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| Priya Rackoff |
- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 2.16.14
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Showing posts with label Priya Rackoff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Priya Rackoff. Show all posts
Sunday, May 10, 2015
TRUTH in Time
- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 2.16.14
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Thursday, August 21, 2014
With Myself
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| Priya Rackoff in the landscape |
"Sometimes I feel like disappearing into the landscape resting in the embrace of something so much larger and wiser than myself." - Priya Rackoff 1.31.13
Friday, March 14, 2014
Care To Know.
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"...Professionally I am in service to women of all ages and the men in their lives who want to stand more fully in their power. Towards this goal I teach Compassionate Communication Skills and offer Individual Coaching for Transformation.
I also specifically midwife women who are going through important transitions in their lives, to blossom in to their fullest selves. Helping them to find out what really matters to them at the core, to let go of old ways that no longer serve and take steps to create lives that radiate their light of love into the world.
Personally, I am a wild nature woman who loves to climb mountains, swim in primordial rivers, walk the deep forests, sit in silent communion with nature or dance and sing with others, hearts and hands connected in the joys and sorrows of life...."
- Priya Rackoff
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I have read and re-read and re-read, shared and posted your insights about your life, and aging over the past year with keen interest in how you speak and live a truth. Your words move deep within me leaving much to ponder and more to wonder.
There isn't enough of you circulating around for younger people to meditate upon. Your words, and approach fill a void, a gap in understanding and connecting with the primal forces of living longer in the deep parts of our lives.
I hope all is well with you. Thank you for your words. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2.16.14
Priya's blog
Monday, March 3, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
LISTEN TO A GRANDFATHER'S INTERVIEW!
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| Talk with girls about women. |
Audio Innerview with Loren Gremlich, artist and spiritual philosopher – Making Sense of Sex After 60
Written by Priya on January 28, 2014
Sexual intimacy has played an important role in my personal life and although I had heard from others of loss of desire as they got older, I never thought that this would happen to me. But it did!
As I got closer to 60, I got less and less interested in sex, but also missed it and some of the wonderful things that it brought to my life when it was there. I recognized a need to have a fresh look at what sex for me now is and begin to address the new sexuality that is there for me in this age. It is not the same as it was when I was even 55! But what is it and how do I want to express my sexuality now? I also know that I am not alone in the question of “Now What?”.
As a culture we have only begun to talk about the profound shifts in our libido after 6O and beyond and what sex is for us as we age. In our culture sex is generally defined by youth and often seen as owned by it, but in actuality it is not bounded by it. It's important to bring the conversation about sex after 60 out to be shared so that we can support each other in our unique changes, stay vital in our bodies, hearts and minds, and continue to enjoy and reap the benefits of a healthy sexuality.
I looked around at my own life and saw that in my friendship circles there were so many of what I call extraordinary, ordinary people living extraordinary ordinary lives. What defines this phrase extraordinary ordinary is people living day to day lives, not necessarily making a big public splash of themselves, but simply doing what they do with integrity of purpose. These are folks who have made choices in their lives in the service of what brings them the most life, joy, growth and fulfillment. These are folks who have faced the challenges that we all face and have created lives of quiet inspiration and personal wisdom.
Loren Gremlich is one such friend of mine. Loren is a ceramic artist, philosopher, father, grandfather, lover, creative thinker, and gentle spirit on this earth. He is the creator of the great gratitude ADVENTURE, a web project devoted to bringing awareness to the importance of compassion, gratitude and empathy into our lives. He lives in grass Valley California with his Beloved Partner of 4 years. He refers to himself as a serial monogamist, has been happily married 3 times, has been in 3 live in relationships besides his marriages, has 2 grown children, 1 grandchild and has active friendships with his previous partners.
I invited Loren to be “Innerviewed” because one of the myriad reasons that I respect and admire him is that he have an active and healthy intimate sex life at 67 years old!!
