Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (2 page)

The soul is ageless, and it’s an expression of the divine, feminine creative force of the universe. The sacred feminine has traditionally been associated with darkness, the body, mystery, fertility, receiving, and the primordial soup—the womb in which all life begins and is nurtured. Every woman is an ageless goddess, an expression of the sacred feminine physical form. Unfortunately, we often forget this in the onslaught of ageist cultural messages. We need to be more aware of our culture’s negative messages about growing older and make a conscious effort to reject them.

Clinical neuroscientist Mario E. Martinez, Psy.D., the founder of the Biocognitive Science Institute, has written about cultural expectations, or what he calls “cultural portals,” that we internalize—such as turning 30, or 50, or 65. Dr. Martinez says that you should always refuse the senior discount because it just reinforces the false belief that you’re growing older and more frail, that you can’t work and need to be taken care of by others.
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My brother recently discovered the truth of this when he decided to take the discount on a flight to save $25. When he got to the airport, he had to stand in yet another line to prove that he was
indeed a senior. He said he ended up feeling like a second-class citizen, which was certainly not worth saving $25.

My mother, who is nearly 90, got in trouble for not signing up for a Medicare drug prescription plan. She didn’t see any reason to do so because she’s not on any drugs and doesn’t plan to be. Do you want to spend your 65th birthday thinking about what diseases and ailments you’re likely to develop so you can choose which prescription drug plan will be right for you? Why is that the cultural portal you’re expected to walk through? It’s probably because back in the 19th century, 65 was chosen as the retirement age that qualified people for a state pension, as that was the average life expectancy. Since then, actuarial charts and statistics have solidified the age of retirement somewhere around 65, give or take 5 years, but now the life expectancy after age 65 is 24 years! So why continue to expect to wind down at age 65? Or 75, or 85, or any age?

If you aren’t thinking about how old you are at the moment, then a milestone birthday, or a lifestyle-related illness of a same-age friend or relative, or a crisis in your life might make you reflect on how you could change your script and get older without deteriorating. Many women call my radio show to get my advice because they’ve suddenly developed an autoimmune disorder, a precancerous or cancerous condition, or allergies. If it’s not a health crisis that’s thrown them off course, it’s the loss of a job or a relationship or an illusion. Sometimes they tell me they have just found out that their husband has been cheating on them or their college-age son or daughter has a mental illness or a substance abuse problem. Our souls design many potent wake-up calls to get our attention back on track.

And of course “the change,” as menopause used to be called, is a natural transformation point in a woman’s life. We are meant to begin life anew around the biological marker of our last menstrual period. Our bodies know it, even when our minds don’t. When I was in active medical practice, brilliant professional women would come in for pregnancy tests, and when I told them the results were positive, they would declare, “I can’t believe it. How did this happen?” Trust me, they understood contraception and the body’s fertility cycle. They were just in denial of their
unconscious need to undergo a dramatic change—a need that drove them to be lax about using birth control. How much easier it is when we can become conscious about the desire to give birth to something new and remember that there are many ways to do that without actually becoming a mother again.

As they enter perimenopause, the transition into menopause that typically lasts for 6 to 12 years, many women realize they’re no longer willing to put their dreams on hold and live according to what everyone around them wants. Maybe you have a strong feeling you should switch careers, move to a new place, end a relationship, or explore your sexuality in a new way. Pay attention to that yearning. Your creative juices are flowing! Life force is coming through you. The new life you give birth to must include your own.

Or maybe you aren’t yet aware of a desire to make changes. The natural shift in focus women experience can often come on unexpectedly—just as perimenopause does. One woman I talked to said her first hot flash was so unexpected and intense that she scolded her husband for giving her a cup of fully caffeinated coffee instead of decaf—she assumed that had caused the sensation. When he said, “Maybe you’re having a hot flash. Aren’t you around that age?” she was stunned into silence. Women often don’t think about perimenopause until they are in it, or a girlfriend or sister around the same age enters it.
Am I that age already?
they wonder.
Really?
And then,
So what does this mean for me? What am I going to create in the next chapter of my life? What am I changing into?

What you are changing into is the powerful, luscious, fertile, ageless goddess you were meant to be—an expression of the divine, feminine life force unencumbered by cultural expectations that keep you small, overly cautious, and afraid to upset anybody. You are in the process of discovering your ageless goddess self, and she has many ways to express her creativity and experience the pleasures in life, from feeling good in her body and rediscovering her sexuality to beginning a new relationship, project, or way of living.

Goddesses Never Age
is a book for women of any age who are enjoying their lives today and are eager to experience how
life can get even better. I didn’t want to write a health book for women that would scare them about growing older and tell them how to prepare for every awful thing that could happen to them, from disease of the breast to the heart to the uterus. I didn’t want to carve the female body into pieces and tell women to use these ten tips to make sure that this piece doesn’t fall apart or to make sure that system doesn’t go haywire. I am
so
over that approach to health. If you want specific advice on how to have healthy breasts, how to nourish your body with good, wholesome foods, and how to keep yourself looking fabulous year after year, you’ll find all that in this book. However, you will also find ideas that will challenge you to let go of the myths about women and our relationships with each other, our bodies, and the earth—myths that women have internalized and that age them.

