Spring Showers Can Boost Your Age Esteem

It’s raining !

Spring brings rain where I live in Europe. Lots of rain.

Sitting here on the bus I hear others complaining that “enough is enough”. It has rained for five consecutive days.

I love walking in the rain. As a child I used to beg my mother to let me go outside and stomp through the puddles. Sister Susie and I would take a couple pans from the kitchen, so we could concoct a witches’ brew with wet leaves, flower petals and some wiggly worms. We hated it when Mom called us inside.

Even today I love walking in the rain. Stomping in puddles with my grandchildren is still a favorite experience. Rain is refreshing and renewing. It seems to wash away worries, leaving room for new ideas and expression.

These feelings of renewal and playfulness are important to our age-esteem. They help us live the age we are with joy and pizzazz. In AgeEsteem: Growing a Positive Attitude Toward Aging, chapter 2, page 16, tells the story of breaking loose from our programed behavior and to begin Singing in the Rain to free the child within you.

When we let the child within us come out to play, we use all of our senses. It frees us to raise our faces to the sky to feel the raindrops, and even taste them. We smell the newness of nature, listen to the sound of the rain on different surfaces, watch drops seemingly bounce on the sidewalk, and laugh with pure joy as we also renew and revitalize our age-esteem.

Bonnie Fatio

Letting go
The ropes that keep us
Tied to life-long habitudes
Live as though
you’re free and fearless
To face each day’s vicissitudes.

Written for Age Esteem by Alexandra Taylor after the chapter “Letting Go”
in AgeEsteem: Growing A Positive Attitude Toward Aging
by Bonnie Lou Fatio

Diane Smith, 53

What is Age Esteem?  When I first saw Bonnie Fatio,s book AgeEsteem: Growing A Positive Attitude Toward Aging I thought it was about aging.  I thought it’s going to tell me how to age gracefully and this it great!

What I worry most about aging is aches and pains.  I’ve never been sick a day in my life, but when I turned 50 I started feeling some aches and pains and that’s one of my concerns.  And you know I look in the mirror and I see wrinkles and I start buying eye creams and stuff.  I have beauty products to prevent aging.  The reason is that it’s probably been on my mind since I was 25.  I’m a believer in prevention.
Diane’s tips:  I stay active.  I have friends.  I love working in my garden.  I feel good working in the garden.  I’m strong enough to do things and have the energy.  I feel  good.   I have a cup of coffee every morning.  I read my Bible every day.  It gives me inspiration and I look at my life and I look at where I’ve been and where I am now and I’m thankful.  I thank God.  If God doesn’t bless me with anything else, I’m blessed.  Yes, I’m totally blessed.  I have a lot of great friends.  I have a wonderful husband whose a good friend.  That makes it easy.  I have a daughter.  I have grandchildren.  I carry their picture around and when I look at them I think what a wonderful blessing.  I’m just thankful for what I have and I don’t worry about what I don’t have.