by Lisa Congdon
My readers often say my words take them to a different world. Isn’t that what every writer should do? And that’s why I focus on issues related to Iran.
Lisa: How are you a different writer now than when you were younger?
Zoe: In many ways. First of all, when I moved here, I wanted to switch from writing in Persian to English. My first book was in Persian, but now I wanted to write in English, especially Sky of Red Poppies, because I wrote it mostly with my children in mind. I thought, Even if no one else reads it, I want to take their hands and take them back to a life and a time that they will never see. I wrote it for them, and little did I know that so many people would like it. When I moved to La Jolla, the first thing I did was to sign up for creative writing classes at UC San Diego. I soon found out that there’s a whole lot of difference between writing in English and writing in Persian: the styles are different, the rules are different.
As I gain experience, my writing is no longer about me. What I wrote as a young person was always personal. As you grow older and you experience the world, it becomes more interesting to listen than to talk. You listen, and you hear new voices. Be it in your past, your present, your future, there are so many voices to hear. They become more important than your own voice. In Sky of Red Poppies, I became the voice of my best friend in high school. The Moon Daughter is the voice of a woman I knew. I mean, they are books of fiction and not written exactly as it happened, but the voices are authentic. The book I’m writing right now, The Basement, is the voice of the working class.
Lisa: You speak publicly about following your dreams. What advice do you give to older women who are considering a new career or breaking out of the gates to reshape their life in a significant way?
Zoe: Sometimes I am invited to retirement centers, where I meet older audiences who have a lot of questions. You’d be surprised how many writers there are among them! And what I tell them is that it all depends on how you look at it. I could have been looking at my career as a done deal: I became a dentist, I never became a writer, so my time is done. And look at me now, four books later, I’m looking at a rather successful career as a happy writer!
And what brought that about was that I decided if I have only one day left, that’s how I want to live that one day. We are constantly misled by statistics, and we say, Okay, that teenager can dream about being this and that, but for me, if I am older, it’s done. But who guarantees that? I ask my audience something I once read in a birthday card: How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? And I tell them, if you didn’t have a birth certificate, and you didn’t have any memory, and there were no mirrors, and someone came to you on the street and asked, “How old are you?”—how old would you be? And when they think about it, they are invariably twenty years younger than what their birth certificate says.
The average life expectancy, especially for women, is between 80 and 90. I tell them, Some of you are 60, and what are you going to do for the next thirty years? Sit there and brood about what didn’t happen, or make it happen now? There are certain things we can’t do. If you want to win a medal in the Olympics and are 70 years old and have never moved a finger, it’s not going to happen. But if you are a writer, if you have a dream of traveling, if you are an artist—there is so much you can do. It is so rewarding, to know that you did live the moment that you dreamed of.
GIRL, YOU DON’T KNOW NOTHING
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“Girl, you don’t know nothing.”
This was Mama’s comment, spoken in her thick Southern drawl, in response to a recent pity party of mine. In her defense, my mom is 83 years old, so her perspective on aging is quite different from my own of 54 years.
My complaints about getting older include declining endurance, the appearance of fine lines around my eyes (not to mention a shockingly deep wrinkle between my eyebrows), and the expense of professional hair coloring services. My mom’s litany of aging is more serious: stiff joints and muscle pain, loneliness, and worries about the antics of the stock market with its attendant effects on her savings.
I’m careful not to whine too much in my mom’s presence because she casts a predictably dim view of my aging woes in comparison to her own. I don’t blame her. I’m sure I sound very much like the bratty teenager that she sometimes still seems to see when she looks my way.
But getting older isn’t all bad, for either one of us.
Admittedly, there are some mornings when I watch the younger women in my Ashtanga yoga class and feel like a dried-up old prune (and they’re all younger, since I’m the oldest one in the room). But when I hear them complain about dating, I don’t mind being the old married lady who just smiles and inwardly celebrates my twenty-plus years with my husband. Even in the company of these little hard-bodied yoginis, I am able to recognize that being older has real benefits and that being in my 50s is a gift that unfolds daily. This is true even while I’m a sweaty mess during my 7 a.m. yoga class, watching the most accomplished star student who, ironically enough, is actually named Star, fold and unfold herself into all sorts of impossible positions.
A yogini, if you’re not familiar with the word, is the female term for a practitioner of yoga (yogi being the masculine form). “A true Yogini is an enlightened woman with exuberant passion, spiritual powers and deep insight,” writes Shambhavi Chopra in her book, Yogini: Unfolding the Goddess Within. While I’m not sure I can claim enlightenment, I am very willing to state ownership over the three qualities Chopra describes: I am exuberantly passionate, powerfully spiritual, and I strive for deep insight. All of these gifts have arrived only in the past ten years and are quite clearly fruits of practicing yoga while growing older.
My journey to becoming a yogini actually began in my teens. I’d love to be able to say that I’ve practiced yoga continuously since I was 16 but, sadly, that’s not the case. Growing up in north Louisiana in the mid-’70s, the only yogi anyone knew of was the baseball player, Yogi Berra. Through some miracle, however, I did manage to discover two great teachers who influenced my lifelong desire to practice yoga: B.K.S. Iyengar and Lilias Folan.
