Finding Love in Later Life—Spirited Edition

© 2010 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

This article follows up on some of the material in the last section of my recent post, Valentine’s Day—A New Vision. It’s the first time I am writing on a topic at the request of someone from our Cool Insighter community. Reader JuliaAna asked me to write: *


… a flower essence article for those of us who are older, but have never found the great love of our life and are now, as older women, looking at what is wrong with us and our energy, our projections, etc. … that has kept us from attracting that love we always wanted and still want in our lives. I have never been married, born in ’51. I’m a total romantic, but I have never found a true or great love.

This article idea intrigued me. I feel eminently qualified to write it, since I did not reunite with my childhood sweetheart until I was almost 50. Turns out, he was “still the one,” as one of my favorite songs goes, and there is definitely a lot of learning I can share on how that happened for me—and for us. Tim had never married; I was single for most of my adult life, though married previously. What I learned about relationship in-between my first meeting with Tim at ages 12-14 and our reunion, 37 years later, could easily fill several books—and probably will someday. As it stands, this will be a longer than usual post, just to share the key points.

I’ll get to the flower essence question last, but first, I’d like to address some of the issues in JuliaAna’s request.

Boomers: A Cool Saging Conversation 

Boom is the sound the baby generation makes when it explodes the old Old. TM

What’s Wrong with Me?

How many times I asked myself that same question as I, too, longed for the right relationship. This question needs to be balanced with reality and the clear vision of someone who has worked on him- or herself. Are your other relationships good—with friends, colleagues, bosses, and family? If yes, it’s probably “not you.” If you’ve looked deeply into your issues with intimacy, that usually means your Mom and Dad stuff, and feel you’ve done a good job healing them: there is nothing wrong with you.

One thing we often forget to examine is where relationship fits into our priorities. If you have kids from a prior relationship or a high-pressure job, you may need to make space for “romantic” love to enter. This happens on an energy level, and it can be also cured there.

Spend a lot of time envisioning how the right relationship would fit into your daily life. In advance, create the space for it. Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it. Don’t let other activities take up your relationship space. It may take time to manifest it, but a relationship cannot enter a life with no room for it. You may actually have to allow yourself to feel lonely at times. I don’t mean you literally have to set aside two hours a day where you do nothing but wait for Mr. or Ms. Right… but have time set aside to do things that you can be easily downscale or let go when love arrives.

Being a romantic, in and of itself, can be a handicap in assessing your own role in keeping love at bay. By its very nature, being starry-eyed is not conducive to clear vision. If you work with astrology, we are the Neptune types (I’m one of them) who see the world—and love—through rose-colored glasses. That topic deserves its own section; it is such a stumbling block to finding a mature, lasting relationship.

Gauzy Vision and Other Romantic Handicaps

If you were born between 1942 - 1957, you have a particularly thorny issue with romanticism. We are the Neptune in Libra generation. When we were born, Neptune, which rules projections, dreaminess, and addiction, was in the sign of Libra —relationship, romance, and especially coo-some twosomes. We crave relationship like mother’s milk, but frankly, many of us are bad at it!

Why? That lack of visual clarity and the tendency to project what we want in a man or woman onto every passing could-be lover. More often than not, this results in harsh disappointment. We fall in love with what we think the other person is--and with what could have been between us—if s/he actually were that person. My own pain with just such a relationship took decades to get over. I just couldn’t give up who I thought he was and what we might have had … and I still occasionally catch myself wondering how our strong chemistry might have alchemized each other with more time together. I finally got over him in writing my memoir. I had to face, in black and white, that he was not good to me or for me. I had downplayed his cruelty and inflated his “loving moments”, often barely disguised manipulations, for 30-odd years. There’s a hint here.

Write about your relationships. Make a relationship history journal. Talk about hot flashbacks and cool insights! Patterns will leap off the pages. You’ll discover whatever you’re doing that’s not working with crystal clarity

The Time Factor

It is crucial to uncover as early as possible whether or not a love interest is real or a projection of your own mind. Most romantics don’t like this reminder, but here it is. To know someone takes time. I think it takes a minimum of a year—often longer. I suggest you consider not moving in with someone or commingling assets until a deep trust is established and you have cycled through several of life’s seasons and challenges. Then you’ll have a track record together and know how you both fare for better or worse before you say it—and seal it in ink.

