Goddesses Never Age
This will be my final post about this fabulous gift to all women, the book GODDESSES NEVER AGE by Christiane Northrup. I intend to get a copy for each of my daughters, and gift it to all my best friends, because it feels to me like a piece of wisdom every woman ought to possess. It's part of the story of our tribe, and should be shared among us. Its message is that aging is far more a mental process than an inevitable, physical one, and that we can remain vital, vibrant, sexy, attractive, valuable, active, productive, sharp, beautiful and worthy right up until we croak. It's a good message; empowering, hopeful, wise, and wonderful.
The A-ma-ta Line
So great is my esteem for Dr. Northrup's wisdom, that I've decided to try her A-ma-ta line of products, and I'll report in on how that goes after I've been using them for a couple of months, so I can give them a fair review. I've ordered the supplements, facial cream and serum. I'm very eager for my packages to arrive!
So what's the takeaway?
The information in this book brought about a gentle but powerful shift of perception, a change in those all powerful habits of thought I didn't even know I harbored. The other day, someone said, in my presence, “as you age, you lose feeling in your feet. That's why you fall down more often.” I had to restrain myself from shouting, “What a pile of bull!” We don't lose feeling in our feet because we get older. We can get numbness in our feet from the following: nerve damage due to stroke, spinal cord injury, trauma, disc herniation, complications from diabetes, peripheral arterial disease, hypothyroidism, alcoholism, certain drugs and toxins, prolonged exposure to cold, kidney disease, autoimmune disorders, low levels of B-12, HIV, or liver infections. (I looked it up.) If you have any of those conditions, it's not because of your age.
The point is, before I read the book, I probably would've just nodded and accepted that as I age, I can expect to lose sensation in my feet and fall down more often. Note to self-watch out for that. And since we get what we expect….well, you can follow the logic.
We start aging the moment we're born. Aging does not mean declining. It's a side effect of living.
My top takeaway from having read the book is that I no longer accept that anything is “just part of getting older.” The only thing that's a natural part of getting older, is that we get smarter. We know more because we've done more, we've been more. Everything else, all those “signs of aging” are really just signs we're blocking our natural state of wellness. And a lot of that is a result of believing we're supposed to decline as we age because society says we're supposed to.
Yes, we're all going to reach the point where our hearts stop beating and our lungs stop breathing, and our spirits fly free of our bodies. But we do not have to get sick in order to die. When it's our time, we can go to bed, fall gently asleep, and wake up on the other side. We don't have to suffer, sicken, weaken, and die. We can thrive, and thrive, and thrive some more, and then croak.
Lies We Need to Stop Believing
As we age, we naturally slow down
As our bodies get older, things stop working the way they should
Once we get past menopause, it's normal to gain weight
Post menopausal women don't enjoy sex anymore
Certain clothes are not “age appropriate”
Older women shouldn't wear their hair long
As we get older, our memories become faulty
None of the things in that list are due to aging. If we experience those things, then something is blocking our wellness, and often that something is a lack of activity. Too much sitting, not too many birthdays, are to blame for a lot of the problems we blame on aging. If we become sedentary, yes, we'll lose bone and muscle mass and that, in turn, makes us feel weaker, which makes us less apt to be active, and it's a vicious circle. But if we keep active, we can avoid the side effects of inactivity. We should address the issue, get moving, and get back to good health, not simply accept it as part of getting older and live with the problem.
And the next person who uses the term age-apropriate in my presence is going to get an earful. 🙂
Because of this book…
Because of this book, I now know that none of those ridiculously outdated beliefs about age are true. My mind has shifted, my wisdom has expanded, and I will no longer accept any physical problem as “just part of getting older.”
Because of this book, the rest of my life will be better than it would have been, had I not read it. And there are not too many books one can say that about.
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