209: The Self-Empowered Woman: Olga Kotelko

Dear Followers,

 

 

Every day each of us is getting older. But thanks to my good friend Karen Bayless, I was lucky enough to learn about a fascinating new book (What Makes Olga Run? by Bruce Grierson, Henry Holt, 256pp, $25.00) that examines the life of an amazing 94 year old track star.

 

Olga Kotelko didn't start competing in track and field events until she was 77 years old, but now she is the only woman in the world over the age of 90 who still competes in long-jumping and high-jumping competitions. Plus, she holds over 23 world records in track and field, 17 of which are in her current 90-95 category.

 

Experts are studying Olga's habits, diet and exercise routine because researchers now believe that longevity is probably about 70-75 percent lifestyle. In other words 25 percent of our health and well being is what we have inherited, and the other "three-quarters is determined by how you play the hand you were dealt."

 

Here are six lessons from Olga that can help us extend and enrich our lives:

• Stay physically active--Olga played baseball until she was 75, and then she began participating in track and field events. New evidence indicates that exercise helps us both mentally and physically.
• Stay on your feet--The more hours you spend sitting, the worse your overall health will be. Many office workers now use stand-up desks to effortlessly burn off extra calories, and improve their circulation. For the majority of her life, Olga never had a desk job, and she still climbs stairs and rarely sits for long periods of time.
• You are what you eat--Olga avoids processed and fast foods, but (occasionally) enjoys everything from bread to beef to a baked potato--and she has a sweet tooth. She eats very little in the evenings, and works hard to have a balanced--but natural--diet.
• Be a creature of habit--Good habits make it easy to stay disciplined. Olga has many regular rituals--stretching every morning, bowling every Tuesday, the same bedtime every night, etc. Establishing a regular routine can be like having a healthy safety net.
• Embrace improvement--Whether it's our career, our relationships or our hobbies, we all want to feel like we're making progress rather than backsliding. But after mid-life--when the body naturally begins to get slower and weaker--we need to "refrain" our progress in order to still feel as if we are improving.
• Keep emotions under control--It's harmful to our health to get upset over little things. When asked about how she stays so even-tempered, Olga replied (regarding getting upset) "Honestly, I don't have the time." All of this falls under the category of don't sweat the small stuff.

Olga, who is only five feet tall, grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada and was the seventh of eleven children. She was a school teacher (grades 1-10) in a one room schoolhouse, married (the wrong man) when she was young, had two daughters, and in 1957, moved to British Columbia with her girls. As a single mother, she earned her bachelor's degree at night.

 

Her track and field career was helped when she found a trainer--a strict Hungarian woman who demanded the best out of Olga. She began going to the gym three days a week for up to three hours each time doing everything from planks to Roman chairs, bench presses and squats. Today she still does three sets of ten push ups, three sets of 25 sit-ups, and runs intervals. Deep breathing, massage, reflexology and stretching are part of her regular routine. 

 

Recently, Olga told an interviewer that she has the same energy today that she had when she was 50. The reason may be that researchers have found that exercise can stimulate the production of telomerase, the enzyme that maintains and repairs the little caps on the end of our chromosomes that keeps genetic information intact when cells divide. This means that older athletes our more cardiovascular fit than their sedentary counterparts, and they are also more free of age-related illness in general.

 

Obviously, Olga is a great inspiration to anyone (especially Baby Boomers) who don't want to look or feel their age!

 

Looking forward to your comments...                     

208: The Self Empowered Woman: Sarah Grimke

Dear Followers,

Sue Monk Kidd

Sarah Grimke

 

Many of you may have either read her novels, or watched the film versions of Sue Monk Kidd's novels. The Secret Life of Bees (which starred Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning) was shown in movie theaters and The Mermaid's Chair aired on the Lifetime channel. Today's posting is about her new novel, The Invention of Wings, which was just released last week and is a featured selection of Oprah's Book Club 2.0.

 

As many of you know, I am passionate about the stories behind Self-Empowered Woman, but I really enjoy sharing information about the lives of women who were born before 1900. From my perspective, they faced even greater challenges while they struggled to be heard and respected. At any rate, here's the story behind The Invention of Wings. 