One advantage: If you’re a woman 50 or older, you’re past the ringing alarm on your biological clock. In today’s world, there are few good reasons to hasten marriage. There’s no shotgun in sight. Allow yourself to grow through all the phases of relationship till you’re both ready to take the next natural step. Don’t worry. Don’t hurry. Be happy. And if it turns out in this process you find you’re not with the love of your life, don’t hesitate to move on.

There is more romance and sex going on these days in many senior housing complexes than on many high school prom nights.  Love knows no age limits.

Think you’re running out of time? There’s never any good reason for rushing in, given how painful a wrong decision and the wrong person can make your life.

The Addictive Factor

You don’t have to be born with Neptune in Libra to be a love addict. There are many more astrological signatures and people so inclined, whatever your year of birth. If you can’t live without a relationship or your longing for one makes your life miserable, it’s time to detox. It may take therapy. If it’s a full-blown sex addiction, it may take Sex Addicts Anonymous. It is unwise, unhealthy, and untenable to live a life where you cannot be alone. When you’d rather be in situations that are personally harmful than to be by yourself, please seek help. Even if you think you’re more compulsive than truly addictive—you could really stop if you just break the knee-jerk habit—the sooner the better.

Another sign of an unhealthy relationship to relationship is “trying too hard.” Relationships are like a handful of sand on the beach of time. The more you squeeze (want a relationship desperately); the more it runs through your fingers. The more you can live without it—the cooler you are way with being either single or partnered—the clearer your energy is for the right someone to pick up on your true self. See Your Cosmic Tractor Beam for more on how this energy dynamic works.

Let’s also talk for a minute about what squeezing sand feels like from the other side. Perhaps you’ve experienced someone who is so intensely “into” you before you even have a chance to decide whether you’re that interested. It feels icky and invasive. Too much, too fast, too soon—not conducive to good long-term relationships. Desperation makes would-be lovers run in the opposite direction at break-neck speed, as well they should. You’re in love with love. You don’t even know them. You’re cheating on them emotionally already.

Probably you’ve noticed that I’m referring to astrology a lot in this article. That’s because it has helped me more than any other tool to understand my own love addiction and to overcome it. More on that next …

You First, Us Second

If you’ve ever read my post, The Converse Golden Rule, you know I am still in the process of learning to make my needs as important as serving others. I have a lot of Libra planets in my chart, and I speak from the trenches of overcoming the malady, bit by bit.

It was working with my astrological passion, the centaur planet Chiron, when I first “got” why it is so important to become a fully realized individual before stepping into relationship. In the zodiac, the first half of the signs and houses from Aries (1st) to Virgo (6th) are about personal development. In Libra (7th) and Scorpio (8th), we bond with one other. In Sagittarius (9th) through Pisces (10th), we are developing our relationships with many others. (See Wholeness and the Inner Marriage on The Radical Virgo.) You cannot give your Self in relationship until you fully become yourself. Until then, you don’t have your whole self to give.

The best relationships come from two whole people who walk the path of life together. Then, when they give themselves to relationship, they create synergy. The whole is more than the some of its parts. But relationship needs both its parts—two budded individuals.

How I Manifested My Man

1. I followed inner guidance, particularly in a very literal dream that predicted a reunion with Tim.

2. I was at a point where I had accepted I might be single for the rest of my life, and I was OK with it. Tim was in the same place. Consequently, we were both broadcasting the energy of our true selves, which made our energies clear to one another.

3. I had made affirmations recently about what I wanted in a relationship. I was quite specific. I wrote them down, put them in a corner of my office where I could look at them occasionally, but for the most part, I just let go, figuring the universe would handle the details.

4. I gave up wanting to control what this relationship or person “looked like” and figured Spirit knew best. (I had a psychic reading many years ago that foretold my reunion with Tim. I thought the woman was nuts at the time! After several other happy reunions, I was now open to new relationships with people from my past.)

5. I stepped out in faith, took a chance, and contacted him. While I wasn’t sure what the dream meant about reconnecting with Tim—he could be married with five kids—I did “get” that I was to re-encounter my very first boy/girl relationship for some reason. I left the rest up to Higher Power. Quite honestly, I wasn’t sure a man/woman relationship was the reason I was supposed to reconnect with him. I was somewhat surprised when it turned out that way.

