Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /home/customer/www/allthesinglegirlfriends.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/twitter-mentions-as-comments/includes/boilerplate/class.plugin-boilerplate.php on line 50

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/customer/www/allthesinglegirlfriends.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/twitter-mentions-as-comments/includes/boilerplate/class.plugin-boilerplate.php:50) in /home/customer/www/allthesinglegirlfriends.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/includes/wp-greet-box.class.php on line 493
New Beginnings Archives - Page 2 of 3 - All The Single Girlfriends

Appreciate The Process

Jan 4, 2012 by

Appreciate The Process

At the end of 2010, I suffered two heavy-duty losses—the loss of a job and the loss of my Father.  Both happened around the holidays, so I went into 2011 feeling the lossess just as intensely as if they’d happened that year. However, I had one major gain that has lasted me throughout the year, and that is my weight. Oh, I completely understand that the gains came from a whole lot of comfort food.   Honestly, I don’t regret one single pound of it.  I relished every drink, every darned good meal, and every single red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting that crossed my lips and made their way to my waistline. Yet when I stare at my closet and see my wardrobe shrinking as a consequence of my expanding…..well….. About three weeks...

read more

The One Thing I Will Do In 2012 Come Hell or High Water!...

Jan 3, 2012 by

The One Thing I Will Do In 2012 Come Hell or High Water!

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. ~  Edith Lovejoy Pierce This quote from Edith Lovejoy Pierce seems particularly relevant for an online community, since of course, each new post begins with a blank page. On All The Single Girlfriends our posts wrap around the stories of our life experiences. Often they reflect our dreams, joys, hopes and sometimes our sadnesses. Our Gf authors are amazing and I wondered how they were going to fill the blank pages of their 2012 books .. what did they want to do in 2012 .. come hell or high water!   Debra Pearlman ~ Resolutions … been there, broke that.  I’d rather say that I’d focus...

read more

That Gratitude List: Item #1 is becoming a writer...

Dec 26, 2011 by

That Gratitude List: Item #1 is becoming a writer

Here it is the holiday season. And no one over-40 gets through it without work, the emotional kind, I mean.  Ministers, spiritual coaches, and therapists worth their salt all tell us that work goes a lot easier if we start with a gratitude list.  Yeah, really. Well, that gratiude list really does trigger an internal paradigm shift – going from poor-me to lucky-me.  At the top of the list I put something that I have been wrestling with since 1975.  That’s my decision to become a writer. Had I not made that decision I might have become a rich, powerful woman.  After all I had the intelligence, stomach for risk-taking, and drive to take that great leap forward into investment banking or even being a security analyst. But, it dawns on me more and...

read more

That Second Half of Life: No one said it was going to be this way...

Dec 14, 2011 by

That Second Half of Life: No one said it was going to be this way

This is awful.  That’s what I thought to myself every few years, after I was over-50.  Now, I find out that I am not alone. “Necessary suffering” is what Richard Rohr calls much of what goes on in the second half of life.  A Roman Catholic priest, Rohr recently published “Falling Upward.” Yes, suffering is a predicable a phase in life as we age as was adolescence after childhood. During the first part of life, explains Rohr, we humans in theU.S.are preoccupied with getting ahead in a career, building the nest and a nest egg, and struggling with an identity.  Then comes the time of reflection about all that, plus, as the cliché goes, life intervenes. We may find that we indeed get ahead in our professional life.  However, we -also realize that the ladder...

read more

Holiday Challenges For Dieters

Dec 1, 2011 by

Holiday Challenges For Dieters

Holiday time is always a challenge for dieters but this year is especially hard for me. I managed Thanksgiving fairly well until most of the guests went home.  Then the “sneak” eating commenced.  I thought, “well, just a taste of Sheila’s apple pie won’t hurt….” but she made two different types of apple pie so that was two pieces.  Of course, there was Laura’s amazing brownies with an Oreo cookie in the middle and when else do you get to have pumpkin pie.  Before I knew it, I’d had 4 desserts and felt like a fool.  Resolve to eat better tomorrow. And I did start the day well.  I made good choices when I went out for breakfast with friends.  I kept “on-track” while driving up to my rental property in upstate New York...

read more

Finding Your Path in the Business World...