In fact,
Goddesses Never Age
is set up to help you move out of the old paradigm and into the new. It’s about pointing out everything that can go
right
with your body and how to embody balance and health regardless of your state of health and well-being now—even if you already have a chronic condition. No matter what your diagnosis might be, the approach in this book can support your healing.
Chapter 1
busts the myths of aging and helps you understand what it means to be ageless and a goddess. The reality is that our bodies are not separate from our thoughts or emotions. They’re not separate from the planet Earth, our great mother, or from the sky and the stars. Understanding this will help you see why it’s so important to let go of the toxic beliefs and feelings that keep you from experiencing optimum health and well-being. And because the number-one thing you can do for your health is to live joyously, indulging in sustainable pleasure,
Chapter 2
of this book is devoted to that topic.

In
Chapters 3
and
4
, I’ll give you a very different perspective on the usual concerns women have about their bodies and physical health as they reach menopause and postmenopause. In
Chapter 5
, you’ll learn about how to release old emotions that can cause disease: grief, anger, and shame.
Chapter 6
will help you reclaim your sexuality—your Aphrodite nature—so you stop thinking you’re not sexy simply because you don’t have the body of a slim 22-year-old. In
Chapter 7
, you’ll continue releasing
toxic emotions as you let go of the shame and perfectionism that are affecting your relationship with yourself and the important people in your life.
Chapter 8
is about a new relationship with food and your body as you make peace with your belly, and
Chapter 9
is about moving joyously instead of forcing yourself to “exercise.”
Chapter 10
is about seeing yourself as beautiful, and enhancing and adorning that beauty with confidence if you’d like to change the way you look. And in
Chapter 11
, you will receive guidance on listening to your goddess-like wisdom and the signals from your finely honed BS meter. You’ll also learn how to forge a new relationship with the earth and her inhabitants as you step fully into your ageless goddess self. Finally, in
Chapter 12
, you’ll receive a practical template for applying the ideas in this book through the 14-Day Ageless Goddess Program, and after that, you’ll find a list of helpful resources for nourishing the goddess in you.

So here you are, at a crossroads, where you have to make a decision about what your life will be like in the years to come. The fact that you are reading this right now is absolute proof that the divine goddess within you would like you to let her take the lead now. I say this with great assurance because I’ve lived long enough to know that there are no coincidences that are simply random. If you weren’t seriously thinking about changing your approach to your life, you wouldn’t be here with me right now.

So are you going to grow older with gusto or deteriorate with age? Will you stick with the old paradigm of battling the body to get it to behave itself? Will you continue putting other people’s needs ahead of your own and fueling yourself with processed foods, sugar, caffeine, anxiety, and sheer willpower? Or will you get off the road that leads to illness, frailty, and reduced quality of life and start living courageously, as if you really mean it?

Getting older is not something to fear. This is not an anti-aging book designed to arm you in the war against growing older—and anyway, a war metaphor isn’t appropriate. Whenever you take an adversarial attitude toward something, you give it power. Instead of being fearful and resistant toward growing older, invoke the magical principle that knowing something’s name gives you power—not
over
it but
with
it, as the author Starhawk says.
Then you can become a neutralizing force. You can make growing older a different experience. Then you won’t be old and you won’t be young. You’ll be “something else”: an ageless goddess.

CHAPTER ONE

GODDESSES ARE AGELESS

We are not proponents of long life. We are proponents
of joyful life, and when you find yourself in joy, the
longevity usually follows. We do not count the success
of a life by its length; we count it by its joy.

— A
BRAHAM

M
y mother is nearing 90, but she still likes to drive. At her home, she maneuvers her sitting lawn mower around her property at least once a week, steering clear of the landscaping on her three-quarters-of-an-acre lawn. Behind the wheel of her Pleasure-Way camper, she has made her way through the streets of Boston to meet me for dinner. Mom drove her camper on a trip across the U.S. a couple of summers ago with her friend Anne, who was a bit older (and who recently died at age 91). They wanted to see the redwoods. The two of them weren’t afraid to pull up to a campground and park for
the night. I prefer to leave lawn mowing and heavy city traffic to others, but I know that when I am my mother’s age, I will be as active as she is. Mom and I are different in many ways, yet she is my role model for living fully and with a sense of joy and adventure. From her I learned the importance of exercise and taking care of my body so I can spend my later years doing what I like instead of reacting to one health crisis after another. To quote Esther Hicks and Abraham, my formula for my later years is “happy, healthy, dead.”
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You are not doomed to spend your last months with an oxygen cannula up your nose. You can rewrite that story!

As a physician and health educator, I know you can minimize the possibility of degenerative disease and premature aging if you make good lifestyle choices. You don’t have to experience health as a temporary respite. It is your
birthright.
You can get out of the state of hypervigilance and stop worrying that your body is about to betray you any minute. Instead, you can reclaim your natural, harmonious relationship with your body and experience pleasure, joy, and vibrant wellness as a daily reality. Then you’ll live agelessly, with the vitality of a goddess, and your body and spirit will reflect that.

CELLULAR AGING, CELLULAR REGENERATION

Although most people don’t realize it, the body is constantly in a state of reinvention. Cells replenish themselves regularly. Old cells die and new ones are born. Of all your organs, your skin replaces itself the most quickly, but each one regenerates. You do not have the same physical body you had just a few years ago. Every cell has been replaced.