I can’t overestimate the importance of Steps 2 and 5. We were both internally in the right place of surrendering a sense of having to have a relationship, but God helps those who help themselves. Tim admits he would have never thought to reconnect with me after all those years. Yet, he was the one who kept all the pictures from our ‘tween-age romance. He was keeping some sort of psychic channel open, even though he didn’t realize it—and it worked!

Once You’ve Got a Hot Prospect

Other than letting it grow into whatever it’s supposed to be—a friendship, romance, marriage, or a brother/sisterly bond—I think there’s a very important question to ask. Do you really like each other?

A good relationship, in my personal experience, is far more about friendship than any other type of love. Yes, I’m a romantic married to a romantic whose goal is to tell me every day that he loves me. Everyday living with its moments of anger, frustration, and annoyance are where you need that romanticism most to remind you why you were drawn to this person in the first place.

I can’t assume because you’re over 50 that you already know this. Physical attraction can so often be mistaken for love. I am embarrassed at how many times I did so in retrospect. There’s nothing like the early months of relationship—hot sex, romance, and your projections going wild all over one another. But basing a long-term relationship on body heat is a big mistake, especially if you don’t bother to find out how you like that person out of bed. With jobs, possibly kids, projects and just the demands of modern life, even people with the world’s biggest libidos are unlikely to spend more than 5 or 10% of their relationship in the bedroom. Why choose a partner based only on that factor?

For some of us, as we age, hormone levels decrease and take the edge off the need to compromise who we are in order to have sex. As a younger woman, I couldn’t count times I didn’t stand up for myself or smoothed over tensions so we’d still “be in the mood” on any given night in any one of my “wrong” relationships. My “loves” were almost always driven by physical attraction first, and everything else second. Hopefully, if your passions haven’t waned even a little, you’ve evolved to the point that the friendship and spiritual aspects of relationship are important to you. That’s when we’re willing to be a lot more discreet about taking that first step into the bedroom or stepping into it anytime later, when things aren’t right between you. Smothering conflict for any reason, including sex, is how you lose your own power in a relationship, bit by bit.

Big hormonal needs as a younger woman took me places I would never have gone with rational forethought. We’re designed that way for perpetuation of the species. But, remember, we’re past child-bearing age. Sometimes, I swear, the oddest combinations of people seem necessary in the short-term for karmic reasons and/or to bring children into the world with a specific genetic make-up. One of the blessings of being over 50 is that there’s no other reason to be in a relationship except for your own reasons. This is liberating!

Help from Our Flower Friends

Because they work on emotions, flower essences are powerful allies in the tricky world of relationship where both head and heart need to be balanced for happiness. Here are some suggestions to match typical issues that come up, especially for mid-life lovers and beyond.

Bleeding Heart (FES) **– Never got over a specific relationship in the past; or having difficulty with a recent relationship that didn’t work out. You haven’t completed grieving. You can’t “move on.”

Swiss Glacier Essence (Ancient Forest) – Melts any hardening that has congealed around the heart, great for people who still bear pain and scars from past relationships who want to heal and open up to love again.


Celtic Healing Springs (Ancient Forest) – Helps us awaken from illusion or preoccupation with our own story. Promotes grounding and wholeness. Good for those trying to be less dreamy about love and open to more grounded, life-affirming relationships.


Self-Heal (FES)– Another good one for past relationship hurts when it’s more a question of the cumulative hurt than one relationship in particular. Still, Self-Heal works well as a “binder” with many other essences and would enhance Bleeding Heart or any of the others in combination.

Impatiens (Bach, Healing Herbs) – Impatient about getting a relationship; trouble trusting the universe to bring it to you when the time is right

Shooting Star (FES) – A sense of alienation and not fitting in, perhaps because you’re single and have many married friends or acquaintances. Feeling you’re “too different” to find the right partner.

Sunflower (FES) – This essences if good if you’ve still got dad issues, but it’s also good for “being you,” that essential pre-requisite for becoming part of a dynamic duo. If you’re concerned about losing yourself or feel yourself slipping in a relationship, a round of Sunflower can put you back on track.

