Tag: transitions

Collage as a Jumpstart

After packing more boxes than I ever imagined, making a cross-country move, and unpacking all those boxes last summer, I needed a reset. I signed up for a collage class of the 4 seasons at the local community center. Having dabbled in a few collage workshops previously, I found the experience introspective, yet aimless at the same time. This class began my prescription for a renewal jumpstart amidst upheaval.

Our small group made a different collage for each season, interspersing each collage with writing about our contained-on-paper musings. We were given ancient symbols for seasons, a feast of colorful papers including wallpapers, buttons, and trinkets overflowing a table. We began with Spring, the farthest season from our summertime outdoors.

I immediately cut some circles — for circle-of-life? My scissor-handed mind turned to flowers emerging from stardust atoms, origins of everything (including origins of writing) and beauty of Earth’s springtime renewal. My eyes chose a wallpaper with a fairy. “What?” a part me asked, but I snipped the fairy (surrounded by stars) anyway. We were time-limited with the structure of the class, but I finished by selecting 3 trinkets from the teacher’s treasure stash – a metal flower button, a delicate paper flower, and a tiny plastic bird with an open beak.   

Here are snippets from my written musings in collage class: Spring has always been one of my favorite seasons. When Winter has been cold and on the fallow side in the garden, Spring bursts through frozen thinking with unending possibilities. I find the Viking symbol for Spring presenting an openness…(checking Google on my cell phone) on Vikings’ Spring: “The Norse goddess Ostara (considered the origin of our word, Easter) is strongly associated with Spring and new beginnings…surrounded by symbols… like flowers and fairies…the Ingwaz Rune, representing a seed or egg, embodies the potential for growth and new life.” When crocuses give birth to themselves, pushing through soil’s tunnel, there is magic for me. I’m even inclined to think of fairies – aren’t they just flowers with petals as skirts? After Winter’s hibernation there is hope with bulbs deciding to stick their necks out…Spring is like that – come out, come out, wherever you are – get blooming.

Collage is a laboratory for artists. When Matisse was in his 70’s, tangled in legal disputes with his wife which resulted in everything in his studio sent to bank cellars, he filled his walls with paper cutouts. Reinvigorated, Matisse discovered what he called “drawing with scissors.” His stained-glass windows for a chapel were designed from his energizing and colorful scissor cutouts. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/29/henri-matisse-cutouts-tate-modern-drawing-scissors

Other artists, including writers, use the joining of collage fragments as a jumpstart for their artistic process. Painter Amy Sillman captures the essence of collage: “…there is something about placing 2 things on the same plane that clarifies their relationship in ways that words, for a time, cannot.”

Collage creates an opening to newness.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

498. What does Spring conjure in your mind?

499. How do you use activities to” reset” yourself?   

Purpose Pearls

At age 80 Betty Kellenberger becomes the oldest woman to ever hike the entire 2000-mile Appalachian Trail. While Kellenberger grew up in Michigan, she always had a fascination with seeing the Georgia-to-Maine landscape along the Appalachian Trail. Her imaginings materialized when she retired and had a 6-month timeframe to devote to her dream.

Like fulfilling many dreams, the reality of inevitable along-the-way struggles is daunting. Kellenberger faced bruising, dehydration, falling, a concussion, Lyme disease, and hurricane damage to trails in the South. She had to change her route heading north. Then cold weather forced a pause until spring. She also experienced inner pauses, both on the trail and upon completion: “You hike alone, and so you have your thoughts…You have so many emotions because you’re excited about finishing,” she recalled. “I was really looking forward to saying, ‘I am done.’ But you also know you’re going to miss this big-time. You’re not going to have what you have out on that trail. That peace, the serenity.”

Kellenberger’s decades-long teaching career was teaching English and social studies to seventh graders, along with night classes for adults. Having achieved her Appalachian Trail dream, she ponders what comes next. This transition time is where life’s dreams require rewiring. There are many choices of how to spend one’s time in retirement and how to create a sense of purpose.

Some, like 100-year-old Jiro Ono, famed chef and restaurant owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo, are never-retire advocates. While Ono has passed the baton to his son as head chef, he maintains that the secret to longevity is to keep working! And yet, he must rewire to accommodate his Centenarian body’s needs as he realizes that his hands “…don’t work so well…I can no longer come to the restaurant every day…but even at 100, I try to work if possible. I believe the best medicine is to work.”

Ono’s health habits include no alcohol, regular walks, and to no one’s surprise, eating well. He continues serving and eating sushi as the first sushi chef to earn 3 Michelin stars. He is the oldest head chef of a three-star restaurant. What possibly could be his next purpose? Yes, he has one! Ono wants to outlive Japan’s oldest man who died at age 113.  

Both Kellenberger and Ono are seasoned citizens who believe in living with purpose. Hopefully, purpose in one’s life starts at an early age, but an overarching purpose in one’s life can change. Life transitions often are a time of upheaval; they may signal either decline and/or renewal to dream big after a muddling-through stage. No matter what your current age or circumstances may be, start affirming purposes that have meaning for you. Please know that you can rewire at any age!

The following questions come from my book, Transforming Retirement: Rewire and Grow Your Legacy.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

442. What are you doing with your precious time today?

443. What kind of rewiring might you tinker with today?

Transition Pearls

Are you in transition? Every day is a mini-transition, but I’m asking about bigger changes, the kind rated on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. The “top” 10 events on the stress scale are death of spouse, divorce, marital separation, jail term, death of close family member, personal injury/illness, marriage, fired at work, marital reconciliation, retirement…moving is #32.  

Transitions are everywhere. Consider your breath moving constantly, from inhale to exhale. As singer/songwriter George Strait, reminds, “…life’s not the breath you take, the breathing in and out / That gets you through the day ain’t what it’s all about / You might just miss the point if you don’t slow down the pace / Life’s not the breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.”

I have experienced moments recently that take my breath away. The reaching out of many friends cools down my stress thermometer. I am moving cross-country for a fourth time. I finished college in the Midwest and moved to Boston for graduate school and career-building. The second move was a shorter hop to Philadelphia where my husband had a new job waiting. Parents by then, we each found employment that was mind-stretching. A third move back to the Midwest was both job-related for my beloved husband and closer to extended families. We found mind-bending jobs and grew a whole lot. Death-of-spouse solo, I plan a west coast move where I will be closer to where my children have settled. They need mountains and hiking; it feels healthy for me too.

We cannot know in advance the outcome of our many transitions, but we can take notice when something “moves” us and takes our breath “away.” A cook for all seasons, Ina Garten, lived in Washington DC and was a regular hostess of dinner parties. She left her government job with the White House Office of Management and Budget decades ago to buy a cheese and gourmet shop, the Barefoot Contessa on the Hamptons. She cheerfully quipped, “You figure it out along the way!” Without knowing how her maiden entrepreneurial venture would turn out, she had a bird’s-eye view. She stepped into uncharted territory one breath at a time. On a small stage, isn’t this what we all do when we wake up each morning?

After two decades of operating her specialty shop, Garten sold her business and took a year to figure out her next stage. When she slowed down her pace, Garten next became a cookbook author in the very crowded field of cookbook authors. With cookbook success, she was offered her own TV cooking show on the Food Network, receiving inclusion in the inaugural 2021 Forbes “50 Over 50” list of leaders and entrepreneurs. Her 2024 memoir has a catchy second title, Be Ready When Luck Happens.

Garten inspires me to make big changes. Who inspires you?

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

399. When is the last time that some action took your breath away?

400. What transition calls out to you?