Enlivening Maturity with Irreverence and Emotion

Welcome to the 10th episode of the Woman Uncaged podcast! In this week's conversation, Laura and Linda redefine maturity. Too often, being mature often evokes an image of boring "adulting" and overall fuddy-duddy-ness (yep, we made that word up!). What if maturity was enlivened with emotion and irreverence?

In this episode, we explore:

- What is maturity and why is it ripe for redefinition?
- What is emotional maturity? What does it look like and not look like?
- Why dogs and other creatures can make amazing teachers on our road to maturation
- How do we learn that our feelings are unacceptable?
- Feelings that get little space in our culture (such as grief, regret, and remorse) and why they are important to a fully-lived life
- Irreverent maturity: What is it and why is it needed?

"Irreverent maturity is walking our own path with delight!" - Linda Katz

Resources:

Dr. Gorden Neufeld: https://neufeldinstitute.org/

Course on five-step model of emotional maturation: https://neufeldinstitute.org/course/neufelds-five-step-model-of-emotional-maturation/

Quotes:

“At 70 years old if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words 'fuck off' much more frequently.” - Helen Mirren

"Wisdom combines experience with knowledge. Experience is lived through the passions of the body; knowledge is learned through the discipline of the mind. Wisdom connects body and spirit in soul."  - Marion Woodman + Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames

How about you? What is your relationship like with the word "maturity"? How would you define it for yourself? We'd love to hear from you. Email us: womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Linda 0:02

Hello everyone and welcome to Woman Uncaged, the podcast. I am here with the wonderful and beautiful Linda Katz. It's always so much fun to be here with her. She is eloquent and brilliant and loving and kind. And she makes great faces, which make me laugh. She's a fabulous coach and a gorgeous writer, and one of my business besties. So glad to be here with you, Linda. So glad to be with here with you, Laura. And I am here with one of my business besties and delightful friend, co-conspirator and co-host, Miss Laura Gates-Lufton, who is a money maven, a financial feminist, helping women to step into their power and into our shared liberation through earning our owning our power as earners and also through many other things, owning our voices, really stepping into who we are here to be. And so it is really joyous to be here uh with you today on International Women's Day when that's right. That's right. Happy International Women's Day. Yes, to all of our delightful listeners out there as well. And today we are going to be talking about maturity. Oh yes, we must be very mature. Exactly. I don't know why I have to think like I'm like, do I sound like the Queen of England? I'm not even sure what I'm going for there. Ew, darling. But I think it is one of these words that I mean, when I think of the word maturity, I, you know, I I imagine like an older person, you know, that it has this kind of like, it's very serious. It's very um and so one of the things that we're going to be talking about today is irreverent maturity and like different modes of maturity. Um but I guess we could start with emotional maturity, which I think I think from where we sit is oftentimes very lacking in our culture. And one of the places where I have noticed this coming up, you know, this is I I think a great part of my work is helping women and guiding women to take up a relationship with their inner emotional lives. And so uh if you've been tuning into the podcast for a while, you've probably heard me say that we have two puppies currently. They're now about four and a half months old. And, you know, prior to that I had my dog Sophie for 14 and a half years. And she was one of my greatest teachers. And I have a sneaky suspicion, you know, that it the same is going to be true for for these pups and for Ursa. And one of the things I think that I love about having animals, and I've only had dogs, I'm sure this is also true for for other other creatures, is you can't bullshit them. And when it comes to our emotions, you know, I think we can we could probably fool one another as human beings. We can even fool ourselves, you know. We we may not be conscious of what we are feeling from moment to moment. Uh, I've had multiple people say, Oh, but you looked so you seemed so calm and all this stuff. And it's like on the inside, it was all huge, like a full-on storm of sensation and activation and all of these pieces. And with a dog, especially if you have a sensitive creature, I've had pit bulls now for a while, they're very sensitive to feeling you can't outcool them. And so you really need to be able to take up a healthy relationship with your emotions and to develop this emotional maturity so that you can show up in your wise and wild woman self and really create the kind of relationship that you want. So I'd love to pass it to you, Laura. When you, when I say, you know, emotional maturity, how do you define that? What do you what is it? What does it look like? What does it not look like? Um, what are the things that come to mind for you? Well, what I immediately thought of was emotional literacy. That part of emotional maturity is just being able to know that you a have emotions and identify what they are. There's such a wide range. And to understand, which we've talked about before, that you know, you can feel more than one thing. It's not black and white, it's very nuanced. That's part of the maturity is the understanding that you know you can have multiple things going on in the course of a day that re that bring up different feelings and they can all be true, even if they feel like they are opposites. Yes, yes. I totally, I totally agree with that. I think one thing that I've um so I loosely follow the work of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, who is a developmental psychologist up in Canada, and he has a great course on uh emotional maturity. It's like a four four session module, and we'll link to it in the show notes. But I think one of the things that he talks about in there, the the kind of first step is to be able to express emotion. And I think because we are, again, uh quite a disembodied culture here in like the the modern Western world, we have a tendency to want to bypass that step so that we can turn our feelings and our emotions into a very cerebral experience. And I think that finding healthy ways of expressing emotion is something that uh it can oftentimes be a struggle. Because we think of like expressing emotion as like, I'm angry, so I'm just gonna yell at you. You know what I mean? Like and again, it's like I come back to the dog, it's like that's not helping when I get angry at them. Like, that's so I need to find ways that I can take myself out of the situation, express my own emotions for myself, come back to a center, be able to identify, like you said, what it is that I'm feeling and what's going on, and then move forward from that place where it's like I'm not stuffing my emotions, but I'm also not just reactive. I'm not just reacting to the world around me. Right, you're not being a volcano, you know, just erupting.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Which I used to be when I was younger.