Mariposa Lily (FES) – Often called “mother love in a bottle,” this essence also handles any bottled-up, unfinished issues with your mom. When we are not at peace with our primary nurturer, assuming Mom held that job, it’s hard to nurture—or be nurtured—by others in a loving relationship.

The Monkeyflowers (FES) work on fears of intimacy. Try Pink Monkeyflower when you’re afraid to tell someone you’re true feelings or feel too vulnerable to take the risk. Sticky Monkeyflower is better when the fear of intimacy is specifically sexual, whether from fear of getting too close or past traumatic experiences involving sexuality.

Crab Apple (Bach, Healing Herbs) may stave off feelings of fading beauty or not feeling “enough” as you look for love in midlife or beyond.

Clematis (Bach, Healing Herbs) - Good choice, if you’re still too dreamy and romantic and your feet aren’t on the ground. Especially good to take at the beginning of a relationship where you think s/he might be the one.

Love: “Reality, What a Concept!” ~ Robin Williams

While my current marriage certainly has its shot of Neptune and romanticism, it is as real as it gets as far as the gifts of mature relationship. We are honest, loving, faithful, and loyal as puppy dogs to each other. (I shouldn’t have gotten so mad when we were kids and they called it puppy love. Puppies have some great qualities that make love work. And let’s face it, licking someone’s face can’t hurt!)

Our marriage isn’t as wild or heart fluttering as some of the romances of my youth; yet, it is so much more. It’s grounded, real, there for me—and something I would never trade for another one of those high adventures. We say, “I like you” almost as often as “I love you.” We are friends and family to each other.

Thanks to Hollywood, we are sold a bill of goods on what love is. To be truly happy, we have to stop making relationship “our everything” and become more realistic in our expectations. Fulfillment is your job, not your partner’s, although s/he may be part of what makes you happy. Love has many forms, and it’s probably the most important aspect of life where we shouldn’t put all our cookies in one basket. Imagine the pressure of being someone’s everything! No wonder the starry-eyed get dumped.

Sometimes we don’t even know it when real love is staring us in the face. Good example: If you caught the recent PBS Masterpiece Classics version of Jane Austen’s Emma. Who did Emma end up with? I’ll avoid a spoiler in case you haven’t seen it yet and still want to—but you can be sure it wasn’t the most exciting guy by Hollywood standards, but rather the one she never realized she had slowly but surely fallen in love with. It was predictable from the earliest scenes, yet fascinating to watch unfold. How many of us are missing someone right under our noses?

Speaking of noses, taking your rose-colored glasses off yours, now and then, might be the best thing you could ever do to find true love. This is especially true as you become more mature and more in touch with what makes life joyful. Take notice of people with similar values, looking in the same direction. Just be yourself and go places where you can meet people automatically, instead of in a contrived way. Awaken to those dynamic laws of attraction mentioned in Your Cosmic Tractor Beam. If you do, attracting the right person for you will be nearly inevitable. Less longing, more living. Dating services work for some people, I suspect in direct proportion to honesty and self-knowledge.

And when you know yourself that well, you’re on your cosmic beam. Love would have happened anyway, regardless of the mechanics.

~~
*Note: JuliaAna gave permission to share her name and e-mail excerpt.

** Links to essence manufacturers are made on first mention only.

Photo Credit: HAPPY COUPLE IN THEIR 50'S Creativest... Dreamstime.com

Blog Comment Contest! Don’t forget to comment for entry into this week’s comment contest for Valentine's month. Comments on any post qualify according to the guidelines in the announcement. Need how-to on commenting? Click on The Cosmos Comments. This is the final week, and the prize is an autographed copy of Capital Crimes: 15 Stories by Sacramento Area Authors. It includes Joyce’s story, “Digital,” which provides the comic relief.

Winner of Week 3 Comment Contest: Congratulations to Dänna Wilberg of the Sacramento area. Dänna commented on the post, Love from Both Sides: An Interview with author Stephanie Riseley. Dänna’s prize is a copy of  the e-book, The Training Tape. Week 3 ran from Feb. 15 -21. BTW, Dänna also has a story in the Capital Crimes anthology, next week's grand prize.

Tools for Winter

So, you’ve done your year-end rituals. You’ve done your Winter Solstice exercises--acknowledged your accomplishments and burned your list of what you want to get rid of in your life. You’ve done your Annual Review. You’re even willing to Hug the Dark.

