Naomi Judd - Naomis Guide to Aging Gratefully: Facts, Myths, and Good News for Boomers

ALSO BY NAOMI JUDD

Naomis Breakthrough Guide: Twenty Choices to Transform Your Life

Love Can Build a Bridge (autobiography)

Naomis Home Companion

SIMON & SCHUSTER
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Copyright 2007 by Naomi Judd

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Designed by Joel Avirom and Jason Snyder

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Judd, Naomi.

[Guide to aging gratefully]

Naomis guide to aging gratefully : facts, myths, and good news for boomers / Naomi Judd.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Older peoplePsychology. 2. Older peopleConduct of life. 3. Middle-aged personsPsychology. 4. Middle-aged personsConduct of life. 5. Baby boom generation. 6. AgingPsychological aspects. 7. Self-actualization (Psychology) 8. Self-perception. I. Title. II. Title: Guide to aging gratefully.

HQ1061.J83 2007

646.700844dc22 2006052217

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7515-6

ISBN-10: 0-7432-7515-2

eISBN: 978-1-416-58801-6

Have you been feeling anxiety about your maturing appearance and changing body shape and dreading birthdays? Do you find yourself lamenting the way you looked ten years ago and constantly comparing yourself to women in the media? This book is written for you. Perception is everything, and yours is about to improve.

NAOMIS GUIDE TO AGING GRATEFULLY

If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.

GAIL SHEEHY, AUTHOR OF PASSAGES

1
All About Eve:The Birth of a Notion

I GOT THE DETERMINATION to write Aging Gratefully after Grand magazine named me one of the top ten sexiest grandparents in the world. The list included Mick Jagger, Pierce Brosnan, Goldie Hawn, and Harrison Ford. I was proud to be included in what was a celebration of aging, and proof positive that Baby Boomers can be vital, exciting, healthy, productive, and yes, even sexy in their later years cause thats how I feel.

But the notion had already been brewing from my disquiet at societys growing prejudice against aging. Every time we see someone over fifty (if we see them at all) on television or in magazines, theyre typically marginalized, or somehow portrayed as feeble or useless. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The first time Wy and I went to the fun house at the state fair while performing as the Judds, we were bemused at our grotesque images in the fun-house mirrors. But now this is how societys distorted reflection of aging feels today. Wy and I kept bumping into mirrors trying to navigate the maze. Suddenly we almost collided and Wy raised her hand to my face. Wondering aloud, she asked, Are you real?

Being Real

The number one cause of mental illness and unhappiness is not knowing who you are. This book is about looking in the mirror of truth and realizing and embracing who you are in mind and body and spirit. So instead of the most expensive over-the-counter cream or a visit to a plastic surgeon, think of these choices as your most effective weapon against fear of aging. Grab your bifocals or magnifying glasses and lets learn our options. Im going to show you Grandma aint what she used to be.

My friend Lily Tomlin says, Anyone who writes a self-help book should first be able to prove theyve helped themselves. So to begin every chapter, Ill reveal the personal story of my own experiences through the years. First I want to introduce you to a girl from my past named Naomi (name not a coincidence, as you will soon discover). She was a fellow student at Crabbe Grade School in Ashland, Kentucky. She was slow and unlovely. Every day I watched as Naomi walked by herself to our old stone schoolhouse. By contrast, as long as I can remember, people have told me how pretty I am. Seems its only served to make me even more aware of how little external appearances mean. I didnt do anything to earn the looks or IQ with which I was born. Neither did Naomi. Neither did you.

We didnt get to choose the body or face with which we are born. Nor can we stop time from moving on. Somehow, even when I was in my early twenties, I intuited that basic reality. Maybe it was because I was in Hollywood, where I was becoming more and more upset about seeing people, especially women, allow themselves to be defined by our ever-changing, superficial culture. Thank goodness I began looking inward for my identity. I immediately felt less desperate. I realized that whenever I look at the fun-house mirror of society, I can remember its only a distortion.

As I searched to figure out my values, I realized I value helping others. I left Hollywood to move us to Kentucky. My inner knowing steered me toward choosing to go to college and get a nursing degree. I valued a career in which character and caring matter more than the gift of genes. My patients didnt care what my face looked like, how old I was, or how much I weighed.

Shift happens. With this shift in my awareness, I felt more confident and more and more in control of my true self-image. I felt so much better about my future! I even went so far as to change my name from Diana Ellen Judd to Naomi Ellen Judd. Looking back, this early decision to change my first name, in recognition of that other Naomi (who still reminds me to be grateful) has helped preserve my sanity. I couldnt predict in the seventies that I would later be getting into the grandmother of all superficial and vain careers, showbiz. Somehow I have found my way in this most ageist of professions. Im happier today at sixty-one than Ive ever been. The critical steps Ive learned along my journey are the ones Im eager to share with you, dear reader.

It was a life-affirming breakthrough when I saw I could choose not to allow the culture, media, and some ad agency to impose harmful, unrealistic views and ideas about beauty, size, and age on me. Ever since then, Im okay with growing older. I see it as something Im going toward, rather than something to run away from. You cant stop the river, lets go with the flow. Ive had a lot of ups and downs in my lifemarried and with a child at eighteen, struggles with money and inappropriate men as a single mom, fame, fortune, and marriage to a wonderful man in my late thirties, forced retirement due to a supposed terminal illness in my late forties, and then the reinvention of myself as an author and a speaker, and with my own TV show in my fifties. Ive survived so much stuff that my personal history (her story) is a testament to how not to sweat the stuff thats out of your control. When I cant control outer circumstances, I choose to change your reaction. That means you and I can change our reaction to aging too.