Saturday, February 15, 2014
The Getting OLD
Written by Priya on February 15, 2013
I turned 60 this year and I awoke to the realization that I am now officially “an older” woman” and no matter how I try to re-frame my new place in the culture, it is a challenge for me. Even though I feel the depth and wisdom of my life’s experience, the capacities that I have cultivated over the years, and the internal richness from a long life lived, I am still in a tizzy about it.
It seems politically incorrect these days to talk about the underbelly of things. I find though that not sharing the discomforts and continuing to sweep them under the rug of new age “paradigm shift”, contributes to the separation that is killing us. So it is within this context that I am opening up the discussion of aging. I am bringing it out into the open for loving acceptance, laughter, crying and connecting.
I have lived an unconventional life without paying much attention to the assumptions of our culture regarding age. Good genes, a healthy lifestyle and a youthful attitude have contributed to my feeling ageless and having that ageless look well into my late fifties. Yet, now I feel this thing called “older” chasing me faster than I can run. I must turn and face it.
It rears up is menacing scowl every day time I am called “Ma’am” by a store clerk. I flinch deeply and want to cry out “don’t call me that, I am not a Ma’am!” It is an empty adjective for me, a categorization, a defining term that puts me into a separate realm, no longer fitting into the currency of life’s pulse.
Ma’am, turns me into “older”. I don’t feel “older”. Not in that way. I feel all ages. Every age that I have already experienced lives within me. It is like a symphony inside of me, each different age’s flavor an instrument.
Sometimes the trill of the flute floats through the orchestra bursting with the delicate fury of the newly found power of the young child. Sometimes the pounding of drums’ passion bursts forth with the exuberance of the twenty something and sometimes the French horns’ drone signaling the one in her late forties facing lost chances of motherhood. I feel all of this inside of me. What is the word that describes this? Certainly it is not “old”, nor “aged”.
Ten years of seeing my skin getting more and more wrinkled and lined and crêpey has given me plenty of time to get used to it. “Ya think?” Well, I am a bit less troubled but I am clearly not over it yet. Will I ever be?
My body’s aging process is relentless. Every day is a reminder speaking to me saying “hey, wake up to your life passing through time! Something is changing! Look!”
The rigors of getting older seem to be as challenging as the rigors of adolescence.
How many thousands of us older women shudder at the thought of seeing our thighs while doing an inverted yoga pose? Or perhaps we no longer wear shorts? Or habitually judge others for wearing bathing suits that we do not dare to? How about making love? Huh? Have you gotten to the place yet where you would rather wear something to bed that is a bit more flattering than your flesh hanging off of your body when you are on top?
You might think all this to be shallow. However, the physical reminders that I face moment to moment are confronting to the fabric of my being.
They are arrows pointing inward harkening me to examine myself more deeply. There are the regrets that I carry of lost dreams, unresolved inner wounds, unfulfilled aspects of my self expression and everything else within that is not yet fulfilled. All of these things are pushing against the” deadline” of my ever more clear end point.
When I was younger, I did not have an experience of this. There was a lot of spaciousness. Endless time into which I could just be. Now as I look at my skin I am reminded of this distinct lack of “forever”. I feel the pressure of the deadline to fulfill these dreams, to let them go, to transform myself, to find peace, to prepare for death. I question how to stay fully engaged and vital in this world when I feel weary of my own trials and tribulations. When the culture is changing too quickly for me and there is the mourning of the losses to be done. How can I go one when I hear the constant refrain of “you are too old for that” coming from all directions including from inside myself! So, there is no more hiding the fact that yes, I am aging. As youthful as I am, as fit as I am, as radiant as I am my body, all of me. Is aging. And yet, as my flesh diminishes the internal world of my soul journey becomes more vast, rich and vital. Calling out for expression, sharing, contribution, recognition.
I wonder how to be seen for this in a world that casts aside wrinkled people as if they were used up. I have been slowly moving towards this moment for ten years. Sometimes standing up to be seen, but mostly hiding behind a thin veneer of resistance. No more hiding now. To do so would be a cruel self-denial. All of my cultural preconceptions of what is acceptable are challenged and I must reevaluate how I perceive myself.
