s Garden in Paris.

I have a huge smile on my face as I read this, and I am inspired to greet each new day as a great day. Thank you, Charmaine!

P.S. If you’re ready to nudge your career to the next level (or up several levels), check out McClairie Group’s website for insights, solutions, and upcoming events.

52+: On Going Gray–and Owning It

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If you’ve spent any time in 52Nudges, you know that I am a huge fan of people who summon up their courage and create changes in their lives.

Suszi McFadden is one of those brave people I’ve been watching quietly from the sidelines for a while. Full disclosure, we’ve been friends since the early 1980s, a friendship that has grown closer now that we are adults and live about an hour apart. Leaving a corporate career to go out on her own as a photographer was a big step she took several years ago, and it’s been exciting to watch her succeed. But it was her decision recently to ditch the hair color and allow her natural gray* to grow in that held my fascination. Would she stick to it? Would she wear it well? If she can do it, can I…?

To get my answers, I nudged myself to “Interview someone I admire”.

Suszi is about two years into the transformation process. “I am loving the gray!” she told me. “I want it to gray faster!”

Suszi began coloring her hair when she was 16. “It was my form of creative expression,” she said. “I did the ’80s right, from perms to seven colors of shadow on my eyelids—at one time. Do you remember my brush with a ‘Flock of Seagulls’ haircut?” she said with a laugh. “Yeah, that was BAD!”

Over the past few decades, she has tried on every shade of red, from copper to burgundy, and had “one ill-fated dance with blonde”. After “one complete disaster doing it on my own”, in which a peroxide accident left her with a skunk stripe and leopard spots, she committed to paying a professional stylist to do the coloring correctly.

Full color. Photo by Ashleigh Taylor Henning.

But the maintenance took a lot of time and work, not to mention expense. In the last phases, she was going for brighter and brighter, ultimately sporting a bright orange. “But I was graying at a rate like a five o’clock shadow,” she said. “I kept asking my stylist, ‘Can I do it yet?’”

The “yet” was important. It’s one thing to transition from mostly gray to all gray, she explained to me, another to transition when there’s just gray at the temples. You have to have “enough” for the transition to succeed, otherwise it can be difficult to maintain the gray.

“I wanted it to be more about making a statement as opposed to looking like you’ve let yourself go,” Suszi said, and with her stylist’s advice—and with her nephew’s bar mitzvah on the horizon—she went for one more round of color.

Finally her stylist agreed she had enough to get started, and her expert advice and attention was crucial. “It was hard going from bright orange, and it was hard with straight hair,” Suszi said, having noticed that women with curly textured hair could better carry off the layers of colors during the transition. “So I cheated.” Not wanting to wait for it all to grow out on its own timetable, she had her stylist bleach out all of her hair, then tone her a warm gray. “I literally went gray overnight,” Suszi says, “which was super fun.”

Initial Bleach. Photo by Andy McFadden.

But it didn’t last. She was still “more pepper than salt”, so the dark hairs turned yellow over time, and in different lighting, such as fluorescent, it wasn’t pretty. “I joked I had to walk around in my own lighting,” Suszi said. To compensate, Suszi kept going shorter. “Previously, whenever I was bored, I colored my hair,” she reminded me. Now she makes a creative statement with her sassy pixie cut.

It’s impossible to miss the growing trend on going gray. “I feel like it’s everywhere, and I think it’s stunning,” she said. “A lot of actresses have made it glamorous, including Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Gillian Anderson, and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.” We can add Sharon Osborne and Jane Fonda as other recent converts.

For Suszi, the change is less about the outward appearance and more about the internal feeling. It’s about women owning who they are. She explained how she came to this. “I got my photo taken about two years ago, to experience what my clients experience. The photographer asked me to send photos I found online, photos I found inspiring. All of them were of older women, significantly older than I am, 70 to 80 years old. They were owning their style, their look. Quirky or classy or eclectic—just all in!” she said. “I want to be that person: 100% all in!”

This recent photo says all that to me. Strong, gorgeous, 100% Suszi.

All natural. Photo by Patricia Gonion.