Now what?

Skeleton Crew

I’m not talking about Halloween or Day of the Dead. I’m suggesting that your winter have a skeleton or backbone of regular activities that anchor you in your cave months of self-reflection. These three months are about being rather than doing. Even if you work full-time, coming and going to these rituals will help you stay in sync with the Season of Slowing Down.

Rituals are vital. They give rhythm and music to our days. They are signposts of where we are in our 24-hour journey. They offer us the familiarity and comfort of sameness that the rest of life rarely holds.

While I am talking about ritual as any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner (Dictionary.com), most of the other definitions have religious overtones and refer to repetitive spiritual ceremony. When our rituals become praying without ceasing, they evolve into something more than touchstones in a world with constantly ticking clocks. You don’t have to be serious or work at making them so. It just happens through conscious repetition.

Ritual also allows us to  make the rite itself a mantra.  We let go of ourselves in the repetition, so that inspiration and spirit can break through to us.

The following are some tools for winter that will enrich your “down time.” Don’t try to do them all, any more than you’d fix a loose faucet with the entire toolbox. Choose which tools work best for your season of introspection and reunion with your Inner You.


Start Your Day Off Rite

Open your day with a reading that inspires you. Whether it’s Daily Word, Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance, or any one in a million sites you can access online for your morning spiritual communion, this practice will change the course of your day. It gears your mind in a positive, healing, holistic direction as early as possible after your feet hit the floor. One of my favorite winter practices is to read Love Is Letting Go of Fear by Jerry Jampolsky. This is tantamount to the Cliff’s Notes version of A Course in Miracles. It will absolutely change the way you see your world and open a window to let love in. It’s especially a good choice for anyone who is grieving, angry, or is otherwise hurting.

Some of my favorite online stops for a morning cup of positive thinking include:


• Inspire Me Today
• Quote Garden
• Spirited Woman Blog
• Inspiration on Beliefnet
• Daily Affirmations with Dr. Wayne Dyer

Keep a Dream Journal

I’ve written so much about dreams on my Writer Joyce Mason website, I’m referring you there for everything you’ll need to know to explore the free guidance you have available daily in your night movies. No subscription or rental fees!

Take a Short Walk in the Fresh Air

Even when it’s frosty, there’s nothing like contact with the outside world. You might not want to take a mile hike in a snowstorm, but contact with the elements has an invigorating and grounding effect. It reminds us we’re part of the changing weather and basic substances that make up life itself. (Read the Four Element series for more on this subject.) While it’s boosting your circulation, that short walk will stretch your legs if you’re computer-bound and allow you to let step out of any mental ruts you’ve been digging. A walk freshens your thinking, as long as you allow each step to be a journey back into your body and out of your mind. It’s good to be out of our minds for awhile each day!


Meditate

It doesn’t matter what form or how you do it. Meditation has major benefits for the body, mind, and spirit. If you’re like me, you probably know that down to your toes but still have a hard time doing it on a regular basis. We complicate things. All you have to do is sit for 10-20 minutes, let go of your mind chatter as much as possible, and let inspiration—spirit—come in. This practice boosts creativity and your ability to handle life’s ups-and-downs in a centered, easygoing way. Yet we still struggle with it. Meditation is a bit of winter all 365 days a year. Is 2010 the year you’ll commit to it?

My first spiritual teacher always said that praying is talking to God; meditation is listening to what God has to say. However you perceive a Higher Power, hone your listening skills! Imagine: We have this inner guidance at our fingertips, but we just won’t make time to open our palms and let it in. If you “go within” during winter, by the time the natural New Year occurs at Spring Equinox, you’ll know your goals and have the sap-rising energy to achieve them.

Read

People talk about summer beach reading, but reflective winter is the perfect time to drink in some of those more thoughtful reads like self-help or spiritual books. Just for fun, I thought I’d look at the top five books on Amazon in both of those categories for you to consider as possible winter reading picks:

Self-Help. (1) The Power of Self-Coaching by Joseph J. Luciani, (2) When Am I Going to Be Happy? by Penelope Russianoff, (3) Get Out of Your Own Way by Mark Goulston and Phlilip Goldberg, (4) Five Simple Steps to Emotional Healing: The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need by Gloria Arenson, and (5) 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books to Transform Your Life by Tom Butler-Bowdon.