Linda 6:56

Yes, I remember hearing about this. And I had one of my children was. Um, and for me, dealing with that, it was really important for me to stay calm and centered, even when things were not calm in the room. Um, and one of my parents was insistent actually that I should spank this child. And I said, no way, I am not doing that. I could not see how that could help the situation in any way, shape, or form. All it would teach this particular kid would be your feelings are unacceptable. And how many people learned that as kids, especially in and again in this culture, that it's like with those emotions, like you are not welcome here. Like you need to turn it down from a 10 to a two. We're told, like, we're told to go to our rooms, right? We're we're separated. And again, this is something that Gordon Newfeld talks about a lot is that we put attachment or relationship at odds with emotion.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yes.

Linda 7:58

And so it's like if you show an emotion that is displeasing to me, you do not get to be in my proximity anymore. Yep. Go to your room until you have a smile on your face. Yep. How harmful that is and how difficult it is then as adults to begin to find this form of emotional maturity when oftentimes we're not even we're not even aware that we're having these things because we've been taught to stuff it down in order to belong, in order to be safe, in order to, yeah, be pleasing to the people that we love. Yes. It's funny. I asked one of my clients recently, like how, because she was describing the way she is with her kids around emotions. Um, and I said to her, How did you become so wise around emotions? Because what she describes is beautiful, just the way she teaches her kids about emotions and the way she allows for emotions, and she's constantly standing up for the fact that they're allowed to have feelings and all of that. And she she said, It's funny you should ask that because it wasn't that long ago. I was Googling, what are emotions? What are they? Like what I wanted a list. Uh-huh. So it's amazing. Like, she's come so far from that day that she was Googling to like now shepherding these children into the world who have great facility with their emotions and they understand that they're allowed to have them and they need to handle them appropriately. They can't, you know, erupt all over our other people, but they are absolutely allowed to have their feelings. Yeah. It's a key part of being human. Yes. And it's, you know, it's that that piece also of taking up a relationship with our feelings that sometimes we have feelings that might be uh not pleasing, not just to other people, but we might have feelings that are not even pleasing to ourselves. Yeah, oh absolutely. You know, we can have this like disagreement, but we have a relationship with this part of ourselves rather than pretending that it doesn't exist, slapping the smile on our face, etc. Okay, I have a question for you.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

Okay.

Linda 9:58

How do you feel like emotional maturity fits in to just like the general picture of what it means to be a mature individual in a healthiest sense? I think it's a huge part. Because if you I think it impacts everything actually, if you don't have emotional maturity, then you're more likely to look to ways to numb your feelings because you can't handle them. So, and that can take all kinds of forms. You know, we automatically think of addiction, but it can be all kinds of things that things that help you bypass your feelings. Yeah, if you it's hard to make decisions if you don't have emotional maturity. I mean like the big decisions, because you that's what you want to make them from, right? Is that wiser, mature part of yourself. But if you don't have that, if you if you are spiraling because you can't handle your feelings, or you're just not in that mature place, really. Yeah, yeah. And then we end up, I think, also making the decisions that are quote unquote good on paper.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Yes.