* I noticed Suszi used the terms “silver” and “gray” interchangeably as we chatted, so I asked her about this. “When I talk about it, I say I’ve ‘gone gray’,” she said. “I consider myself to be gray because there’s still so much pepper in my hair. I think of ‘silver’ as all white.” Some of her friends, she said, push back and insist on “silver”, feeling it’s a more empowering term. We both agree that we should use whichever term feels right to the individual.

Suszi McFadden takes photographs of families, kids, and adults, and captures the best of women in all stages of life. Check out her work at https://suzmcfaddenphoto.com/. To see her more creative work, including shoots with professional models, follow her on Instagram @suzmcfaddenphoto.

52+: On Courage

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A friend shared this link with me this morning, an inspiring video interview featuring record-breaking astronaut Christina Koch. I stopped in my tracks at the headline: “Do what scares you”

Did she just do a nudge?! 🙂

(We actually did that nudge back in November, and you can read the completed nudge post here.)

Courage seems to be theme in my life this week. Two days ago I attended the Naturalization Ceremony for my dear friend Lisa, in which she and 1,253 others took the oath to become American citizens. Being in the audience of supporting friends and family members was an emotional and inspiring experience, and I cried my way through a couple of kleenex.

Keynote speaker California Secretary of State Alex Padilla congratulated the new citizens on their courage. They left behind friends and families. They made difficult choices and took big chances, all in an effort to create better lives for themselves.

Maybe you and I haven’t done anything as dramatic as walking in space or leaving our homelands, but I believe we face every day with courage. For some of us, it’s as “small” as getting out of bed despite many legitimate reasons to stay buried under the covers or deciding to have a positive attitude no matter the obstacles. This might be the day we decide to pick ourselves up (again) after a disappointment or loss in our professional or personal lives. We might embrace someone just as they are or say goodbye to a relationship that is no longer healthy. Maybe this is the day we summon up all our bravery to say YES to something new or NO to something we need to let go.

Whatever is happening in your journey right now, I hope you’ll pause and acknowledge your courage. You are doing great things. And I congratulate and celebrate you.

52+: When tech doesn’t make life easier

52+: “Croned” by EK Bayer

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Dear Nudgers,

As my dear friend Erin approached her 50^th birthday, I encouraged her to find a meaningful way to celebrate what I feel is a significant milestone in a woman’s life. Imagine my delight when she told me other friends had honored her with a croning ceremony! I wanted to know everything about this ancient and beautiful ritual and what it meant for her, and she agreed to share. — Kathleen

The Crone

Fifty years is halfway somewhere.

The trappings of youth fall away to reveal your most beautiful self.

The brain, once willing to take off on flights of fancy,

Becomes efficient and direct.

Cut the bullshit; we have life to live.

All the beauty in the world is now more profound, more precious, more appreciated.

Isn’t that what it’s all about in the end? Gratitude?

In fact, that most beautiful self has been there the whole time.

The difference is, you appreciate her now.

— EK Bayer

In some ancient, earth-based religions, there is a name and reverence for each stage of a woman’s life: the maiden, the mother, and the crone. The word crone comes from crown, in reference to a wisdom gained from understanding. I am well aware that my culture thinks of crones as sad, ugly, or a failure of eternal youth. Facing the loss of beauty, motherhood, career, or options can leave us feeling like there’s no chance to regain our agency or worth. Shel Silverstein took the hopelessness of aging to the extreme in The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, tragically sung by Marianne Faithfull on the soundtrack of Thelma and Louise: “At the age of 37, she realized she’d never ride through Paris in a sports car, with the warm wind in her hair.” It’s a heartbreaking ballad, ending in Lucy’s apparent suicide.

Surely there is an alternative way to embrace aging. My friend Ceri and I schemed about how to celebrate our fiftieth birthdays, and she told me about spiritual croning ceremonies. I wasn’t thinking of becoming a crone, I just felt the pressure of time, and if there was anything important to do in this life, I’d better get to it. Something clicked about a croning ceremony, about shifting the dread of aging to an excitement for what’s next, an appreciation for the wisdom of my age. Embracing a ceremony meant honoring this new me.

A Google search will reveal lots of suggested ways to do a croning ceremony, but there is no formula other than honoring the transition to the next phase of womanhood and expressing a reverence for the wisdom of the crone. Typically based on old pagan ritual, it can be presented with a combination of spiritual elements.