 

The novel--which is based on the life of Sarah Moore Grimke, who was born in South Carolina in 1792 (16 years after Jane Austen was born) is a fictionalized version of one of America's most impressive (but unrecognized) women. She was the eighth of fourteen children (the second daughter), and her father was a rich plantation owner who was also an attorney and judge. As a little girl she was annoyed by the fact the her brothers received a classical education, but hers was limited to tutored lessons on "appropriate subjects for young women." The combination of this inequality and her observations of how the slaves lived changed her life forever. From the time she was twelve years old, Sarah spent her Sunday afternoons teaching Bible lessons to the young slaves on the plantation (2: An Early Sense Of Direction).

 

The family attended the Episcopalian Church (3: Belief In The Unbelievable), and Sarah's mother volunteered to help the poor in the area as well as female prisoners. Sarah had two goals as a young girl, but because of the values of her time and her parents' rules, neither could be fulfilled. First, she dreamed of becoming an attorney, and she also longed to teach the slaves how to read so they could study the Bible for themselves. Teaching slaves to read had been against the law in South Carolina since 1740, and when her father caught Sarah secretly teaching her personal slave how to read and write her father had the young girl whipped. Sarah stopped the tutoring lessons in order to protect Hetty (who was nicknamed "Handful"), but never stopped working to help the slaves (17: Dreaming Your Own Dream).

 

Sarah's brother, Thomas, left to attend law school at Yale, and whenever he returned home for a visit he would secretly tutor her on the importance of both law and religion (2: Supportive Someone). When she was 27, Sarah travelled to Philadelphia with her dying father, the rigid man who had controlled her and prevented her from getting a good education. While they were there, he died (1: No Paternal Safety Net). Afterwards, she became more independent and self-assured, and decided to remain in Philadelphia where she was introduced to Quakerism. She decided to leave both the Episcopal Church and Charleston (14: Selective Disassociation), and become a Quaker minister.

 

This is where she encountered even more discrimination. The male members of the Quaker community felt, as did most people of that time, that women should be subservient and limited to the domestic arena. In 1836, Sarah published a pamphlet "An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States," which denounced slavery. And by 1837, both she and her sister (Angelina) were being attacked because they bravely but (for that era) scandalously spoke publicly in front of "mixed audiences" (men and women). They also dared to debate men who held anti-abolitionist positions (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest).

 

In 1838, Sarah wrote "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes" to argue that the rights and liberties of both African-Americans and women were one and the same. It's hard to imagine how much courage it must have taken (during that long-ago discriminatory era) to have publicly--and simultaneously--denounced both slavery and discrimination against women (7: Magnificent Obsession).

 

Later that year Angelina married the Abolitionist Theodore Weld, and with Sarah they moved to New Jersey where they opened a school. During the Civil War they lectured and wrote in support of Abraham Lincoln. After the war, the three moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where the two sisters campaigned for women's rights for the rest of their lives. Sarah died on December 23rd, 1873.

 

Looking forward to your comments...

207: The Self-Empowered Woman: Martha Beck

 

 

Dear Followers,

 



 

I truly hope that 2014 has started out on a great note for each of you--optimism certainly seems to be in the air where I live.

Today I'd like to talk about author/columnist/life coach Martha Beck. If you're like me, you first learned about her while reading her column in the pages of O, The Oprah Magazine--I've always been amazed that--regardless of the topic--I feel more centered and upbeat when I finish her column than when I start. Or, if you're not a magazine person you may have seen her during one of her guest appearances on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."  Ms. Beck is the author of ten books, and also runs a thriving business training life coaches. She's in demand for corporate training sessions and coaching weekends for both personal and professional growth at her ranch near San Luis Obispo, California. Her coaching business has trained over 1,300 people in the "Martha Beck method," and has become so successful that in 2012 it grossed $1.9 Million.

Beck was born on November 29th, 1962 in Provo, Utah, and was the seventh of eight children. Her father, Hugh Nibley was a professor at Brigham Young University, and was considered by many to be one the leading authorities on Mormon teaching (3: Belief In The Unbelievable). Beck created a firestorm of controversy when she publicly accused her father of sexual abuse during her early childhood. Her seven siblings and the Mormon community at large have condemned her accusations (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest).

