Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Love You Carry; Guest Post from Kim Garrett

Kim Garrett

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The Love You Carry

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."-- Albert Einstein


When you are ‘fifty something’ and dating online ageism is in your face. And with an onslaught of ads proclaiming “ We love older women” it feels both courageous and ironic that I would start this blog. But here’s what I have finally taken to heart : I am the indisputable, fathomable force that propels Cupid’s quiver and directs it to it’s mark. And even more exquisite, the mark is ME. Could I have comprehended this in my twenties ? Ha. Of course not.; but that’s another chapter, closer to the beginning ... My thirties were grounded in marriage and f a m i l y. My forties were G Force; career firm, at home in my community, wiser and, well ... Beautiful. And I was finally, really feeling it.

I was born in the fifties ... Which, from my brand new perspective was the beginning of the divorce epidemic. It seemed that the era that created ‘baby boomers’ twisted and reversed on itself in my formative years and left a vacuum , void of paradigms. Fifty years later I found myself divorced with little more explanation than he had stayed with me for 20 years because he wanted to do the right thing. With three beautiful children who coped poorer with my attempts to reconstruct the blissful caricature of family life than I could have ever imagined, I came to accept that you can not fake ANYTHING in your fifties ... Thank God.

So I’ve been reading online profiles for four years now, wondering what it is that I will find, curious what others will find in mine. I want them to find something. They want me to find something. We want to find each something in each other. We put time into thoughtfully written profiles that aim to present our best, synthesizing and distilling our qualities (and photos that can only convey so much) and the final product is sometimes suspect, often dubious, and mostly ineffectual if you’re looking for the extraordinary.

I’ve discovered that the fifth decade is extraordinary in and of itself; that the divorce that I thought would surely undo me did not. Or more apt: my undoing was my ultimate doing ... Maybe feeling so intolerably alone with no pictures of the future created the space for new consciousness to fill.

Last week I learned that my life is going to be blessed with a grand-daughter. If I were to get biologically technical for a moment I would point out the possibly profound idea that I carried her in my own womb once, in her mother’s eggs ... But the real point I’m making is that it has affirmed something so big that it has compelled me to take on the whole dating dilemma!
Grandma has a dating profile. Grandma has had scores of promising dates with men who were discouragingly looking for the forty something powerhouse that she now refers to as mere gestation ... So what will Grandma impart to her darling poppy seed ? Be your (wonderful) SELF. Stay your (wonderful) SELF. What right do you have to be anything less ? If you discover you are becoming something less turn around and return to yourself immediately. This is Love. It is the Love you carry, the Love that is your very beckon. This is how all other Love finds you.

I once heard a dating professional insist that women be the target, not the archer. Tough advice in the modern world of dating where many, perhaps most insist that men want women to be bolder about what they desire. In this light and that of my Madrone’s status I conclude that the Love we carry is the bull’s eye.

http://www.DeMistyfiedDating.com

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