Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being Read Online Free Page A

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    Alpha Goddesses recognize their value in the “tribe.” Although our culture is less ageist than it was a generation or two ago, there’s still too much power in the old message that a woman’s value decreases when she enters menopause because she’s no longer physically fertile. That message has been drilled into us often over our lifetimes and is rooted in the belief that a woman is like an empty vessel, designed solely for the purpose of incubating and nurturing the next generation. Once we can no longer do that, what’s our purpose? Most of us don’t actually think we have no more value once our eggs dry up, but many of us do internalize the message that our value is in what we can produce for others. Consequently, we start feeling guilty that we aren’t spending more time, energy, and money on our adult children who are struggling with their bills, or our teenagers who are having trouble navigating the choppy emotional watersof middle school. Other people’s problems keep creeping up to the top of our To Do lists because we are trying to prove our worth to ourselves and others. Without the balance that comes from rest and receiving help from others, we burn ourselves out. There’s no better way to suck up your vital energy than to try to prove to everyone that you are a good mother, good neighbor, good daughter, and so on. As Tosha Silver, the author of Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead, says, “Accept yourself absolutely and unconditionally. It’s one of the most radical acts you can do in an insane culture that actually profits from your self-loathing.” 14
    As we enter our ageless years, we can also finally free ourselves from the need to prove ourselves. We look back and see that we didn’t do so badly after all. Maybe we have some regrets, and maybe we disappointed some people, but that’s part of being human. Now is our time to focus on ourselves more instead of always worrying about everyone else. According to Chinese and ancient Ayurvedic medicine, at age 60, women end their householder life and begin to develop their souls. Our fertility stops being about having children and starts being about what we create for ourselves that benefits us and the people around us.
    CREATIVE GODDESSES
    This new form of creating means seeing new possibilities all the time. Ageless goddesses aren’t jaded. They recognize that there are always new things to learn and discover, and new relationships to begin. They’re exuberant about life and they let loose their curiosity and playfulness. A friend of mine went on a cruise to a tropical island with a turquoise lagoon and was practically “drunk with joy,” as she described it. She eagerly climbed into a boat that would take the group out to snorkel in a coral reef. But two women near her, both 20 years or so younger than she was, could only talk about how they wished the boat taking them out snorkeling had a quieter motor, and how the wind was too strong, and how the waves were going to be hard to navigate once they jumped into the water. Hello—you’re in a sparklingtropical lagoon communing with the fish! If you can’t enjoy that, you need to reconnect with your spirit and earthly pleasures so you can participate in the creative process of the earth herself.
    Agelessness is all about vitality, the creative force that gives birth to new life—the divine feminine that makes it all happen. Blades of grass will push up through a brick patio even if there is a foot of gravel underneath the brick because nature is determined to push outward, upward, and forward in the act of creation if it has to. Vitality is our natural state. Taking all the right supplements and pills, or getting the right procedure done, isn’t the prescription for anti-aging. It’s ageless living that brings back a sense of vibrancy and youthfulness.
    I’m all for exercise and healthy eating, but forcing yourself to go to a badly lit basement gym and work up a