Inspirational. (1) Everyday Blessings: 365 Days of Inspirational Thoughts by Max Lucado, (2) Daily OM by Madisyn Taylor, (3) Remember Who You Are: Life Stories That Inspire the Heart and Mind by Daisy Wademan, Kim Clark, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, (4) I Am With You Always: A Treasury of Inspirational Quotations, Poems and Prayers by Douglas Bloch, and (5) How to Succeed in the Game of Life: 34 Interviews with the World's Greatest Coaches by Christian Klemash.

Listen to the Quiet

If you’re not accustomed to a house where the TV, music, or chattering people aren't a constant blare, try it. You might like it! I feel blessed to be married to someone who also likes the beauty of silence. I can hear myself think and hear Spirit whispering directions. Do not underestimate the importance of alone time and silence.  They are essential to cool insights all year long!
 

Walnut—and Other Flower Essences

Maybe you wondered about the illustration for this post. Is winter a “tough nut to crack?” Maybe in some ways, yes--but this is really a visual pun on why we might need a nutcracker to carry over from the Christmas ballet.

When I trained as a flower essence practitioner, one of the enduring things I learned about the flower remedy, Walnut, is how the anatomy of a Walnut itself explains how these particular drops work to free us from limiting influences and encourage us to make healthy transitions and follow our own path. What a wonderful remedy for the New Year!

Now, onto the anatomy of a walnut. Crack one, and you’ll notice it has two lobes in separate chambers divided by a membrane—just like the human brain. A cracked walnut may as well be a miniature human brain model. This flower remedy helps us integrate both sides of our brain and break mental patterns that hold us back from the radical changes sometimes needed to move forward.

If you resonate to this idea, visit your local health food store for a bottle of Walnut or wherever flower remedies are sold locally. The primary brands are Bach Remedies or Healing Herbs. Buy an empty dosage bottle, too. Fill the dosage bottle with approximately one-fourth preservative (brandy or apple cider vinegar), three-fourths spring water, and 2-4 drops of Walnut. (Let your intuition guide you on dosage.) Take this mixture, 4 drops, 4 times a day under your tongue, especially at the threshold times of sleeping and waking. Take it for 3-4 weeks. You’ll know when it’s time to stop. You’ll consistently forget to take it-- a tap on the shoulder from your intuition that you’re ready to move on. Review your relationship to change over those few weeks. Comment, if you will, and share with us how it went!

In fact, let us know how you fare with any of these tools and share any faves not mentioned. Happy Inner Journey!