When she was about nine years old, Beck was also sexually assaulted by a teenaged neighbor who had barricaded her in his room. She called the event "extremely traumatizing," and--combined with her father's abuse--it created a challenging childhood. As a youngster she suffered from anorexia, depression and despair, which she says was the result of being ritualistically raped by her father (12: Hard Times). 

Beck earned a Bachelor's degree in East Asian studies as well as a master's and a Ph. D. in sociology from Harvard (10: The Critic Within). While there, she married John Beck whom she'd known since high school and who was also a Mormon. The couple had three children, but their second child was diagnosed with Down Syndrome before his birth. The Beck's returned to Utah to be closer to their family support system, and  in 1999 she wrote Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic (which became a best-seller) about her decision to give birth to and raise their physically-challenged son (16: Intensive Motherhood).

After the birth of her third child, Beck was a part-time faculty member at Brigham Young University, when several faculty members were excommunicated from the LDS Church because their writings were considered too critical. In 1993, upset by the controversy, Beck and her husband decided to leave the Church (14: Selective Disassociation). Afterwards, she and her husband both came out publicly as gay individuals, but stayed together for the sake of their three children.

In 2003, the couple separated, and they divorced the following year (15: Forget About Prince Charming). These days, Beck lives on her ranch in California with her son Adam, who is now 25, her domestic partner, Karen Gerdes, and two other coaches. There is no shortage of people who want to attend her seminars, buy her books or sign up for her life coach training, but some experts are either confused by or skeptical of her "positive energy talk." If Beck has a common theme, according to The New York Times, it is "You will have all the happiness and money you need if you can just find what you're just supposed to be doing and just do it."

Looking forward to your comments...

206: The Self-Empowered Woman: My Holiday Wish for You

Dear Followers,

I received this amusing email from my late father-in-law's widow, and thought I'd pass it along.  Helen is in her 80s, and it's nice to know that a good sense of humor doesn't fade.  Enjoy...

 

 

Merry Christmas To My Female Friends If I were ol' Santa, you know what I'd do I'd dump silly gifts that are given to you And deliver some things just inside your front door Things you have lost, but treasured before. I'd give you back all your maidenly vigor, And to go along with it, a neat tiny figure. Then restore the old color that once graced your hair Before rinses and bleaches took residence there. I'd bring back the shape with which you were gifted So things now suspended need not be uplifted. I'd draw in your tummy and smooth down your back Till you'd be a dream in those tight fitting slacks. I'd remove all your wrinkles and leave only one chin So you wouldn't spend hours rubbing grease on your skin. You'd never have flashes or queer dizzy spells, And you wouldn't hear noises like ringing of bells. No sore aching feet and no corns on your toes, No searching for spectacles when they're right on your nose. Not a shot would you take in your arm, hip or fanny, From a doctor who thinks you're a nervous old granny. You'd never have a headache, so no pills would you take. And no heating pad needed since your muscles won't ache. Yes, if I were Santa, you'd never look stupid, You'd be a cute little chick with the romance of a cupid. I'd give a lift to your heart when those wolves start to whistle, And the joys of your heart would be light as a thistle. But alas! I'm not Santa. I'm simply just me, The matronest of matrons you ever did see. I wish I could tell you all the symptoms I've got, But I'm due at my doctor's for an estrogen shot. Even though we've grown older, this wish is sincere, Merry Christmas to you and a Happy New Year. Save the Earth; it is the only planet with chocolate!

 



205: The Self-Empowered Woman: Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Dear Followers,

 

Practically everyone knows that Dr. Ruth--who studied at the Sorbonne and rose to fame in the 1980s--is America's most popular sex therapist. But few know about her life before success and stardom.

 

Her birth name was Karola Ruth Siegel, and she was born in Wiesenfeld, Germany in June 1928. Her parents (she was an only child) were Orthodox Jews (3: Belief In The Unbelievable), and soon afterwards Hitler began actively promoting genocide against the Jews. When she was ten years old, her father was taken by the Nazis (1: No Paternal Safety Net), and in January 1939, her mother and grandmother sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland. Letters from her parents stopped arriving by September 1941, and four years later she learned that her parents had been murdered in the Holocaust, probably at Auschwitz (12: Hard Times).

