Archive for the ‘Women’ Category

1. Buy really smelly cheese.

2. Replace your laptop on the dining table with a place setting for a person

3. Attempt to write something dazzling in cards to clients but end up with ‘best wishes’

4. Slip into your office to catch up on work and don’t answer the phone

5. Wonder why you keep buying boxes of crackers

6. Go to farmers markets and expensive bakeries for your ‘homemade’ baking

7. Curl up at 2pm with a book, hot cocoa and no guilt

8. Carry on whole conversations without any interruption

9. Feel like a kid again and actually enjoy the snow

10. Stop planning everything with military precision

…………. remember that the best moments are spontaneous.

In her recent article Mrs., Ms. or Miss: Addressing Modern Women , Nancy Gibbs ended with this statement

Feminists a generation ago fought for the title and dreamed of Freedom and Choice and Opportunity; maybe the surest sign that they’ve won is not which title we pick, but that we can have them all at once.

I also like the fact that how we choose to be addressed is now a matter of personal choice not societal mandate. I use Ms. for all things business; preferring the neutrality that it provides.  Whether I am married or single is irrelevant in my professional life.

For business I also use my family name of Crossland and that decision had nothing to do with patriarchy. I like the name and am proud of the English heritage behind it -

English (chiefly West Yorkshire): habitational name from a place in the parish of Almondbury, West Yorkshire, named Crosland, from Old English cros ‘cross’ + land ‘newly cultivated land’.

(English or Scandinavian) Belonging to Crosland/Crossland (Yorks) = the Land of the Cross [Middle English cros, Old Norse kross + land].

Early records of the name mention CROSLAND (without surname) who was recorded as a tenant in the Domesday Book of 1086.

In my own way I keep the family name in a state of perpetuation and part of me imagines how proud my father would have been to see the name being branded in my company and as the byline to my writing.

Googling one’s name is always interesting. Jill Crossland, the pianist comes up first and frequently but I manage to hold my own somewhere on the first page of the search.

For those personal matters such as banking, legal documents. Mrs.  Sadie married lady steps forward.

I have never liked the practice of hyphenating last names unless there is a cultural or social reason; as it gives one the impression of a need to try to please everyone. So this is the only time that you will ever see ……….. Jill Barbara Crossland-Pappageorgiou.

In an O magazine article Looking for Stillness author (Riding In Cars With Boys), Beverly Donofrio goes monastery-hopping (her words) and she discovers ‘peace, clarity, connection, grace and a kind of hush’.  At the end of the article she returns to the Nada Hermitage in Colorado “Where you can hear your own bare feet on the floor”.

When was the last time you heard your own bare feet on the floor?

If you are anything like me noise is embedded into your life. I get up, turn on the news so that I can hear what has transpired in the world while I slept.  Feed excited and hungry dogs/cats, water runs, the coffee pot beeps to let me know when the coffee is ready, the toaster dings, my computer says “Good morning, Jill”, a phone rings and the day is underway.

As the hours progress my heels will click on busy pavement or loafers connect with my office’s hardwood but somehow I missed that moment when my bare feet quietly set my life in motion.

In between the self-effacing attempts at humour and the ambiguous medical reports is a woman in menopause. I have used humour myself but the truth is, it is not all that funny.  No woman enjoys the  extreme mood swings, muddied thinking, hot flashes, and assorted other symptoms that ebb and flow over a span of years. Not to mention the affect that fluctuating hormones is having on our intimate relationships.

I am not asking for drugs, quite the contrary if you look in my medicine cabinet you would die from boredom.  There is a jar of Vicks, pills for my Afib and some Bufferin.
It is the fact that nine years into the 21st century I would have expected more in the way of unbiased research and possible options.

Hormone therapy has been a roller coaster of benefits vs risks since the ‘60s this all culminated in 2002 with the Women’s Health Initiative study. Controversy continues to swirl around drugs such as Premarin and Prempro not the least of which is how it is obtained from pregnant mares’ urine.

Understandably weary of the whole HT approach of “we’ll get it right, even if we just lower the risks to your overall good health”; women started to look to the bioidentical option that has became part of the menopause fray. Suzanne Somers and Robin McGraw have marketed themselves as part of the next big menopause solution package. This is also equally unnerving.  I mean you are probably lovely ladies (call me we’ll do lunch) but in reality you are just baby boomer women; the difference is you have the money and resources to get books published and garner media hype. However you are not experts in any field.