Nov 10, 2011 by

Finding Your Path in the Business World

“I see you exploring,” my friend said about my business ventures.  “You’re doing a good job.” That was nice to hear.  Sometimes, I feel like a kid playing at being an adult without taking on any real responsibility or getting any real results. I started this experiment in entrepreneurship with one idea; an idea that seemed to expand as I asked people for advice and then change as opportunities came along.  I got advice from creative, knowledgeable people who had started businesses and knew what they were doing.  I wholeheartedly acknowledge that I would not have known where to start without them.  However, if I had to do it again, with everything I know now, I would change a few things. 1. For one, I wouldn’t spend so much money up front. I wouldn’t...

read more

The Permissible Personality

Nov 2, 2011 by

The Permissible Personality

The house has been taken over by a tiny canine visitor, the chickens are molting and looking ridiculous, and an adorable, squealing baby is running around the house. Snowball the Cat is not pleased.  Not pleased at all. Wait!  This post is supposed to be about starting a writing business and here I am writing about my home life.  Isn’t it irrelevant?  Shouldn’t I screen out these fascinating tidbits about my personal life? Therein lies the question, doesn’t it?  When I worked for the big corporation, I sought to find ways to express my slightly oddball personality without clashing too much with the official Corporate Persona.  Coworkers who had become friends would talk about leaving their personalities in their cars every morning in order to fit in and gain respect.  We’ve all seen the...

read more

Wedding = Universal Symbol of Hope...

Oct 26, 2011 by

Wedding = Universal Symbol of Hope

Shakespeare’s comedies frequently end in weddings, the universal symbol of hope, even in the face of mankind’s dark side. We single girlfriends honor that emotion when those we care about take that step.  Even though divorce happens after about one half of marriages there’s the possibility the couple, two sexes or one sex, can do whatever it takes to make a joining of separate human beings function better than one human navigating life solo. So, when Cate Edwards married her college sweetheart Trevor Upham, M.D. many of us were rooting hard for both of them. Edwards, like members of the Kennedy dynasty, has experienced more than the average amount of suffering at a young age. Her brother was killed in a car accident.  The marriage of her parents, so seemingly idyllic, foundered on the...

read more

An Entrepreneurial Adventure

Oct 24, 2011 by

An Entrepreneurial Adventure

I recently read that though unemployment is up, so is self-employment.  I find this to be heartening news.  It brings to mind an image of a modern pioneer picking out a path and taking it, willing to take a chance and explore the unknown.  I love the idea that thousands of Americans have taken on the challenge of building their own little portion of the economy. Personally, I’m on my second try this year.  As you may recall, I quit my corporate job last March (what kind of crazy person quits a good job during a recession??) to start a business designed to link local farms to local consumers.  And guess what?  It didn’t work.  I admit that freely and without shame.  Simply put, when you don’t know what you’re doing, the only way...

read more

Stilettos at Sixty

Sep 5, 2011 by

Stilettos at Sixty

For many, turning sixty means crossing something lofty off their bucket list.  Maybe they attempt an athletic achievement, or take a vacation at a far-flung destination, or revisit their childhood neighborhood. I did none of that on my birthday. First, I don’t have a bucket list. It would just depress me. But besides that, I did something much more pedestrian for my sixtieth – I decided to start wearing high heels. When I turned 35, I became an enthusiast of Erno Lazlo products, spending my mornings and evenings religiously splash, splash, splashing to protect my skin. At 45, I invested in a personal trainer, committed to having a better body than I had at 35.That program unfortunately ended with a ruptured disc and a week flat on my back. For my 50th, I forgot...

read more

House of Mourning

Jul 5, 2011 by

House of Mourning

This is a house of mourning, even if you can’t see it among the brightly colored ceramic lizards or hear it in the laughter. I have woven mourning into every house I’ve lived in since the death of my husband in 2008.  It flickers like dappled sunlight, casting shadows with the death of each cat who was part of our home, with every new chicken in the yard or farm skill learned, with the introduction of every potential long term boyfriend. Our old life slips away like hands reluctantly unclasping.  Like the sun at the summer solstice, an era sets slowly. Sometimes, I sit outside at the most recent grave and talk to Spot.  I tell him things I never told him when he skulked around the house, catching mice and stealing Snowball’s food. ...

read more

Voting for Birthdays

May 31, 2011 by

Voting for Birthdays

“Do you have a birthday coming up?”, I wrote.  “Skipping it, thanks.”, my friend wrote back. Really? I find this hard to understand. Why would anyone skip an opportunity for birthday cake, balloons and the possibility of sparkly confetti? It’s not just the bright colors that make birthdays a delight.  Every birthday is a chance to celebrate the lives of those we love, and even those we merely like!  What makes them so fearsome to adults? Whatever you think about aging, it’s hard to argue for the alternative.  Someone ought to caution us not to let the inexperience of youth inform our opinion of age.  What treasures will the lucky ones find?  What does a person know at 95 that she didn’t know at 55?  Why decide we don’t want to be older before we...

read more