Bonnie Fatio and Kristin Engvig during Win Conference drumming

Imagine 700 women coordinating their drumming beats for harmonious rhythm and you have an idea of the power of women of all ages working together towards one common goal.  – Moving to the same beat.

This was an exercise in the closing ceremony of the 2010 WIN Conference in Paris, where I was honored to speak.  Sewa Beats brought in 700 African drums and coordinated the movement and sounds, unifying us in a unique and powerful experience.  Each of us contributed to the amazing sound.  Age, physical appearance, mobility, intelligence, previous musical experience, profession and ethnic background were not factors in our success.  It was the movement of working together to the same beat!  And we did it with laughter and energy!

Drumming provided a wonderful example of intergenerational collaboration, and an exercise in age esteem.  There are times when we bring unique talents, experience and point of view to a new activity and group of people because of our age.  We bring our uniqueness to complement the uniqueness of others.  There are other moments, such as the drumming, when the intergenerational aspect is one of  blending and equalizing.  We each bring our unique gifts and experience but it is used to make a common sound and to move to the same beat for the desired result.  Age esteem helps us have confidence to know when to complement and when to blend.

Bonnie Fatio

Today you are honored as a woman!  This is the 100th anniversary of the first International Women’s Day, a perfect opportunity to honor women and girls of all ages.

This is a day to celebrate womanhood, sisterhood, and friendships.  It is a day to pay tribute to those who have gone before us and have helped pave the way, rejoice in those who are near to us and encourage the women and girls who follow.

In a recent speech, First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama said  “We should always have three friends in our lives – one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way. ”   This is what International Women’s Day is all about.

Happy 100th International Women’s Day!

Bonnie Fatio

Attending the Commission on the Status of Women with the World YWCA at the United Nations is an intergenerational experience, and an energizing one!

Women of all ages from the entire world share real life experiences in preventing, overcoming, and striving to eliminate violence against women and girls, discrimination, and racial injustice while promoting equal access to education, decent work, finances, health care, safety, political opportunities, decision making and dignity.

The intergenerational commitment to sharing these issues at each age and working together to promote women at every stage of living is essential to making this happen.

Look at your life at your age today in the environment in which you live. Imagine that

• You have no pure water. You walk for hours each day to carry the infected water that you do find.
• You are unable to attend school because your mother is ill and you must replace her to work in the home.
• You denied decent work opportunities or advancement in the workplace.
• You risk violence and rape on the path to school.
• You do not have access to health care. The nearest infirmary is three hours by foot.
• Your parents arrange for you to marry while you are still a child. You have no choice.

This may be difficult for you to imagine or it maybe the way life is where you live.  Either way it is important for discussions and solutions to be intergenerational.

Bonnie Fatio

Bonnie Fatio and Hendrica Okondo, World YWCA

Women’s issues are also the issues facing aging.  As I arrived at the United Nations in New York today to register for the Commission on the Status of Women, I was struck by how strongly these same concerns are pertinent to all of us.

This year the Commission on the Status of Women (22 Feb. – 4 March 2011) is focusing on the issues of access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology, and access to full employment and decent work.  All of these concern older people as well.  People of all ages are touched by these issues.  As we work to enhance the gender equality, we also work to enhance the lives of older people. – All people.

Women’s issues are aging issues.

Bonnie Fatio

Age Esteem is participating at the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York with the World YWCA.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), established in 1946, influences the lives of people of all ages, including children and men.  It is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) dedicated to gender equality and advancement of women. Each year it draws women from around the globe to the United Nations in New York to evaluate progress, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.

This is also important for you men!  It has been shown time and again that when women are empowered the family and the whole community also improve.

Age Esteem will present an Intergenerational Dialogue on February 28.

Bonnie Fatio

I’m not sure who wrote this; I received it from a girl friend over the internet.  We know that friends are precious at all ages and are important for our Age Esteem,  but this also has a special message for you men. – Marriage is good for your health!

“I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford.  The last lecture was on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head  of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a  woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.

At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin – a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being.  Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities.  They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes.  But their feelings? Rarely.

Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health.  He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged—not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo, let’s toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s very good for our health.”

Inter-generational friendships are also important for our Age Esteem.

Bonnie Fatio

Lessons of Autumn

Do you remember rolling in the Autumn leaves?  Most of us who grew up in areas of the globe where Fall is synonymous with Autumn leaves spent happy moments of our childhood jumping into piles of leaves and scattering them with zest.