Linda 11:10

Because we make our lists of pros and cons and we make it again this very mental, like a solely mental exercise. And we completely neglect the wisdom of our bodies and the wisdom of our hearts, which it needs to be, it's like all of these pieces need to come together. I think that's also how I kind of see maturity is that it is to use kind of this word of like integration, but having space for all the different parts of ourselves to be able to hold them in some kind of coherence and some kind of resonance so that one aspect isn't just running 180 miles an hour in one direction, and the other aspects are like standing still or even going in the opposite direction. Right. Right. There's a degree of responsibility, which is not one of my favorite words, but there is a degree of responsibility that we need to take in our lives in order to make important decisions and in order to move forward. And part of that too is being responsible to and for our emotions. You know, like being able to recognize when you maybe have done something you wished you hadn't. A lot of emotion comes up around that. There's shame, there can be grief, embarrassment. And if you can't stand in those, it's really hard to say to somebody like, hey, I screwed up, I I recognize this, I'm really sorry, I want to make a repair, I, you know, can we talk about this?

unknown 12:53

Yeah.

Linda 12:54

But if you're feeling defended, if you're feeling like, oh, I can't possibly admit that, even though the other person probably already knows, but you know, just it's so hard to look at that. It's really hard to move forward in a relationship. It's hard to do a lot of things. Yeah. And I think we end up with a a more shallow version of our life when we do that. And especially again, I think there are so many emotions and feelings that have little room in our society because they are quote unquote seen as being not useful. Yes. And they're not forward-facing. They're not, you know, like you were like so many of the ones that you just mentioned. Grief, shame, regret, all of which are, I think, an inherent part of what it means to be human and to have this connection with um with our past selves, with our present, with our future. Like we need to have all of those faculties available to us. And again, I think what you said at the very beginning, it's like, but that's not the only thing we get to feel. Right. It's it's like we don't have to become mired in regret.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Right.

Linda 14:14

But it can be like, oh, I've reflected and I regret that I did this. And now how do I feel about that now?

unknown 14:21

Yeah.

Linda 14:22

Can I give myself permission to make a different choice? Can I go back and repair this relationship? Can I, if I if I'm in a new relationship, can I make take a different stance?

SPEAKER_04 14:33

Yep.

Linda 14:34

And if we don't allow ourselves to feel the regret, I mean, I think it's like we parcel those parts off from ourselves and then we continue on the same loop over and over again. Yeah. Yeah, I think having been your client, um, one of the beautiful things about the work that you do is giving women the space and the listening ear. Because Linda's an incredible listener. She's one of the best I've ever experienced. Um, but but Linda, you really you create that space and you you're so good at holding it for somebody, a woman, to really explore those things, to really talk about those things that are hard sometimes. Like we we all have things that happen in our lives that we wish hadn't or wish didn't. And sometimes we're the actor and sometimes we're not. Like sometimes these things happen in our realm and we didn't really have any control over them. And I know, like, just from being with you, like we processed a lot of that for me. Yeah, a lot of those things where it's just like these things are so hard to talk about, and I don't necessarily want to put them out, you know, in the public. I but having somebody who's willing to witness and to say, like, just to reflect back. Like, yeah, that's really hard. And yeah, you did the best you could. And and also to ask the really important questions, like, well, where do you go from here? And all of those things. I think that can be really important. And that's probably why a lot of us struggle, is we don't have that place, that person to go to, yeah, to talk about these things. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think it's um thank you for for sharing that. It makes me really happy to hear it, touches my heart. And it it is because it I think you're exactly right that there are because of the lack, I think, of emotional maturity and comfort with emotions, there are so few places where we have the welcome of for all of our experience to say what is true, even if we might deem it as ugly or bad or unproductive. Unproductive. Exactly. And it's like, you know, so often if we do that, what we're met with is is not that warm welcome. It's somebody who like, you know, flinches. Sometimes it can just be a flinch, you know, like there, because we still do, even if we're not aware of it, live in these animal bodies. Like we can sense if, like, okay, their face changed right there. I said too much, right? I was, I was too much. You know, and and even to the point of like people trying to fix emotions, I think that's such a common response is like, or bypass them again, because if we're not comfortable with those things in ourselves, you know, it's like somebody is going through grief and comes to you with their heart, and your response is this too shall pass. It's like shut up. You're making me uncomfortable. Right. And it's it's said from a place of love and I think just a lack of awareness that it's like, yes, that is true. And it can feel really minimizing in the moment that, like, okay, I think this is enough of this grief right now, and I want you to move on.