 

As a teenager, she emigrated to Palestine, where she joined the Haganah as a scout and sniper (11: Risk Addiction). When an exploding shell seriously wounded her in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, she was unable to walk for several months. Two years later she moved to Paris, and six years after that she immigrated to the United States (14: Selective Disassociation).

 

Dr. Ruth speaks English, French, German and Hebrew, and has written a number of books on human sexuality. She received her master's degree in sociology from The New School; her doctorate in education is from Columbia. She completed her post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital (10: The Critic Within).

 

In 1980, Maurice Tunick, who was the program coordinator at WYNY (NBC Radio's New York City station) joined with Betty Elam to launch a fifteen minute program at midnight on Sunday night starring Dr. Ruth and called "Sexually Speaking" (4: Supportive Someone). Within two months the show was expanded to an hour, and soon Dr. Ruth was appearing on TV shows like David Letterman. By 1982, Lifetime cable gave Dr. Ruth her first TV show, and she has also appeared on Israeli TV, PBS and has made guest appearances on a wide variety of programs (13: More Than Meets The Eye). 

 

Dr. Ruth is only four foot seven, wears size four shoes, has been married three times, and has a son and a daughter (who both have earned doctorates in education, just like their mother) and several grandchildren. At 85, she remains active, and recently allowed a New York Times reporter to write about her three-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, Manhattan.

 

Looking forward to your comments...



204 The Self-Empowered Woman: Mary Poppins/ P.L. Travers

Dear Followers,



 



Since there's been a great deal of publicity lately regarding the new film Saving Mr. Banks (starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as the irritable P.L. Travers), this seems like a good time to learn more about the woman who created Mary Poppins. Pamela Lyndon Travers was born on August 9th, 1899 in Queensland Australia, and her birth name was Helen Lyndon Goff. Her mother was the niece of the Premier of Queensland, and her alcoholic father was an unsuccessful bank manager who died of influenza when Helen was only eight years old (1: No Paternal Safety Net).

 

Biographers believe that her creative career choice actually began only a few weeks after her father died. Her grief-stricken mother (who planned to drown herself in a nearby creek) had left her alone at home and in charge of her two younger sisters on a dark stormy night. To entertain her sisters she told them a fairytale about a magical white horse that could fly even though it had no wings--26 years later she would write about a magical nanny who could also fly without wings. And as a teenager, she also wrote poems and articles for local publications (2: An Early Sense Of Direction).

 

After her father's death, the family moved to New Zealand, but soon Helen changed her name to Pamela Lyndon Travers, and moved to Sydney where she began a career as a writer, dancer and model. When she was 24, she travelled to England with only ten pounds in her pocket (11: Risk Addiction). The gamble paid off, and she began writing newspaper columns for The Sun.

 

She began travelling to Dublin, and became friends with George Russell, the editor of The Irish Statesman. He became her mentor, and introduced her to a wide variety of accomplished writers, including Yeats (4: Supportive Someone). During her visits to Ireland she became exposed to various forms of astrology and mysticism; she also became an acolyte of the spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff (3: Belief in the Unbelievable).

 

In 1934, while recuperating from pleurisy (a lung disease), she moved out of London and into a cottage in Sussex, where she entertained two visiting children with a story about a nanny with an umbrella and a carpetbag. The story turned into Mary Poppins, was illustrated by the daughter of the Winnie the Pooh artist, and was published in 1934. The Mary Poppins books published from 1934 through 1989 became wildly successful (7: Magnificent Obsession).  

 

She had an unfortunately turbulent love life, and her lovers included a much older man, then an American bookshop owner, followed by an Irish poet (15: Forget About Prince Charming). As A broken-hearted 40 year old, she travelled to Killiney, Ireland where she was going to adopt a baby boy from a poor family. When she arrived she discovered there were twins, and on the advice of her astrologer she chose to adopt only one. Her new son's name was Camillus, but both his young years and adulthood were unhappy.