If you know much about yoga at all, you probably know who Iyengar is. His book, Light on Yoga, is a classic text that has guided thousands of yogis and yoginis in their practice of the eight limbs, or aspects, of yoga. Sadly, my original copy, purchased while I was still in high school, was misplaced years ago, but the influence of reading Light on Yoga at such a pivotal time in my development has never been lost. What else can explain how a girl from a redneck, backwater, parochial region of the world managed to turn into a tree-hugging, eclectic bohemian? It was through Iyengar that I discovered vegetarianism, meditation, and ahimsa (the principle of non-harming). If there is anyone to credit for putting me on the path of lifelong environmentalism, it has to be B.K.S. Iyengar.
But let’s not forget dear Lilias Folan, who was my more tangible teacher, and who, through her television show, Lilias, Yoga and You, introduced me to the poses (more properly called asanas) that I still practice today. I started watching Folan’s show when I was 16 and immediately began my homegrown yoga studio of one. Surprisingly, my straight-laced, Southern Baptist mom was interested in and supportive of this endeavor, even though she’d never heard of yoga. She said the poses were beautiful, and she admired my youthful flexibility. Sadly, she didn’t feel inclined to join me on the carpet (no yoga mats back then!). I can’t help but wonder how her experience of aging might differ now if she had taken up yoga nearly forty years ago.
Despite my efforts to the contrary, my practice of yoga remained intermittent through my 20s and 30s. Thankfully, I finally arrived in the right environment for serious study in my 40s. After we moved to Oregon, I joined a studio and began learning from accomplished teachers rather than dog-eared books or grainy videos.
I can say with confidence that I’m a true yogini now. And because I’m over 50, I can also tell you that yoga provides one of the best approaches to aging with some kind of grace (even though
I regularly topple over during balancing poses). Together, yoga and getting older have catalyzed a season of confidence that I don’t think I’d have access to otherwise.
One of the criticisms I heard during my early life was that I was “too emotional.” Admittedly, during my teens, I was hell on wheels, but the truth about me is that I am, as Chopra puts it, “exuberantly passionate.” Only in the past five years have I come to terms with this aspect of my personality. While I used to see my deeply felt emotions as a liability, I now embrace them as part of my authentic self and express them openly. As a woman in my 50s, I am far more courageous about expressing myself emotionally and intellectually.
People sometimes tell me that I’m brave, and for quite a long time I thought they were mistaken. When someone would tell me that I’d done something courageous, I’d assess my inward feelings and see nothing but sheer terror. Only recently have I come to realize that my feelings of fear while plowing ahead are what actually constitute courage. I’ve come to believe that this ability to act rationally while terrified is a sign of spiritual power.
Although I was raised in the Southern Baptist church, I parted ways with organized religion when I was 19. Largely, this departure was due to my first husband’s influence. He was an atheist and (in hindsight) quite possibly a sociopath. I’d like to say that I don’t understand why I married him except that I think I do know: He satisfied my cravings for attention while deftly manipulating my fears of abandonment. Between those two extremes, he emotionally and sexually abused me for nearly ten years.
In the decades after my divorce, I resumed my spiritual path that has led to who I am today: an ardent yogini, committed vegetarian, and devout Roman Catholic. (Bet you didn’t see that last one coming, huh?) And yet, here’s the truth of it: Whatever deep insight I possess has come through the power I’ve learned to surrender myself to in my spiritual life. Surrender—with its attendant allowing, releasing, and accepting—is the supreme yoga of growing older.
One of the lessons my mother and I are both learning is that everything changes. Our capacities and faculties alter, shift, freeze, falter. Our pets grow old and die before we do. Many of our friends and family members unhelpfully do the same. These experiences are often exquisitely painful and, even so, abundant with gifts.
One of the great spiritual teachings of yoga is presence: to be fully present, engaged, and yet somehow detached (what some refer to as equanimity). To resist the inevitable means to attempt to exert control over what cannot be controlled. And such resistance is always futile. But with surrender, each change becomes a transaction—something is taken away while another gift is bestowed. In Mama’s case, she’s received the gift of perspective while I’m opening the present of letting go. Both of us enjoy the gift of each other: I in offering the gift of my caregiving and she in giving me the benefit of her still-enthusiastic baking skills.
Lest I think I’ve got this all figured out, our lives will always be full of surprises. Crises, like some position we’ll be asked to fold ourselves into, will invite us both into discomfort and strained effort. I’m sure that’s life’s way of reminding me that Mama has been right all along: “Girl, you don’t know nothing.”
Tara Rodden Robinson, PhD, is the author of Sexy + Soul-full: A Woman’s Guide to Productivity. She is a coach, an author, and an artist. She founded her coaching practice in 2006 when she left a career in academia. Before becoming a coach, she enjoyed a lively adventure as a biologist that began in the Costa Rican rain forest.
