Aging Lessons

Sometimes you’ll meet a person and know you need he or she in your life. For me, Dr. Julie Williams, a professor at Wright State University, is that person. Not only is Julie smart, but she’s funny. What I love most about Julie is that she is real. When you have a disability, you often need friends who have a disability to talk too because we often understand each other’s struggles. Julie became a sounding board for me and many others as well. It’s a pleasure and an honor to have her serve as guest-blogger today. May her words stay with you today and forever.

Shari

I am honored to be asked to write a piece today. I am blessed to share this earth with people like Shari Cooper. Shari you are a warrior!!! I love you for who you are and what you do for your community.  I share these words and offer my Crip love and solidarity, from here to the moon, as we age!

As a disabled person, with diastrophic dysplasia (DD), my aging process has been “on” for a while. Pain has been a part of my narrative since childhood and I am good at tuning it out. I am proud to say I resist the use of narcotics to numb. Rather, I do it cold turkey and have for a lifetime. As a DD dwarf I have experienced the typical things my community experiences: orthopedic issues, lots and lots of major orthopedic surgeries, severe sleep apnea and advancing hearing loss issues, just to name a few.

And yes, all that being said, I am officially 55 years of age, yet my middle age number may not accurately reflect the “felt age” of my body parts as changes have begun.

Over time my age-related changes have been experienced as slow and insignificant inconveniences, and then other times, I have felt them as rapid intrusions of advanced arthritis, scoliosis, hearing loss and then my newest uninvited guest hypertension.

I feel it in my work environments when colleagues schedule meetings back to back, across town, in and out of buildings. And yet, I am left wondering will my body hold up? Will I have time to manage a bathroom break in Crip time? I feel my body ache when the world is calling us back into our offices and classrooms from COVID. In some ways, I have thrived working virtually and my body has thanked me.

I think I have met each of these aging related changes with a certain amount of denial, self-advocacy and resistance, ultimately reentering my core around improved health habits, pacing of my efforts and on a good day…a spiritual place of humility. After all, as a Crip, I am skilled at adjusting and figuring out clever ways to get this body to do stuff that most would see as impossible or intolerable. I revel in it!

I am blessed because I had 2 grandmothers who also taught me some aging lessons of grace and vigor. Both of my grandmothers are gone but live on in my heart. Anna Marie, all country and Leona all city. Anna Marie was a force to be reckoned with. She was strong, physically able, and an avid Gardner. She was a resister of gendered norms for women. Many also referred to her as a whisper to all animals. She was also known for hiking in the woods behind her home with her seven dogs surrounding her for miles and miles. She was not afraid and a leader. And then there was Leona, who was the person who taught me grace and radical acceptance; not to be confused with being weak, passive, nor giving in and or giving up. She too, showed me resistance to gendered norms. She is a survivor of an abusive marriage while raising 5 children.  Leona endured years of silence and then found her own liberation with never a word of bitterness or looking back. When asked, she would say it was not necessary to relive the past.

Anna Marie taught me to never stop feeling that sense of awe when you see life come out of the ground, from just a mere seed. It’s delicate and strong all at once, defying forces of nature to survive and grow old enough to drop more seeds of life. She taught me that sometimes it’s ok to resist and stand hard on something even when it is not popular. That is life.

Leona taught me it’s OK to say goodbye and that aging while at times it is hard; it is also an opportunity to welcome a deeper understanding of what truly matters in this thing called life and it’s not about living in the past nor is it living too far in the future.

It was on my patio, at a time I was early in my career, late 30’s perhaps, I was on my way and I was feeling pretty proud of my success as a Crip. Anna Marie shared the seed moment with me, and I felt humbled and reminded to dial it back a bit. It was when I was probably 10 or 11ish, when I was flippantly saying something “unkind” about someone, and Leona gently put her finger on my lips to silence me and went on to quietly challenge me to think about my words.  She taught me a powerful lesson that I am still learning.

And next I must center my aging narrative back to my Crip family. Last night on the Breaking Silences virtual meet up, the question posed to all of us was “if your body had a voice what would it say?”  It was a fabulous question and brought me home to my body.

Last night, I said, my body’s voice is saying, “Look at you! Look what you’ve done with this body! Look what you’ve accomplished with this body even when “they” said you wouldn’t even live a life worth living.  I am 55 years and still going.” And then I added a message to this aging Dwarf body, a message of gratitude and love. “I love this body and all it has taught me. I would have no other!”

And today I am indeed actively aging. I have no idea how long I will be here on this earth, but I am aging with vigor and grace as Julie.

Peace and solidarity…Julie