SPEAKER_04 17:53

Yeah. Yeah.

Linda 17:55

And then it it again, it separates us from ourselves, it separates us from one another. Um, and it really hampers our ability to have these deep emotional connections that I think as human beings, most of us we I think we just need and really desire. Right. Well, there's a depth to life that's hard to experience if you don't have that full range of emotions. If you can't experience them, sit with them, let them flow through. Yes. But I think I do think as a culture, and this isn't this is not my unique thought, um, it's kind of obvious that we're really bad at grief in general. So, and just the thought that people talk about like living a life of no regrets, like I don't get how that's possible. And I I get the idea of like go for it, you know, don't hold back because you regret that you didn't go for it. That's one kind of regret. But there are all kinds of regrets. It's like, you know, not making the phone call that you should have maybe could have made and didn't, and then the person passes on, you know, it's like, oh, I could have talked to them one last time. I thought about making the call and I didn't do it.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Yeah, yeah.

Linda 19:08

It's not like a huge regret, but it's just one of those things where it's like, I'm I'm not gonna gloss over that. Right. Yes, yeah. It's um I think like you said, it's something that we're just really uncomfortable with. And I think it's hard to live a life of reflection and contemplation. And again, that that maturity, that wisdom, that depth that really requires us to say, like, yeah, I went for it and I still have regrets. You know, like there's always, I think if we live a life of no regrets, it just means that we haven't contemplated our lives. You're not doing much. I'm just gonna exactly I'm just gonna. Standards are pretty low. You know, it's like there's so many things that I regret. I don't let them, it's not like they're just like, again, it's not this, it's the only thing that I experience and I'm like let it define yourself. Yeah, which I think is the fear of people. I've had so many clients that have some version of, but if I open the door to my grief, if I open the door to my pain, it's gonna come in and it's just gonna wipe me out. And that's that's all I'm going to experience. Yep. I'll never stop crying. Yep, exactly. That fear that it's like it's all or it's nothing. And so at that point, I'm gonna choose nothing and I'm just gonna button up my shirt and you know, put on the happy face, and I just carry this really large, it's like I imagine it like this, you know, almost like Santa, but instead of lack of like presence, it's like I'm carrying this giant bag of coal over my shoulder that I'm dragging while I'm smiling a lot, like, no, there's nothing back there, you know. It's everything's good here. Yeah, exactly. And it's um and the irony is that the opposite is often true. Oh, yeah. It's like the more that we allow for our emotions to move, right? I mean, again, this is I'm not the first person to have said this, but it's like e motion, motion. It's meant to move through us, it's meant to move us. And when it does, there's often it leaves much less of a residue. It's the things that we, whether we're conscious of it or not, don't allow ourselves to feel that end up defining our lives. Because again, it's like almost like with the good girl and the rebel, then we live in in the the defensiveness or the defendedness against that thing, and it still ends up ruling our lives because we miss the totality of who we are. Yes, and we end up doing things like drowning our sorrows, which is interesting that we use that phrase, but. You know, you and I both love a glass of wine, but Linda gets a devilish look on her face. It's Friday. I wish we were having a glass of wine together today. Um, but but you know, there's that whole thing about like drowning your sorrows. Like, I don't want to look at this, so I'm gonna drink a lot or do whatever. Um, it's doesn't go away, of course, but no. And it's like, you know, I mean, for that was one of the things that for a long time, you know, I write about this in my book Homecoming. For a long time, I all of my grief in my life like the was ahead of me. And last year, you know, my dog Sophie passed away and she had been, she was like, she was a soulmate of mine, like she truly she truly was. And I had been dreading dreading that day for years. I thought about it. I didn't know how I was ever gonna get through it. Um and after it happened, I allowed the grief to just be like it it would rack, like move through my body. There would be like the convulsive sobs. There was for a week I would just turn off the pumps to the pool and I would lay on its surface and just stare at the sky for an hour because it was August and it was like 105. Um And then it it it moved through much faster than what I thought it was, like than I had imagined that it would. And it still comes up, it's not like it's gone. But it was if I hadn't allowed myself to feel it fully, I think it would be still be so much more dense than it is right now. Yeah, I was worried about you when it happened. Um, I remember exactly where I was when yeah I got the text for me. I was standing in my mother's den and I got the text that Sophie was gone and I burst into tears. And my mother said, What's wrong? And I told her, and I was really worried about I wished I could be with you because I I knew what Sophie meant to you and I know what she continues to mean to you. And yeah, so I was what do I want to say? Like, not happy, but like I've been relieved to see how you're moving through this process. Yeah, yeah. And it still brings like even just having this conversation, right? We're we're teary-eyed, we're both teary-eyed right now, and it's you know, it's like those are the things, like that's that's the the meaning and the connection of life, and it's still, you know, it'll catch me off guard. Uh and I know that there's other, you know, griefs that are probably gonna be even bigger than that that are ahead of me. And yet I think that there is this the more that we're able to turn towards all of our feelings, whether it's like that's I think that was the wisdom of my inner volcano when I was younger, you know. I I was called my mom called me the siren because she's like like a police siren, because she's like, you flare up out of nowhere, and just as fast it was completely gone. And it's like I think that the more the more that I mature, quote unquote, it's about recapturing some of that from a different standpoint, like not just flaring up and like we were saying, like vomiting emotion all over everyone, but at the same time, it's like still having the space for that expression of it and then coming back to center. Because then it's like, oh, okay, here I am again. Like there's just um and it does make for a richer life. And yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a perfect segue into irreverent maturity. Oh, yeah, let's talk about that. Talk to me, goose. Yeah, because maturity oftentimes, like we were saying at the beginning, feels a little fuddy-duddy, not gonna lie. No, it does. I I picture like church ladies, like, you know.