, sold her first painting at age 89—after six decades of quiet work creating minimalist geometric abstracts. Her work has since been added to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern, overlooked no more.
Carmen was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1915. Her father was the founding editor of El Mundo newspaper and her mother was a reporter. She was first interested in art as a child and took lessons, but she chose to pursue an architecture degree instead of an art degree. She eventually left her studies to marry an American English teacher, and the couple moved to New York and then to Paris after World War II. It was in Paris that Carmen began to paint in earnest, inspired by the abstract artists of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. The less-is-more painting style that she developed was in defiance of the cultural expectations of the art of a Latin woman, and through it she found her lifelong focus and artistic identity.
The couple moved back to New York, and Carmen continued to paint, further distilling her style to the most essential shapes and colors. “Only my love of the straight line keeps me going,” she later shared. Her work was included in several shows over the years but never sold. In 2004, after the death of her husband, a friend brought her work to the attention of an art dealer. Soon after, she experienced her first artistic acclaim and financial rewards. Told that perhaps it was heavenly intervention on the part of her husband that brought her recognition, she replied, “I worked really hard. Maybe it was me.” Carmen has continued to work, conceptualizing paintings and executing them with the help of an assistant, long past her 100th birthday.
is a walker in the way that many people are runners, and her routes take her far from her immediate neighborhood in northeast Portland, Oregon. Fay is 74, and in only ten years as a long-distance walker, she has completed eighty-five races, including twenty-one marathons, fifty-two half marathons, and one ultra marathon. She is a dedicated member of the international groups the Marathon Maniacs and the Half Fanatics, meeting their qualification requirement of completing multiple marathons or half marathons in short periods of time—Fay did it by walking three marathons within ninety days. She’s 20 pounds lighter than she was when she began walking and has higher bone density, too. Fay describes herself as “sort of retired.” She works part-time as a tax consultant at H&R Block when she’s not traversing Portland to train for her next race.
Lisa: How did you begin walking long distances?
Fay: About ten years ago, when I was 64, I stepped on the scale and it said 149 pounds, and I didn’t want to see 150, because I never, ever had weighed that much. I was over 30 before I weighed 100 pounds. So, I basically looked at that, put my shoes on, and went out for a walk.
Lisa: You have a very small frame, so 150 pounds felt like a lot to you!
Fay: Yes, so I went for a walk and came home and took a nap, and got up the next day and I thought, Okay, I have to do it again. And I went for a walk, and I came home and took a nap. The next day and the next I did the same.
Lisa: How did you get into racing and longer distances? That’s a whole different level of walking.
Fay: I had begun walking in February, and I had friends who were doing the races and I was curious about what it would be like to participate in them. The very first race that I did was in April of 2007. I did the Race for the Roses, the 5K. I walked it primarily to find out what happens in a race.
Lisa: And then you got hooked?
Fay: Yes! Then in June, I did the Helvetia Half Marathon, which I would not recommend for a first half marathon because it’s very hilly! I didn’t have the right shoes, ended up with a nasty blister, and took over four hours, but I kept going. I figured out I needed to get different shoes. And then I walked the Portland Marathon that October, and that was my first marathon.
Lisa: So basically nine months after you began walking, you did your first marathon.
Fay: Yes, and as I was getting ready to do that first marathon, I knew that if I ever did one, I would do at least one more because I wasn’t going to be one of those people marking it off my life list and then never doing it again!
Lisa: As you began walking, how did you grow to walk longer and longer distances? What does training look like for you?
Fay: When I first started, I walked only 2 or 3 miles. I was just walking around my neighborhood. The best idea is to work with a training plan. For example, this week you walk 3 miles and next week 4 miles, and the week after that 5 miles, and the week after that drops back to 4 mil
es. You train by time during the week and distance on the weekends. You always increase the mileage on the weekends for several weeks, and then you drop back mileage a week, and then increase again, and then drop back again, and then increase again, and drop back.
When I first started walking on my own, it was really easy to turn around and go home, and not do the whole distance. At every intersection, you have to make a decision. And after a while, I thought to myself, There’s got to be a better way of dealing with this.
So I began taking the bus out however far I wanted to walk that day from near my house. Then I’d get off the bus and walk home. So basically I began forcing myself out the distance I wanted to go, and I knew I wasn’t going to get on the bus coming back. And after a while, it just became natural to walk that kind of distance.
Lisa: Do people sometimes assume you are a speed walker? Do you ever run?
Fay: I don’t do speed walking. It has some specific requirements. I run a little and I walk. I mostly walk, but I run a little bit.
Lisa: Do you ever beat runners in races?
Fay: Yes, sometimes.
Lisa: How has walking changed your life besides being more physically fit?
Fay: The community has become so important to me. Running and walking have different levels of notoriety based on how many races you’ve done in what period of time. For example, there are the Marathon Maniacs or the Half Fanatics. You may have never met people before a particular race, but they’re instantly your friends because they are also wearing the Marathon Maniac shirt. You have an instant connection.