My concern is that menopause is quickly becoming another money making health condition. Once it reaches that status we the real women of menopause; will never be offered anything more than quick fixes, snake oil scams, self-help fluff and pharmaceutical companies trying to ‘cure’ us. Or are we already there?

Dare I say it but now that no one is commenting on her hair and clothes she looks great. Bold suits, chunky jewelry and the hair is just doing it’s own thing. She has found that she can play well with others and life is good all in all.

Yes, Hillary Clinton is a contented woman. History seems to have written itself in the right way, at least for now. We see her getting off airplanes in some foreign country ready for  whatever and whoever awaits her. Sometimes the reception is a chilly handshake, sometimes a two cheek kiss and I have even observed a few bear hugs when the person at the bottom of the stairs knows her. She is taking it all in stride and relishing every moment.

Ms. Clinton has paid her dues time and time again in the court of public opinion and now she is rewarded for her perseverance and dignity but it is more than that; her approval ratings are high and she is the right person for the job.

Where’s Bill these days? Last time I saw his name it was on the guest list for the Rachael Ray Show. And I’m not touching that one!

I have recently read a number of articles by women who write that they suddenly feel invisible. They are the ‘beautiful’ women who had a somewhat charmed life; one in which they were accustomed to getting attention and being admired. For the rest of us there were different life lessons. How to walk into a room with confidence, what clothes work, the importance of being self-assured  and that with a handshake, warm smile and eye contact you can connect with anyone. Over the years we didn’t just survive but we thrived and succeeded.

I want to remind those ‘invisible’ women; we are not the generation that ‘goes quietly into the night’.  So shoulders back, head up and find your articulate midlife voice. I am not invisible in stores,  people listen when I speak and last time I was in Starbucks I had a very engaging conversation with a young man when we both reached for the stirsticks at the same time, mind you it was a very good hair day.

There are positive things about midlife. Goals and life priorities are clearer. Never a people pleasing, cannot say no kind of woman, I now care even less what some people think about me.  I no longer worry about dust bunnies, the dogs muddy paws and how the towels are folded. I concentrate on the people and things in my life that are important to me and let all the rest go with a shrug of my shoulders.

Time has also made me a more relaxed cook and that has actually improved the meals coming out of the kitchen. I do pre-plan and shop a week ahead of time. A habit that is economically sound and allows me to make sure that I am preparing well balanced meals, especially with a diabetic beloved.

Some nights though a meal is two parts non-fuzzy things from the frig, one part what is left in the vegetable basket, combined with 1 1/2 cups of a non-descriptive rice or pasta from the cupboard. These meals are usually really tasty and it amuses me when  Chris says “We should have that again”.

When I have finished writing this post I am off to the Saturday Farmers Market, where I will pick up some fresh baking. Because while I may love home baked cookies, I also know that I don’t need to be the person measuring out the flour & chocolate chips in order to have some.

The time has come for change and to me Barack and Michelle Obama embody the 21st century’s Renaissance.  It is the natural order of the world that the days of baby boomer diplomacy and leadership are starting to come to an end. Some have said that President Obama is too cool, quips too much and is not reassuring enough. Actually his manner is saying that a head of state being a comforting and cardiganed Mr. Rogers type of leader or as seen more recently the secretive and John Wayne type is not only outdated but ineffectual.

This next generation of leaders has a technology enhanced worldview, logical pattern of thought and unemotional approach to the issues. Qualities that will enable them to clean out the dust and cobwebs of where we have failed and to modernize what is no longer working.

Barack and Michelle Obama are taking the world stage with their trademark quick intellect and unruffled elegance that make them stand out amongst their somewhat tired & frazzled counterparts.

Even Queen Elizabeth, who has been welcoming US presidents since Harry Truman, appeared warm and relaxed at the first meeting. When Michelle embraced the royal presence, instead of  roaring ‘off with her head’ she smiled, briefly reciprocated and apparently suggested that they “keep in touch”.

On a similar trip taken in 1961, John Kennedy said “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.” I think that at the end of this trip President Obama’s statement would be “I and Michelle have enjoyed our time here and I am glad that you like and admire my wife and partner as much as I do.”

The Obama’s day ended with a dinner at 10 Downing Street. this apparantly takes the form of the leaders in one dining room and the spouses in the other. I wonder if this is a throw back to Victorian society when the hostess said ‘Shall we leave the gentlemen to their cigars and port, ladies and go into the drawing room for tea” or merely protocol?  Whatever the reasoning I would have loved to heard what was being said at both dinner tables as they dined on Jamie Olivier’s menu of organic salmon and shoulder of lamb from Wales.