I remember twenty years ago when my 72 year old aunt, still fresh in the bloom of her new marriage, told me that she caught her reflection in the mirror of a store window one day and was aghast at seeing the image of an old woman. She thought “who is that “old hag” that is certainly not me! I feel like a young babe.”
How to come to terms with this paradox within an ageist society?
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Sunday, January 26, 2014
TWO Stories of AGING
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| Pretty Black woman with beautiful eyes lays on the grass... |
I recently read an article in the Huffington Post on women over fifty becoming invisible to men! Here is my comment...
We all have so many variations on the theme of aging and the man/woman game. No matter how we do it, we all face the injustices of this ageist and sexist society. Under the man/woman "game" of how we give each other attention is the simple need for love, connection and the exchange of human energy, which is crucial for our life force. Everyone responds to an open human heart. Now that I am 61 and loving myself for who I am and not because I am loved by a man, it is easier to be truly open and engaging with everyone in a genuinely authentic emotionally warm way because I am no longer driven by the hormonal "need" for men to like me. The passage between 50 and 60 for me was about letting go of my "babeness" and embracing a more sovereign, centered version of myself. Am I invisible? In certain situations yes. Does it hurt? Sometimes yes! It usually pushes me to go beyond licking my wounds of aging and finding a way in to connect that feels good to me. Usually when I open my heart and reach out to connect, someone reaches back and I am no longer invisible! - Priya Rackoff, Women in Full Bloom
The story you told is like a piece of jewelry found on a beach. Everyone has walked over valuable things, and easily missed the fullness of discovering what is before them at some point in their lives. I was gently let in to your story. I've thought a great deal about invisibility from the perspective of older women since my thirties because of an older woman complaining about being invisible to the clerk, who could only see the young woman next to her with huge breasts and a big smile. The way she told her story opened an inner discussion. But, I've thought about invisibility from the perspective and experience of being a ceremonial hunter, a hunter of men (law enforcement), a father and most importantly I've developed an understanding of invisibility as a martial art.
My inner discussions as a man about aging considers other factors, but all of them are based upon the perceptions of women around me aging and growing into either old women or Old Wise Women. Their views and outlook informed me. They were and are gauges. It is too much to discuss in this forum, but I can and do share what I've learned over the years. It is important to the development of young people.
My manhood and sense of masculinity tells the story of learning to listen, and care for what women, my wife and mother say about the body, and getting old. I don't know how to convey all I need to say to this story of yours. I can, but for now suffice it to say, "I have heard your story, and will think about your story, how you told it, and why." - Gregory E. Woods, 1.12.14
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| mature elegant woman in Paris, France by the Sartorialist. |
Monday, January 13, 2014
Women at 90 & 60
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| 90 year old Phyllis Sues has much to say about living in the deeper sense of the word. Read her story. |
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| Priya Rackoff |
WHO ARE WE?
Priya Rackoff offers coaching services, with a special niche for those entering midlife and beyond. Here's what she has to say about where she finds herself now ...
Fifteen years from the time I made peace with my decision to be childless I, now at 60, stand at another powerful threshold. The stage of being an "older woman". Having heard many others speak of the pain of feeling invisible after 50, I have become passionate about changing "invisible" to "invincible!" A decade of being an older women has shown me the many gifts that come with "aging" and the potency of another perhaps thirty years of vital life to be lived.
Most of us lucky ones who live long enough get an opportunity to face this. However challenging, it is there for us as a gift of life. Another opportunity to shed the stereotypes that oppress us and uplift the way we feel about ourselves, how we act towards ourselves and how we relate to others. I know that as we age we can continue to create inner states of being and life circumstances that express and grow our ever changing beauty, power, creativity, and love.
How I describe my work these days is helping women to "come out of the closet" , find the "glory" in themselves, "bloom" and create a healing and loving world. How? By cultivating awareness, love and consciousness inside and out. You can visit me on my website:
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