My Journey

On one of those lazy days, that is a part of retirement, I put down my plate of delicious snacks, the cat, rolled out of bed and decided it was a time for change.

The journey began. I declared to the universe that I was going to become a hottie. I squeezed my overweight body into a modest swim assemble, complete with long sleeve jacket, and hit the local pool.

For months, I went to pool classes and walked the “river”. The river is a large oval watery path, with a circulating current, that makes walking a bit of a tussle.

Around and around, I walked that river and watched lap swimmers. Women and men, in one-piece swimsuits. thin bodies, bodies in the making of warrior bodies.

In my 70th year, I announced to the cat, Nicky, that I too would have a warrior body and took my first swimming lesson.

One day, a lap swimmer, near my age, interrupted my uncoordinated flopping about and boastfully declared, “I compete in the Senior Olympics.”

“So, well I,” I mumbled to myself. “So, well I!”

I started a journal, complete with wall charts, forms, plans, routines, instructions, diets, etc., etc., etc., wrapped around my desire to compete, with my warrior body, in the swimming Senior Olympics even though I was a horrible swimmer.

I attended the state’s Senior Olympics. “Senior” applied to anyone over 50. I saw a lot of 50+ women in zero-body fat suits aside 70-80-year-old female bodies…hum! All with greater swimming skills than I could hope to develop.

I left, that day, feeling deflated. My ego a bit crushed. My lack of skills heavy on my mind. My dream of a warrior body vanishing. Sadly, of all, I was unaware of something that took me years to relearn, to learn.
Back I went to my journal, endless months of planning and lackluster swimming. This was my fate until one day I overheard, “I walk in the senior Olympics.”

“So, well I,” I mumbled to myself. “So, well I!”

With a set of disagreeable knees, I added power walking to my goals, my journal with additional wall charts, forms, plans, routines, instructions, diets, etc. etc. etc.

I found some success in my efforts, though no weight loss which I truly needed – then – the world changed.  China’s COVID-19 pandemic invaded the world.

During the following pandemic years, the State and National Senior Olympics were cancelled/changed.  Politics, and elections, got involved.  All training basically stopped as there was no pool, no gym, no nothing and little incentive.  When things reopened – limited, by appointment – everything closed, again.  What a mess!

My journal and my efforts to compete, build a warrior body, also changed.  I turned my attention to the story I had been writing for a very long time.

My grandmother, Jeannie McGrael, was murdered while she was giving birth.  Jeannie was only 30.  Her death, and one very close to me, have always troubled me, intimately, a part of who I am.  For them, and a place, a land I long for, I finished the story, The Witch’s Heart, The Tale of Emma McGrael.

 After I finished The Witch’s Heart, The Tale of Emma McGrael, I gathered the journal and all its 100’s of pieces and began, again but not as before.

Not one wall chart, form, plan, routine, instruction, diet or word in my journal did I not scrutinize as my success, even before the pandemic, was fragile at best.

Depression over took my life.  I stopped everything.  I filled my days and nights with plates of delicious snacks, petting the cat, watching television and lying in bed only to mindless stare out the window.  It was the dark night of the soul for me; but I did not want that as it is truly a dark, bleak, hopeless place to be.

So, I called upon what has always gotten me through the darkness – my own will power to survive.  I restarted everything from the beginning…but this time with one concept that was born out the darkness – magnificence.

Yes, I wanted a hot warrior body, to complete, so that I could hold my banner high and declare to the world, “Look at what an old woman can do!”  “We, seniors, we people, those who live on the outskirts of what an entitled fickled society dictates, are acceptable.  We have worthy dreams.  We can accomplish great things.”

Not once did my banner declare that I was acceptable…to myself.  That I had found my own magnificence to light my way in a very dark world.

That hot warrior body in a zero fat swimsuit?  Why not build a body that can be the best that it can be?  Compete?  Why not find the courage to stand before a crowd and do the best I can, win or lose?

Magnificence?  It is going beyond the hot body, the rewards, the superficial selfies and developing that which is inside…soul, spirit, life force however you wish to define it.  It’s like giving motion to form, purpose to aspiration with a bit of honey, sweetness, and not vinegar, sourness.

This my journey.  This is my journal, full of success and failures, as this is a living journal, with an end goal to find the courage to stand before the crowd.

So, let’s not just “get through” life, the day, the week; but, magnificently live it.  Let’s not say “sorry about that” with an empty heart but one of compassion.