unknown 26:13

Yeah.

Linda 26:14

Like older church ladies. Yes. No, no offense to any who might be listening.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Um we love you older church ladies.

Linda 26:21

We do, some of them. Anyway, um, I mean, the ones I know, I don't just generally love all of them because I don't know them. But when I think of irreverent maturity, it's this thing that you and I have talked about a bunch. It's really, it's that mature unto oneself. It's having maturity, yes, but having that sort of solid sense of self, but then doing whatever the hell you want. It's like it's not having the kind of maturity that we think about as a society of like somebody who never eats a cookie for breakfast, you know, like that kind of thing. Where like, oh, she's so mature, she she's so um sensible.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

Uh-huh.

unknown 27:03

Uh-huh.

Linda 27:04

I think irreverent maturity is more somebody who is wise and centered and fully alive and doing the things that are important to her, and you know, who cares about the shoulds. She's choosing what's meaningful to her, and she's having fun, and she's wearing bright colors, and she laughs a lot, and she's fun to be with, and she cries at the movies, which she goes to a lot, and she loves to dance, even if she's bad at it by anyone's standards. She just does not care what other people think. That's that's a partial definition. What do you think, Linda?

SPEAKER_00 27:48

I just want to like step into that picture that you so beautifully painted there.

Linda 27:52

I'm like, yes, please, like, just more of that. And I think what you were saying, there's a sense of what I heard too, is like how we tend to think it's kind of like the same thing as responsibility. And you were even saying that there's a certain like relationship between maturity and responsibility. And so often those things become about doing the quote unquote right thing.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Right.

Linda 28:20

Right. Like doing the shoulds, doing like being responsible for um yeah, just being a responsible person. Well, we call it adulting these days, right? Like we call it adulting. Uh-huh. The sensible choices and da-da-da-da-da. And it's um I just love that picture that you paint of irreverent maturity, is again like a woman to me, it's very similar. It's like I've gone through these cycles of life. I am more deeply myself. I I know myself more, I take myself less seriously. I think that's a piece of irreverent maturity too, is because when we do have that deep sense of who we are, it's less about the persona, it's less about the mask, it's less about who the version of ourselves that we present to the world. And so there's more room for play, there's more room for experimentation, there's more room for who gives a fuck, right? Like, but not of this, like I'm gonna do the opposite, right? Not that just walking our own path with delight. Yes, yes, I love that walking our own path with delight. I love that. I think that's a great way to sum it up. I think there's a piece too about visibility. Say more that there can be a a hiding sometimes, you know, that comes with supposedly being mature. It's like, you know, like hiding things that maybe you love but you don't feel acceptable to others. You know, it could be anything too. I'm not talking about some like weird, like, oh, I take lovers in the afternoon, but I mean like, you know, it could be like I love to color in coloring books or I love to whatever it is, like I love to go out and walk at midnight under the stars and the full moon, things that we might consider irresponsible for a woman to do. There can be a hiding of those things, but when I think of the a woman who's irreverently mature, shouldn't hide those things. She's like, Yeah, I this is what I do, and I love it. Yeah, the word ownership comes up for me and sovereignty, right? Like sovereignty, yes. The ownership, self-ownership of like, this is what I love to do, and I'm gonna do it. Yes. I might be wearing very bright colors while I do. Exactly. I might be wearing nothing at all. Who knows? Who knows? Yeah, I love that. I love I the the phrase that just popped into my head when you said that was act your age. It's the opposite of acting your age. It's like age isn't really the consideration. It's who am I, what do I love, what do I want to be doing, who do I want to be, who do I want to do it and be it with? Like who are my people? Like, there's also I I think when I think of irreverent maturity, it's you know, not suffering fools. It's not not wanting to waste the time or the energy. It's like, you know, if you if you are interested in being somebody who can handle me, then by yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Yeah, yeah, it's like that. I think it was Helen Miren's quote.