My own spirituality is bricolage, meaning something created from a diverse range of things. My family was agnostic, but I grew up surrounded by Christianity, went to bible study with friends, and participated in spiritual programs offered by the YMCA. In college I learned about how Catholics adapted ancient, Goddess-worshiping, earth-based holidays and rituals from the places of my ancestors. I’ve studied Native American earth-based spirituality and ancient Celtic ritual, reclaiming old, feminine, and forbidden practices. I’ve cast circles in the name of the Goddess to honor the four directions and the elements connected to them. I’ve set intentions, burned candles, meditated, and offered up everything in gratitude. I have a strong yoga practice as well. Bits of wisdom have stood out to me like treasures, and I have collected them.

As Ceri explained her plans for my ceremony, I recognized that in addition to embracing my new life stage, honoring the crone in me also meant accepting this bricolage, no longer subverting my spirituality under mainstream Christianity or even the mainstream agnostic. In preparation, I cleaned the house, set my intentions, and opened my heart to the experience. My wife and a few friends gathered to toast me with champagne and present me with gifts of crystals, incense, and a beautiful carved wand, while my kids started a fire in the pit in our backyard. We gathered around that fire and began.

For the first time in my life, I led a group to stand and face each direction while I cast a circle. For a croning, it felt proper to invoke the Goddess, to acknowledge the sacred feminine, so I called to the fire in the south, which is her spirit; the water in the west, which is her blood, sweat, and tears; the earth in the north, which is her body; and the air in the south, which is her breath. We burned incense in the fire pit and invited our ancestors to join us. Not just any ancestors, but specific women invited for their wisdom, love, or reputation. Ceri brought out three candles. My friend’s six-year-old daughter—shy, but stoked to be included—represented the maiden. She held the white candle, and I lit it. My mama friend took the red candle and lit it from the white one, and I lit the black candle from the red.

Ceri spoke of crones being revered as strong and wise. She noted that our society has lost its reverence for women of a certain age, but in times past, this was a significant doorway only a few women achieved. She spoke of power in moving consciously from a time of nurturing others to a time of nurturing the earth. I set an intention, which is like making a wish, and blew the candles out.

Ceri then brought out a beautiful, dark-purple velvet, satin-lined cloak with tiny pearls around the bottom. Together, my friends held the cloak high over my head, then gently laid it across my shoulders and fastened the black spiral clasp over my throat.

Since it’s creation twenty-three years ago, this cloak has been passed on to many women as they’ve had croning ceremonies of their own, and each woman has added something to it: pins, talismans, patches, and beads. There are secrets sewn inside the hem, and inside, over the heart, there is a pocket with a journal in it. Crones write messages to newcomers, like, “May you join us in happiness and health, taking our courage, strength, and wisdom. Be well.”

Until the next of us is ready for the cloak, I get to wonder at its treasures. I sewed in two tiny keys from a long-gone childhood diary, a keeper of secrets in my maiden days. I wrote in the journal “May I finally unlock my voice, and may the wisdom discerned by writing be passed on to you, and you, and you….”

As the weight of my new label, crone, settled on my shoulders, I felt giddy and light, but also a new, deeper responsibility. I felt like the Universe had finally given me permission to be my authentic self. The Universe would laugh and say I always had permission, I just chose to make other commitments. Still, I finally felt free, and with that freedom came clarity. As I face the end of one era and the start of another, I feel empowered for what is to come.

Being a crone means you can cast aside worries of being judged. I have life to live, work to do, and a voice to unveil. Being a crone means I am free to do this work. I have a responsibility to do it, to speak up, to be the example I wish I had, to put all of my heart into whatever I do. And I am not alone. My opportunities come through the grace of others, and my wisdom through many more. With gratitude, I honor Ceri, who inspired my croning as well as the poem at the start of this missive; my wife, who enables my writing; and also my mother, who birthed my body as well as my insatiable curiosity.

Erin is writing a memoir about her journey as the mother of twins called Mamagrit: a story of twin shooting stars (and also the meaning of life). It will be released in 2020. To learn more about Erin and her work, visit https://mamagrit.wordpress.com.