Where did my beauty go?

It has been a long time since I have walked into a room and heads turned in awe. To be perfectly honest...that never happened to me. Although I never thought of myself as a beautiful, pretty or attractive woman, I was told by both men and women that I was attractive. . Somehow, I took that as a compliment and added it to my "they think I am acceptable" bag. However, I knew that it was the clothes that I had picked out, paid a great deal of money for and wore proudly, that made me acceptable to the general population. Now...I know the truth. It was my age. The younger I was the better looking I seemed to be to everyone.

Now, at sixty-five, I wear my clothes with an mature air of sophistication; however, no one notices but me. A very wise woman told me that this happens as a woman gets older. I don't remember hearing this before or maybe I didn't want to believe it. So in one day I did a study. I changed my outfits five times. Wore Mac makeup, applied as I had been shown by the Mac representative and really put a great deal of effort into looking "attractive". But no one noticed and I was invisible even to my partner. But I knew I was here. What to do? What to do? Was I really too old to be beautiful, pretty or attractive?

What had happened was that I bought the hype about a woman's beauty. And now I am returning it for a full refund. I thought that no one noticed me because of the surgery I had for salivary cancer that left my face with an odd shape and an indentation on the left side of my neck. After the surgery, when I looked into the mirror...looking back at me was a stranger. I cried and screamed and begged for my own face back. Everyone assured me that I looked different but fine. That word "fine"...watch out for it! It is a non-committal word meaning "I don't want to tell you the truth".

I no longer had the face that I had taken for granted and what I had was not what I wanted. It took me years to get use to the stranger in the mirror and I blamed myself for the lack of compliments coming my way. I hid myself with clothes that were styled in the Eileen Fisher mode... they hid my body but made me look modern and stylish. I wore big glasses and covered a great deal of my face with a haircut that tended to move forward. I was afraid to go to Sephora for a make-up consultation for fear of the reaction. One day I did go and the result was a great deal of sympathy and an attempt to cosmetically hide what couldn't be hidden...the physical changes to my face.

Today, and I really mean today, I have decided that I had it all wrong. I was allowing the fashion world and the entertainment industry to tell me what is acceptable and what is not. I had cancer five times. I am sixty-five. I was a principal. I am a good friend. I like to read, laugh, dance, do yoga and be kind to animals. I care about the world. I support Senator Obama. I do random acts of kindness. I use shopping bags to support the "Green" movement. I support the ASPCA and Move-On. I donate money to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I have a spiritual life. I like to learn. And I trust the world will someday be at peace and accept all of us. Now, this is real beauty as defined by me.

When I looked in the mirror today, I looked into my eyes and I gently told myself what I wanted to hear...you are beautiful and you are a child of God. Be proud of who you are....AMF

The Secret........or is it?

My sister mentioned the book THE SECRET to me. So, off I went to the bookstore and I picked up two copies of it, one for each of us. My sister and I were going on "OUR SISTER TRIP" to a spa where we would be nurtured. We had been there twice before, but this time it was really important for me to get the most for myself. I was having a lung biopsy withing six days and I wanted to feel prepared. I thought that my sister and I could read the book and dialogue with each other about its contents. And that is what we did!

I found that the secret was already known to me but I had ignored it for so long. The secret is simple...what you think about you invite to enter your life, the law of attraction. You see when I am unhappy, I am unhappy. I nurture that unhappiness; I talk to friends about it; I seem to water it until it flowers into a big weed. The more I talk and talk about what is wrong in my life, the more things go wrong in my life. THE LAW OF ATTRACTION.

That has been true since I was a child. That was my mother's milk - she fed me with stories of loss, pain and grief. I never really knew how to free myself of this habit. I carried it with me all my life thinking - believing everyone lived this way. Yes, there were the wise ones who encouraged me to be happy, and to let go of my unhappiness. I just didn't get it...I didn't know what they were talking about or how I would do it. Until now...

The contents in the book THE SECRET were not a surprise to me. Over a twenty year span I had read or heard the messages before but this time something was different. I wanted to stop the pain, I wanted to be happy. So, I started slowly and this is what I did: I made a verbal decision to my sister that I wanted to be happy. I created a visual diagram of how to do it - thought, feeling, action, joy.

I started to closely monitor what I was thinking. Remembering that what I think invites more of the same. I checked my feelings. If I felt good. Great. If I felt badly - I went into action. I had a choice of actions - singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" or "Sunshine On My Shoulders". Or I danced. I took an action that made me feel great and positively overshadowed the negative feeling that was caused by the negative thought. Within seconds I stopped the pain or unhappiness. And what I felt was new to me I HAD CREATED HAPPINESS AND JOY FOR MYSELF.

I didn't wait for a miracle or for someone else to make me happy. I am now home from the spa and I am being tested. I monitor what I am thinking and if something happens to me that causes me to have an unhappy feeling or to be angry, agitated, miserable (you have the idea) I go into action : thoughts monitored, feelings monitored, positive action taken immediately and back to feeling good.

So if someday you see a woman singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" or some other happy song...or dancing down the street...you will know it is me! Happiness and Joy to all of us! AMF