Affirmation: New Year, New Decade, new me becoming all that I am!

~~~


Photo Credit: NUTCRACKER AND WALNUTS © Tihis Dreamstime.com

Note: Information about flower essences is not meant to replace medical or psychological treatment. Readers need to decide for themselves on the quality and effectiveness of flower remedies.

Celebrate Epiphany, Jan. 6th! Epiphany is this blog’s feast day. Revisit the post Epiphanies—and follow your star!

Hot News Flash! Writer Joyce Mason Website

It’s complex, dense, deep, and fun. It’s a web site years in the planning. It’s joycemason-dot-com!

If you wonder about life's mysteries, your purpose and special gifts ... my new website is for you.

Discover my many other facets as a writer. My memoir-writing baby boomer persona is just one. Joycemason-dot-com will be home to everything else I write besides this blog, starting with my body of literature that has proven timeless for decades on astrology, dreamwork, and other symbol systems. If there is one thing that joins all my writing, it’s this: I play the symbols. I see signs in commonplace occurrences as well as the moon, stars, and meaningful coincidences.

There are articles, old and new, and links to my writings on other web sites. I look forward to introducing current readers of Hot Flashbacks to my other works. I also hope to reconnect with many old friends and clients who knew me when these topics were on my front burner—and when I still did individual astrology charts and other spiritually oriented consultations. You’ll find links to other people whose works or products help me share what I’ve learned in the Symbol World. The last tool in my medicine bag from my former practice, Inner Growth Work, is flower essences. Who knew a few drops of a tincture taken under your tongue a few times a day could transform emotions?

There’s an expanded bio, information on books and publications already in print or online, and previews of writings in progress. You’ll discover my poetry—my first genre, also symbol rich—and my genres I call M-in-M’s for short—memoir, inspiration, and mystery.

But the mystery of my new site? Don’t let it linger! Why haven’t you clicked on that link yet? Or this one?

Thanks to all my Cool Insighters who check it out, and if you find it’s for you, I hope to be seeing you in both my cyber “pads” often.

Join me for the fireworks! And let’s crack open some champagne.

Dreams—Waking and Sleeping

Dreamwork—helping people access and decipher the messages in their own night movies—was one of the services I offered in my former astrology-plus practice.

I have been a dream catcher for as long as I can remember. After journaling my nightly entertainment and instruction for decades, I understand my own dream code. This is what it takes—writing it down and taking persistent shots at analyzing the content, until you see the patterns, rhyme, and reason. Once you get the hang of your personalized symbols, the sky’s the limit on self-understanding.

Free guidance in your sleep. What could be more laid back? Effortless?

Even more enticing: This symbol system spills over into waking life. For instance, I got the message that it was time to look for my birth mom when the topic of adoption kept coming up in every other conversation and a magazine connecting adoptees and birth parents appeared in the window of my local bookstore. The one I passed every day and could not miss if I tried. A series of dreams about happy reunions complemented these waking hints, although the characters in the stories varied.

As you can see, the message I was supposed to “get” was a very simplified nugget of the material I was receiving. My world kept repeating “adoption, adoption” and my dreams whispered “happy reunions, happy reunions.” By not being hung-up on the details—by zeroing in on the simplest core message—my dreams came true, both sleeping and waking, in a happy reunion with Original Mom in 1986.

This reminds me of two of my favorite dreamwork techniques. One is to nugget your dream down to a single sentence, like a blurb in the TV Guide. Example from last night’s dream: Woman returns to her childhood home to find it renovated and moved to a different location.

I was the woman, but it’s better to take yourself out of the description, in case you or any other star is symbolic. Could be I represent someone else, as dreams are notorious for morphing one person into another and substituting one person for someone else with similar characteristics.

My childhood home represents security and happiness to me. My time in that little brick house were the best years of my life.

The blurb nuggets it down to a simple concept. The house can change in appearance or location, but I can still find what it represents in an uncertain world—stability.

The other technique I love is titling dreams. I took a workshop once where I learned this trick, and it has helped me vastly in dream synthesis—discovering the core message. It’s important to use your first inspiration in titles, as they are usually spot-on. I called my childhood home dream, Happy Childhood Home: Moved, Redone.

There are many other techniques I have developed over time, but the most important thing I want to share is that dreams are the portal to intuition and learning to use divine guidance toward abundant living. In order to mine your subconscious, you have to go down the shaft and hang out there—a lot. I know some people are scared of the dark, but remember that little light the miners wear on their heads to guide them on their way? Right on their third (intuitive) eye? It symbolizes insight, and the stuff they seek is treasure.

So, what if you’re somewhat new at all this? How do you get started?

If you don’t already remember your dreams, here’s a medical fact. You have them; you simply have not invited them into waking memory.

Here are some helpful dream memory tips:

• Get enough sleep. I dream triple the content on days I can get 8-9 hours.
  
  
• Avoid stimulants, especially caffeine, beyond morning


• Avoid alcohol at night


• Anything deeply relaxing before bedtime enhances—lavender baths, meditation, tense/release of muscles