Linda 31:55

She's like, she's like, what I wish I would have done was I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like when I was younger, is say fuck off way more often. You know, I think that's irreverent maturity. It's the integration of the wild woman. It's that like, yeah, fuck off. Why am I trying to, why am I trying to appease you? Why am I trying to fit and contort myself into this version of myself that I think that you're gonna like? I'm just gonna, yeah. I'm I'm unapologetically me. That's something that comes up too. Yes.

unknown 32:26

Yeah.

Linda 32:27

Yeah. I was looking at my wall because I had a card that I realized fell down and I've moved it, but that you gave me a while ago that has the queen of the unapologetic on it. I need to put it back on my wall because I love it. It's a great reminder. Yeah, I think with irreverent maturity, you don't have time for those apologies. I mean, you just don't like sure, if you if you hurt somebody, you apologize, but it's not about apologizing for who you are. Sorry, Linda, what were you gonna say? I forgot. It probably wasn't important. I'm sorry, I trampled all over your words.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

No, you had something, it was coming forth.

Linda 33:08

But yeah, I I I love the picture of that kind of woman. It's interesting to me that I have a hard time seeing it as a younger woman. I'm not sure what that's about. That's something for me to contemplate, but I think of it as more somebody who's like hit her 60s, maybe her 70s, who really knows herself, who, you know, is just like we said, unapologetically herself. Yeah. And I think it, I mean, I I don't picture it as a young woman either. And I think part of that is that it perhaps requires a bit of that, you know, like lived in wisdom. Like, you know, I love it's Marian Woodman who says that like wisdom is the the marriage of of knowledge, but with experience, right? It's the knowledge that we gain in the head with our minds, but the experience that we've lived with our bodies. And so it's like we can't we can't get there without living into it. Right. And it's like that's just the nature of the game. I remember years ago in a meditation, I heard something along the lines of like just live into the cycle, like live into where you are right now. And it's like that's where wisdom comes from, is like we're not trying to get ahead of ourselves, we're not trying to present ourselves in a certain light that we're not at yet. It's like we're just live our who we are in that moment, and we live into that kind of irreverent maturity. Yeah, I love that. I love that. It helps me to see why I'm having trouble saying it as a younger woman. I think it's just the nature of the beast. Like there's only so much life that we've lived, you know, and I think that there are definitely people who are mature before their time, you know, like to a certain degree. Sometimes I wonder, I'm like, yeah, what why is that, you know, for myself too? Like there's parts like I my astrologer once told me, like, Linda, you're aging in reverse, which I thought was also a very interesting picture of irreverent maturity because it was like it's like I'm growing into the greater irreverent part of it. Yeah. Um as I get older. But yeah, I think it's we have to know ourselves. And I think the journey to get there it requires time. It requires lived experience. And that's not to say that we can't have that when we're younger, but it's just like that's just the nature of time on earth, is like the longer we're here, the more experiences we're gonna have, the more we're kind of like tumbled around, you know, and demolished and become more of more of who we are if things are kind of going along the way that that they can. Yeah. Yeah, you're making me think of my dear friend Peggy, which I know I've talked to you about her before, but she just turned 80. Um, and she she's sort of my role model for retirement when I think about retirement. And I forget how long she's been retired now, but I remember I remember when she did. It's been maybe 15 years, I'm not even sure. Um, but she just like like during the pandemic, I was worried about her because she lives alone, she has a dog, but I'm checking in on her and she was like, Oh, you know, it's just been the best summer. It's like I get up every day and it's like I'm a kid. I I like put on yesterday's t-shirt and I think, what am I gonna do today? It's like this is like wide open day, you know, and she and it made me remember like when I was a kid. Sort of those long the summer felt long, like it's hard to imagine now, but it felt long and felt like there were these all these days of just like no plans and what am I gonna do today? And I like I'd forgotten all of that, but when she was talking about it, it made me remember. And I just thought, oh yeah, I want to be Peggy when I get older.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Ditto.