 

Travers was constantly able to change homes and locales during her life--to England, Ireland, New York, Arizona, Russia, Harvard, Japan, etc... (14: Selective Disassociation). Walt Disney's daughter fell in love with the book Mary Poppins, but it took him twenty years to persuade Travers to give him movie rights. She was notoriously difficult to work with, and made no secret about her dislike of everything connected with the movie. Richard Sherman who over a two and a half year period co-wrote the musical score for the movie told an interviewer, "She didn't care about our feelings, how she chopped us apart." She hated all the music, including Chim Chim Cheree, A Spoonful Of Sugar and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest). In spite of her disdain, Mr. Sherman and his brother won two Academy Awards for their work on Mary Poppins.  Julie Andrews  also won an Oscar.

 

Even though  her life was full of adventure and success, she definitely suffered. She told an interviewer that "Mary Poppins is the story of my life...Sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind everything I have written." She and Disney fought so bitterly that she wasn't even invited to the Mary Poppins premier. She begged for an invitation, but spent her time at the 1964 screening crying with her gloved hands clenched into fists (12: Hard Times).

 

All in all, Travers wrote 21 books, and died in 1996 (she was 96) from an epileptic seizure.

 

Looking forward to your comments...

203: The Self-Empowered Woman: Whoopi Goldberg/Moms Mabley

Dear Followers,

I don't know how many of you watched Whoopi Goldberg's amazing HBO special on Moms Mabley, but it was a real eye opener. Mabley was the first successful female comedian, and she paved the way for women to be both financially secure and funny. So today's blog will take a brief look at both of these talented women.

 Whoopi Goldberg's real name is Caryn Elaine Johnston, and she and I both share a November 13th birthday. Some records indicate that she was born in 1949, while others say her birth year is 1955. Her mother was a nurse and a teacher whom Whoopi has described as "stern, strong and wise." Her father was a clergyman, but left the family, which meant that Whoopi was raised by a single mother (1: No Paternal Safety Net). 

When her career was in its early stages, she was trained by acting teacher Uta Hagen, and later she was "discovered" by director Steven Speilberg (4: Supportive Someone). During her varied and impressive career she has earned a reputation for creating controversy--especially when it comes to gender, personality or political issues (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest).

Whoopi has had a bumpy love life--with three divorces and two high-profile romances--Ted Dansen and Frank Langella (15: Forget About Prince Charming). When she was 18 years old, she and her then-husband had a daughter (Alexandrea), and Whoopi became a grandmother at the age of 34, when her first granddaughter arrived on her November 13th birthday. She has three grandchildren, and has always lived near them (16: Intensive Motherhood).

Whoopi's amazing career has involved almost every aspect of popular entertainment, and she is one of only a handful of entertainers to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. In 1993, when she made Sister Act 2, she was one of Hollywood's highest paid movie actresses (13: More Than Meets The Eye). These days, she is best known for her appearances on The View.

Goldberg is the first African American actress to have received Academy Award nominations for both "best" and "best supporting roles." She has continually pushed herself to excel in almost every aspect of her life from activism (comic relief, LGBT, acting, directing, producing and writing) (10: The Critic Within). Since the age of eleven--When she was supposed to go see The Nutcracker, but she went exploring instead (11: Risk Taking).

Now here's some information about Moms Mabley, who was born in 1897 and died in 1975.  She was a star at Harlem's Apollo Theater, and also appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.  She was born in North Carolina, had 15 siblings, and her father--who was a volunteer fireman--died when a fire engine exploded when she was only eleven years old (1: No Paternal Safety Net).  When she was 18, her mother was run over by a truck while returning home from church on Christmas day.

By the time she was 14 years old, she had been raped twice and had two children who were given up for adoption (12: Hard Times).  When she was 27, and working as a comedian on the Chitlin' Circuit of African-American vaudeville, she came out as a lesbian and wore male clothing (11: Risk Addiction). 

Her brother, Eddie Parton, helped her polish her routine and become more popular (4: Supportive Someone).  At her most successful, she was making $10,000 a week, and recorded more than 20 albums of comedy routines.  She became famous for her stage persona--where she wore a baggy house dress, a floppy hat, and removed her false teeth (6: Life Is Not A Beauty Contest).

When she was 75 years old, Moms Mabley became the oldest person to ever have a U.S. top 40 hit with her recording of "Abraham, Martin and John" (13: More Than Meets The Eye).  She died in 1975, and is credited as being the first successful female American stand up comic.

Looking forward to your comments...