• Pray about or affirm your desire to remember your dreams. You can even write a note to your Higher Power requesting guidance on a specific issue and put it under your pillow.


• Keep a note pad handy to jot down memories first thing upon waking, even in the middle of the night, along with a high intensity reading light that won’t bother your partner if you share a bed.


• Put the herb mugwort under your pillow, which you’re likely to find at your local health food store. The scent stimulates dreams.


• Use flower essences that evoke dreaming.

Dreams are so integral to the intuition and insight needed to have a cool life, no matter what your age; I encourage you to invite them into yours wholeheartedly.

Dreams are like people. The more you court them and pay attention to them, the more they’ll want to hang out with you—and share themselves.

FLOWER ESSENCES: Emotional First Aid, Boomer-Plus Edition

Remember "flower power” in the 60's? Flowers symbo­lized peace, love, and goodwill. Flower essences have another kind flower power that promotes peace on earth from the inside out for they help heal emotions. Flower essences are infusions of flowers in fresh spring water, charged by the sun, fixed in a small amount of preservative. A few drops of essences are taken several times a day under the tongue. Essences are chosen by matching your current emo­tional issues with the correspond­ing flower essence, proven in repeated case studies to catalyze that emotional pattern to comple­tion.

The essences heal at the vibrat­ory, ether­ic, or soul level, so a little goes a long way. Each drop of essence contains the vibrational pattern of the flower's energy. Flower essences do not suppress feelings. On the contrary, they seem to open us up in a deep and receptive way to the process of embrac­ing and moving through them. Without resistance, feel­ings are much less painful and more quickly resolved.

The flower remedies were first discovered in England in the 1930s by Dr. Edward Bach, a homeopathic physician. Dr. Bach believed that pain, suffering, and illness are oppor­tunities to grow and discover ourselves. To avoid the tran­sitory walk through pain is to say no to whole­ness. For this reason, tools like flower essences, which enable the spirit to face and work through feelings, are so valuable.

Bach's flowers tend more toward heavier issues, like depres­sion, guilt, jealousy, trauma, and grief. There are 38 Bach remedies—39 counting the multi-purpose combination, Rescue Remedy.

The North American Essences have been developed over the past several decades. Marriage and business partners Patricia Kaminiski and Richard Katz are the keepers of these essences, also known as the FES Quintessentials. They live in Nevada City, CA where they operate Flower Essences Services surrounded by gardens of wildflowers. I feel privileged to have trained as an essence practitioner with these two highly spiritual, on-purpose mentors, dedicated to healing our planet through better com­munion with nature.

The FES Quintessentials cover a larger variety of issues. Releasing a relationship, feeling grounded, contacting your own inner sense of conscience, opening up to draw in friendship, and getting in touch with your inner child are just a few ex­amples. There are 103 essences, with new and exciting research essences continuously in development.

This brief introduction to flower essences and some of the pioneers in the field is just that. There are many other wonderful essences and essence-makers, among them Whole Energy Essences of Concord, MA, makers of fruit, flower and gem essences. Desert Alchemy of Tucson, AZ makes healing essences from cactus and other desert flowers, including a whole range of blends for astrological cycles. Ancient Forest Essences of Gualala, CA creates remedies from a variety of pines and other long-lived trees, infusions made at sacred sites throughout the world, and essences chosen to represent the positions on the Native American Medicine Wheel and their meanings. If that isn’t creative enough for you, Pacific Essences makes infusions from sea creatures. Barnacle is one of my favorites, for “radical trust,” when we cling, like barnacles on a boat helm, to what was, rather than leaping into the void and meeting our next opportunity for growth.

But, wait—there’s more! This month, Vibration, an ezine on flower remedies to which I have contributed periodically during its decade on the Internet, is having a special edition just for those of us in, or approaching, the fast lane to Social Security—or those already getting their checks. If you already know and love flower essences or are intrigued by this introduction, don’t miss Vitality at Any Age: Aging and Essences.

I didn’t know it when we moved into this house, but I was destined to become a spokesperson for getting the most out of later life. I live in a veritable oak tree house. This week’s picture of the oaks off our deck is just another way of sharing my views. Here’s the serendipity: Among many other fascinating revelations in the Aging and Essences issue of Vibration, you’ll learn how oak trees are the seniors of the botanical kingdom. Co-editor Donna Cunningham tells us, “Oak flower essence …is the most powerful remedy for anyone who's struggling with seniorhood or who wants to get even more out of these blessed years of being an elder.” That makes it the essence of cool aging and the signature flower remedy for the Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights Blog.

Flowers help us honor and remember key milestones on our journey. Intuitively, people have always linked flowers and feelings. They are the gift of choice in our most emotionally charged times of transition: birth, death, illness, marriage, anniver­saries, and celebrations of all kinds. Flower essences help us celebrate life by freeing stuck energy that keeps us in the painful past by giving us the present of “the present”--and a new start.

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Note: This article is provided purely for informational purposes. Readers are asked to make their own determination regarding the quality of the services and products described above. This article is not meant to be advice, and the information is not meant to replace medical or psychological treatment.