Anna Cahill

01/10/2024

No one told me
it would be like this—
how growing older
is another passage
of discovery
and that aging is one
grand transformation,
and if some things become torn apart
lost along the way,
many other means show up
to bring me closer
to the center of my heart.

No one ever told me
if whatever wonder
waits ahead
is in another realm
and outside of time.
But the amazement, I found,
is that the disconcerting things
within the here and now
that I stumble
and trip my way
through, also
lead me
gracefully
home.

And no one told me
that I would ever see
an earth so strong
and fragile, or
a world so sad
and beautiful.
And I surely
didn't know
I'd have
all this life
yet in me
or such fire
inside my
bones.
~Susan Frybort~ With gratitude for this Soul Deep Poem

11/02/2023

This is terrific.

“Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.”
Susan Sontag - “The Double Standard of Aging”(1972)

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

Thank you Ravenous Butterflies

05/24/2023

Beautiful….

Her attempt to comfort me seemed ridiculous at the time. But years later it showed me how I could be there for my own daughter