The other day as I was walking through the park I noticed several people watching me with looks of amusement.  When I began to wonder why, I realized that I was gleefully kicking leaves as I shuffled through them enjoying the swishy sound that they made and the crisp feel around my ankles.  Is there supposed to be an age limit for such pleasures?  Surely not, I decided as I alternated with kicking a chestnut ahead of me on the path.

We need to let our inner child loose more often.  There is no age for feeling happy and connecting with your inner child.  Play and laughter are among the healthy keys to age esteem, to feeling good about yourself at the age you are today, every day.  Play and laugh in the autumn leaves.

• Borrow a child and rake a pile of leaves in your yard, a park or the countryside and delight in jumping and lying in the leaves.  Scatter them.  Throw them at each other.  Enjoy.
• Walk along a lane lined with leaves.  Shuffle through them.  Kick them at you walk, marching like a soldier.
• Use a chestnut as a baby ball and kick it ahead of you on the path.  You may take turns with the child or each have your own and race with them.

Note:  If anyone stops you in the midst of your play and laughter, tell them that you are practicing an Age Esteem inner child technique.

Bonnie Fatio

Anandi Smith, 23, British & Nepalese

Age Esteem is definitely a positive message on how you deal with getting older.  It’s for all different ages.  When I hear the word it’s not just based on older people or younger people.  It’s for all ages.  You don’t lose your esteem simply because you get older, provided you have esteem.

Anandi’s Tips: I think mainly is to have good role models in people around you.  Obviously the media tells us that you’ve got to be young; old is bad.  I study the media all the time and they put this picture in your head of what you have to be.  No one really celebrates being older.  There also seems to be a gap.  It’s  good to be 25 and then you’re respected after you’re 40 but that gap in between is not celebrated.  You have all these expectations:  You have to have a boy friend, to get married, to have kids and a career.  There seems to be no celebration of this in between age, especially as a woman.  For example, if men haven’t gotten married in that time, their main focus is on their career.   If you’re a woman and have a good career at 25 you still aren’t fulfilled until you’ve ticked all the other boxes.  But then once you’re 40 you are old enough to be respected because of your age.

I look at my mom who just turned 50 this year and I can see that her peak in career is actually now.   Mine is just beginning and is just as exciting as hers, but I can see that the older she’s getting the more clever and intelligent she’s getting.  She’s wired.  Her career is moving.  I respect my grandma a lot.  She is on fire.  She knows everything that’s going on in the world.  She was one of the first teachers in the northeast region (England) that taught computers and she was very career ridden,  which in those days for a woman was quite strange.

I’ve been surrounded by older women that made me think positively about getting older.  I do have girl friends who are younger than me and I learn from them as well.  Their generation is different from mine.  They’re quicker than I am.  You can bounce off ideas and experiences with other people who have a whole different knowledge.  But role models for me are generally older than me.  There are lots of women who I want to be like when I reach their age.  I want to have their attitude and their energy.

Happy World Teacher’s Day

What better way to follow “Words of Encouragement” than to give tribute to teachers.

Each of us has one or several teachers who have encouraged and inspired us.  They did it out of love and dedication to teaching and to helping us become smarter and confident in our own knowledge.  Most often teachers have to be satisfied with their own estimate of how well they did their job.  We were not over zealous in letting them know that we appreciated what they taught us or in telling them what we have done with our education.  But it is never too late.

Today is the ideal occasion to write a note of gratitude to a former or present teacher.  Formal education is a blessing that not everyone enjoys.  Search out your teachers on face book and through former classmates.  Make today a day of thanks for teachers.

Bonnie Fatio

As grandparents we try hard not to spoil our grandchildren with “things”.  Instead, we offer them endless unconditional love, educational experiences, happy memories filled with fun and adventure.   As much as we laugh together and play together, we remain their grandparents.  This is important for their age esteem as much as it is for ours.

Recent studies at Yale University, USA and the National Institute on Aging in the USA show that the attitude that children have towards aging influences how they feel about age when they become older.  This means that our attitude towards our own age is an important factor for our little ones later in their lives as well as today.

In order to offer unconditional love to our grandchildren, we must love ourselves unconditionally.  This indicates that we love ourselves at the age we are and celebrate ourselves as well as our grandchildren.   Children feel this sincerity and what we get in return are

• lopsided hugs and sticky kisses,
• pet names that only a child could chose,
• questions and statements that melt our hearts,
• a chance to rediscover life through new eyes, and
• the privilege of knowing we are important in very unique and important ways to our grandchildren.

Age esteem is the perfect gift for every occasion.