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Sexy Underwear and Other Sundries
Are you a hot mama or have you surrendered your womanly power to the diaper bin? I have decided to reclaim my whole self and here’s how.
I reached the technical linear date of mid-life a couple of years ago (now 42) and at that moment I realized the value of bucket lists. In the first half of life, it’s easy to feel like there is alot of time. Because, in some ways, there is. The average lifespan is 75-80 years if you’re healthy. So, in the 20s, 30s, it feels like there is plenty of time to consider what might have escaped noticed up until that point.
When I turned 40, I had four children under 12. I was uprooted and soul searching. We were thinking about our values as a family, mostly. What did we (as parents) want for our children? What did we each want to do with our creative energies? But I hadn’t spent much time thinking about me. Just me. Not wearing any particular hat or consumed by any particular role. The big ole elephant (pick a color) in the room was “who am I…now”?
I was dabbling gleefully in writing and photography. Forcing myself out of my comfort zone into the public blogging sphere to document our “Life On Purpose.” I was athletic, as usual, committed to yoga, surfing, skiing, horses and whatever else I might have time for outside of chasing my children around. I was a wife, a mother, a friend. But there was a part of me so long neglected that I forgot who she was or that she had ever existed.
Our sexual energies sometimes go into deep hibernation when we become parents. I know it’s not just me because it seems to be true for many of my friends, too. Despite the fact that some pretty racy and exciting nocturnal or diurnal engagements resulted in brand new hybrids of our genetical material, parents start to lose their sexual identity once those same progeny arrive in our homes. It’s a slow, insidious creep. Pregnancy weight, stretch marks, stretched parts, touched out and bone tired exhaustion pretty much destroy what ever meager libido clings to our depleted frames. Two healthy human specimens are sucked dry by nature’s march to ensure the next generation’s survival. While I have met some annoyingly well adjusted parents who glow with the bliss of new parenthood and sleepless nights, most of us really cannot remember those first few years let alone wax poetic about them.
I must confess that for the past year or more I have been feeling rather depressed about losing my youthful verve. I could see the frown lines and smile crevices etching ever more profoundly into my once fair visage. I was very aware that I was no longer, ever a Miss, but forever more a Ma’am. Okay. I can accept that.
Er. Um. Not really.
In my mind I feel 30. Really. But during that decade I was pregnant or nursing. So, I need to set a new bar. A new year of feeling and being a real woman. A healthy, sexy, vivacious, intelligent woman. No more mommy sweats. No more frumpy days. I need to draw the line somewhere. Since when do we have children and hang up our libidos? I’m not talking cougar vamping. I’m just talking about feeling whole and alive. Yes, sexy, but really just WOMANLY. Remember when the swagger of the hips and the keen mind were a killer knock out blow to any mere mortal?
So, I recently resolved to find ways to feel womanly again. My method? I only buy sexy, silky underwear. I will never again buy those blase, boring nude practical panties again. I strut around in them with little braless tank tops (a luxury of the smaller breasted woman perhaps but one that I relish) and vamp it up like nobody’s business. Somehow the cellulite and past few years of inconsistent glut workouts is easily overlooked in a pink laced bikini!
A friend of mine recently confided that she sleeps in the nude. As a lifetime pajama sleeper I decided to pair down and sleep in my new sexy underwear to start. I may work my way up to sleeping naked. This may be too much information (TMI) but I would like to suggest to all my mommy friends out there, that it’s time to reclaim our full womanly powers. Yes, we create LIFE. Yes, we nurture and raise those little cherubs with great devotion and love. But we are WOMEN! We have our own needs! We are still sexual and sexy. It’s not too late to embrace it and own it. I hear that the next 40 years can be MORE fulfilling and exciting than the first…and I intend to find out.
PS: I draw the line at thongs. To each her own.
How about you? What do you do to feel sexy after 40? Please share your tips. I want to know!
Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day. I hope your day is filled with more (much more) than flowers!
Interview with Pearls Author Craig Meriwether – “The Art of Creating Diamonds.”
Stuck, broke and depressed, Craig Meriwether struggled with life for 25 years. Failing to go through with a planned suicide, Craig determined to get out of depression and to turn his life around but faced 2 major challenges, no money and no health insurance. Yet he took massive action anyway, studying, researching and working his way through his self-sabotage, anger and negative thought patterns. Today Craig is recognized as a leading expert in mind mastery, eliminating depression, and creating deep happiness and success; achieving results that last.
After teaching meditation and stress reduction workshops, Craig founded the stress reduction program at the Northern Arizona Medical Center’s Cancer Center. He is also the creator of the best selling programs Depression 180 and Mind Mastery Blueprint, as well as, a featured author in the #1 New York Times bestselling book Pearls of Wisdom: 30 Inspirational Ideas to Live your Best Life Now! along with Jack Canfield, Marci Shimoff and Janet Bray Attwood. He now speaks to thousands of people every year and leads workshops in creating lasting life transformation.
You deserve happiness and success. Craig will teach you the tools to live the life of your dreams.
You can find out more about Craig and his work at:
1. How did you get into this collection of inspiration with folks like Jack Canfield?
Randy Davila who runs Hampton Roads Publishing, and puts out books like Conversations with God and authors like Eckhart Tolle, saw some of my writing and asked me to submit a chapter for consideration. He liked it, and as it fit with the other chapters that were going in the book, it got in.
2. What is your chapter about?
How you can use the problems, challenges and pain in your life to move forward toward success and happiness. The chaos can be used to create a new You 2.0 You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” My chapter, The Art of Creating Diamonds, is about how to go about seeing the world anew while you’re dealing with pain and adversity in your life.
3. What do you think makes this book unique and who would want to read it?
It’s a choir of personal transformation experts all giving their best tips. It’s a great way to find new voices and ideas that resonant with what’s going on in your life right now. If you’re having any sort of challenge in your life this great first step towards success.
4. What kind of wisdom do you have to offer the reader?
I spent 25 years living with depression. I spent four years figuring out how to eliminiate it from my life. I can teach people the tools to master their minds. I don’t have any fancy degree or a bunch of letters behind my mind. I mastered this on my own. And if I can do it, then anyone can do it.
5. The publisher promises that the authors such as yourself are “up and coming” leaders in self-help. How does the publisher know this and what is your expertise in “self-help”?
The people who run Red Wheel Publishing and its sister companies, Hampton Roads Publishing, Conari Press and Weiser Books, are in the business of bring the best ideas and teachings that will nourish the mind, body and spirit. Their sole purpose is to inspire the mind and soul. That is their job. And they’ve been doing it a long time. Over 500 books published so far including the Conversations with God series by Neale Donald Walsch and titles by Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Richard Bach (author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull). As an experienced baseball scout can see the best in “up and coming” baseball players and an experienced talent agent can see the best in “up and coming” actors and actresses, so can the experienced publishers at Red Wheel see the best in “up and coming” transformational leaders.
6. Most people know about Jack Canfield from the Chicken Soup books and Marci Shimoff from her Happy book … How would you like your readers to think of you? What is your “signature niche”?
I can help people master their minds. I can teach people how to eliminate depression, anger, guilt, self-sabotage, and automatic negative thoughts.
7. We often hear that the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – how does that proverb apply to the 30 authors in this book?
Pearls of Wisdom is a tool box. Sometimes you need a screw driver, sometimes a wrench, or a pair of pliers. This book is a tool box that will help you create success.
8. What is your most central and compelling “pearl of wisdom”?
You can have a successful, happy life but understand it’s a choice. You can let outside circumstances dictate your mood, emotions, and behavior. Or you can take massive action, take back control of your life and forge your own path. Either way, it’s a choice.
9. How can our readers/listeners find you?
