Choosing Is Independence

This new day has me grinning already.
I am here with you but in truth, I am in my cottage, counting my blessings and filling my moments with as much forward motion as I can muster.
You see, in this town, this sleepy town, our early morning was outstanding.
I was slow to come indoors, not wanting to miss the sunrise in all it's rosy, desert dawn, tones.
Beautiful......

But I wish to share with you the insights shared with me, just yesterday.

The conversation was about personal power and/or the lack of it.
Specifically, we were chatting about personal independence and how we can take the independence of driving ourselves, for granted.

Begging me not to tell her care-giver and daughter, my elder had confided in me, what she was finally able to admit to herself.
Driving was becoming a challenge.
Big stuff to admit in our sometimes very small worlds.
I had made her promise me that she would tell this secret, as soon as possible.
Yesterday, she told me she had finally shared her secret, with her daughter.
I was grateful.

Teamwork requires that honesty, you know.
Secrets don't really serve us.
Her honesty told me that she was not being forgetful or even confused.
She wasn't experiencing confusion as she admitted such personal information to me.
She told me that in the past, she had found herself in areas of her town, feeling a little lost. Then she would find a familiar landmark to navigate from and feel strong again. My heart strings tugged as I heard the familiar fears elders conjure when they bear the inner conflict of losing trust in themselves.
I find it affects men so much more than women but in truth, losing a  personal freedom like driving ourselves wherever and whenever we wish, is a direct personal hit to our self respect. That quiet fear of others forcing us to retire our Drivers License, before we are willing to.

It was that same moment for her sweet self, that I have found in others, and also in myself, when I require a driver because of physical challenges. No one wants to wait.
No one wants to greet that stage of life where we are forced to rely on the kindness of others. We want to feel powerful and not needy. We value ourselves based so often on how self reliant we think we are.

She was being an adult about it but sensing her loss of personal power, left her feeling like a child, to others.
She didn't seem to realize that she was being mature and responsible for her own actions.
She was feeling a loss of freedom.
She was admitting to me that she was feeling less useful, less capable, less valuable to our society.
In the same breath she was knowing that it was no longer acceptable to take the chance of creating an unsafe place for others to drive in. She knew that she was not driving safe and wished to be responsible.
Well done!
If you are an elder and you are reading this, you may be nodding your head.
You may be remembering those times when you realized your memory was confusing you.
Short term memory loss, unable to hold on to someones name right after they told you who they were.....
You may have noticed the confusion setting in just because you felt it was happening. Then, falling into that rain barrel, as the dark waters rose to control your emotions.
Complicating your own ability to remember by letting your emotion rise to the fear of losing your trust in yourself.
Because you are older, it can seem like a sign of losing your rights to thrive in this world.
It is incorrect thinking to allow yourself to use this freedom as a measure of your abilities.
Your place in this world.
I am here today to "remind" you of a few things.

Please.

Help yourself or those elders in your care, by retaining my thoughts here.
If you are being forgetful, bookmark this post and let it remind you again, and again.

You are worth the effort, I promise.
We are all worth the effort.

In my years as a care-giver, I have shared company with people who can no longer drive, but still do.
Risky choices.
Sometimes it is our reaction time.
Sometimes, as in the case of this very responsible elder, it is simply how her peripheral vision affects her ability to concentrate.
She is aware of other drivers who are struggling just to get through the lives they fight for.
She understands that we all fight for something.....
The habit I find in our elders is to question their own abilities before they consider the abilities of others.
Perhaps we simply trust ourselves only as far as our ability to react quickly or appropriately.
Both insights will serve us to a point, but when we continually question ourselves, it is a kind of personal training to mistrust ourselves.
It does not serve us as much as we may think it does.
It is responsible to remain aware of our limitations but if we create fear fueled by emotion, we are creating more limitations.
The cycle can begin while we are busy doing something else.
Our job is to know that it is a normal fact of life.
In our younger years, we laugh and say, "Oops, I have forgotten already", when we forget a new name or even just the correct word to communicate our thoughts.
As we age, we realize our forgetfulness is showing and we do not want to seem old so we make excuses to ourselves and stutter and stammer while our emotion rises at the thought that we are losing our faculties. At the realization that others may be judging us, as if they are the boss of us.......^_^
Simply letting the fear of aging set in will often push the memory further from our grasp.
Fear dissolves memory into fret.
I say, practice the patience you deserve and allow yourself to be loved, to be appreciated, as your life continues to require your presence.
A young parent with an ailing child, would reflect the inner pressure felt while waiting to see if the sweet darling would heal. It would be acceptable to be forgetful because concern would be an overload and others would be compelled to be patient.
Financial stress is another overload but overload in any form requires our constant attention.
In our elder years, it can take everything we have to work with, just to keep track of the medical teams we hire or the paperwork needed to sort out payments for care, etc.
As we age, we can love ourselves enough to delegate but many of us see our aging process as something that tells our neediness.
We fall prey to fear and recluse our hearts.
We fear uselessness.

Let me help you remember your power.
Let me help you retain your focus even when your tired self does not wish to.

Choices are our power.
Making choices to protect ourselves, is our independence.
Making choices indicates our ownership of our independence.
This elder has the ability to be responsible for her life, just like she always has been.

Perhaps, as we age, we move slower, perhaps we lose the strength we had when we were more active or our bodies were younger. This does not indicate that we are any less than anyone else.
It only means that what we deal with on a daily basis now, shows for all the world to see.
It does not mean we are less than anyone else.
The younger people around us are actually watching us for clues.
We are in our truest cycle of life.
Being responsible to ourselves and for ourselves is being vital and capable and yes, independent in a good way.
As an elder, please, see your process as a gift that shows on the outside. You are good for us.
Your lives are gifts we younger souls need to be exposed to.
When you are working with your medical teams and your families to retain your freedoms, we are watching to learn how to retain our own.
We are grateful for your time here and for what you have provided for us to work with while we rush around, making the best of what we have created for ourselves to work with.
You are us, and we are you.
It just doesn't seem like it when you are watching us move faster, or while we are pushing you to be more able than you are feeling that day.
I say thank you to my elder for her courage to face this next phase in her life.
She has choices.
Even when she is slow to make those choices, choosing to be slow is still a choice.
No matter how powerless we may tell ourselves that we are, we still have the choice to feel that way.
She chose to allow for a driver in her life.
She chose to maintain her safety and the safety of others who drive.
Again, I say, well done!

May seem like a door is closing but see how this elder already opened a window.
In her personal independence, she still chose quality of life.
I commend her.
I hope for her joy.

I hope for your ability to feel useful in all phases of your decision making.
You are more useful than you know.
Just by being here, we can continue to make this world a better place.
Be well.

Always.