Linda 37:13

And she's she does all kinds of things. She paints, she writes, she walks her dog. And then she sent me a really funny email one day. This is also during the pandemic, that said, Well, I think I've scraped the bottom of my entertainment barrel because I waxed the kitchen floor this morning. Yes. There's like a certain, I think that what that points to also is that freedom that comes with irreverent maturity, right? It is that that reclamation of um I get to do whatever I want to do.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

Yeah.

Linda 37:46

Like I get to see where the day takes me. Like every day is kind of an adventure. And it feels like, and this is actually, I remember now what I was gonna say before. It's like this is such a redefinition. It feels like and the way that you painted the picture of it, such a redefinition of maturity.

SPEAKER_04 38:04

Yeah.

Linda 38:05

And what that what that looks like, what that feels like, what that means culturally, and I think especially for women. Yes. When I think of maturity, I think of closed down, like confined. Like when I think of irreverent maturity, it's the exact opposite. It's Peggy waking up in the morning and being like, ooh, what am I gonna do today?

unknown 38:31

You know.

Linda 38:32

Yes. And I have to say, she's had a lot of hardship over the past few years. So it's not that life is blissful, but at the same time, like she moves through her days, most of them like that. I think that's part of it too, is that um I was talking to uh my neighbor Dave the other day, and one of the puppies, you know, he's in his 70s, and uh one of the puppies jumped up on him and scraped his arm and literally scraped off a hole. Like it was just it was bad.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Let's just put it that way. Because you know, the claws of the the elder skin.

Linda 39:13

And he's just um he's like, Linda, when you get to my age, he's like, you know, you realize you've seen a lot. There's just like he's like, it's fine, it's everything's fine, you know. I was like, oh my god, I want more of that. And it's like, I think we saw that too, that there is a perspective. I guess that's the word that I'm looking for, is that like when we've had this, if we are blessed enough to have the gift of a long and well-lived life, that it's we gain that perspective that even when we have a hard year, or even if half my arm was scraped off by an exuberant puppy, it's like in the grand scheme of things, like I'm still here, I'm still alive, and I'm grateful for this this journey. You know, it's like not sweating some of the small stuff, um enjoying the hell out of the good stuff. Enjoying the hell out of the good stuff and letting it in. And I was thinking about that, you know, and I know we have to wrap up here, but with the the pandemic, and especially, you know, here in Texas, and it was a different kind of situation depending on where you lived in the country. But what I saw over and over again was midlife kind of people being the most like super stressed out about the pandemic and like really wanting to protect their parents, and the older generation being like, meh, yeah, it's it is what it is. Kind of there was just less of that. And I think maybe it is that sense of like, I'm not gonna give up three years of my life because I don't know how many years I have left. So I'm gonna let in all the good stuff, and it's like a different relationship of risk and reward, I think also that might come with a little bit more of that irreverent maturity. Yeah, I also agree that Texas is very different because I don't think we had as much of that up here in New York.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

That's true. We had a lot of it.

Linda 41:24

We had some of it. My parents ate out way more than I was comfortable with. But then again, I thought, well, it's their business, not mine. Um, we weren't spending time together. So it didn't really impact me, but I did worry about them. So I I definitely fell in that category that you're talking about. But things weren't quite as free and easy up here as they were in Texas. Our pandemic lasted longer.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

That's true.

Linda 41:50

Well, we could get off on that, but we won't.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Well, wrap up there.

Linda 41:56

We will. Thank you for listening. Please review, rate, share, subscribe. Pass us along to people you love who might enjoy listening to us. We so appreciate it. And if you want to email us, please do. Our email is in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you. We love hearing from our listeners. Yes. Let us know what what you make of a reverent maturity, how maturity feels to you, where you've seen it in ways that are enlivening to you rather than uh, you know, any of the old kind of fuddy duddy things that maybe like Laura and I had imagined. Like what does a juicy maturity look and feel like? We'd love to know. I love that question. All right, till next time. Bye. Bye.