Dr. Maya Angelou: Her Latest Re-Invention

(1928 – 2014)

Here’s what the media deluge says: Maya Angelou passed. Stop the presses!  She didn’t really die. She simply did what this magnificent literary genius has always done: she re-invented herself – again.

For Maya Angelou, re-invention was survival – all of her life – dodging, slamming, and bunting that nasty curve ball that life had pitched to her, using it to her advantage. Now, in failing illness, she stepped up to the plate again – one more re-invention.

For little Maya, named Marguerite Annie Johnson at birth, childhood was a horrific, traumatizing event. As a little girl, her parents split. She and her brother were sent to live with an aunt in Stamps, Arkansas around 1932. Not a hotbed of liberal acceptance! She saw brutal racial discrimination, unthinkable trauma and went into complete silence for several years. When life crashes in and you slam into a wall, isn’t it interesting how you adapt?

The re-inventions go on and on – and we know them well. In 1957, she was now actress and singer,  re-invents herself as civil rights leader. After living in Egypt and Guana, she befriends Malcolm X and Dr. Marten Luther King and comes home.  With their assassinations and her profound grief, she was urged by James Baldwin to write her memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, reinventing herself as an all time best selling author.

Phenomenal Woman – a gift from Maya Angelou to you

 For all of us beautiful, phenomenal women who are re-inventing, re-creating, or starting over again, Maya Angelou has a gift for us. Through all her trauma, all her success, all her fear, all her achievements, she remained a “Phenomenal Woman”, and proud of it.  This poem is breathtaking spoken from her lips – a gift of love to all women.

Please listen: Click Here.

When we begin to doubt ourselves or what we can accomplish, I will turn to Maya Angelou for inspiration. I hope you’ll join me.

I never had the chance to ask her, but I know she would unequivocally agree with me on this: You’re not getting older, you’re getting started℠.

Passed? Not this lady! She’s re-inventing herself again. I can feel it in my feminine gut.

Did anyone else besides me hear that newborn baby cry? Watch out world, here she comes again!

Photo Credit: pennstatenews via photopin cc

Gilda Radner

(June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989)

Hats off to a woman who made the world laugh at itself. It’s the 25^th anniversary of the untimely death of the funniest darn woman I ever met. Gilda Radner lived across Hill Street from me in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1968. We worked together at WCBN radio station, at the University of Michigan. I recall thinking she was destined for greatness.

Every time she walked in the room, she made you laugh. She was one of those people who had “I want to be with her” written all over her. You simply rose to a higher level of pheromones when Gilda was around.

She didn’t need to die. She was misdiagnosed for 11 months before doctors figured it out. She had advanced ovarian cancer. Remission was hers for a few years, but in the end, during the height of her wondrously humorous career, during her marriage to Gene Wilder, she succumbed. I miss her still, today.

Most of us remember her for the hilarious “Roseanne Roseannadanna” and “Baba Wawa” in the beginning glory days of Saturday Night Live with Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and John Belushi. She was the first female comic on the show – a first for women. Her parodies of Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut were legendary.

When she went in for her last CT scan, she begged not to be sedated. She told Gene Wilder she would never wake up. She was right. She went into a coma and died three days later.

Through senseless loss, like the passing of Gilda at such a young age, and the silencing of a gift that gave us the belly laughs so badly needed in such an anxiety ridden society we were alerted to the dangers of ovarian cancer. The gene is transferred from mother to daughter. Her mother, her aunt, her grandmother… wouldn’t you think they would have connected the dots?

That was another time and another place but because of her death, the disease has been studied at the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center at Cedars-Sinai (established by Gene Wilder) to screen high-risk candidates. It’s no longer the absolute death sentence it once was. Still very dangerous, but it can be handled if discovered early.

Gilda, you make me laugh to this very day. One quirky grin, and I can be in stitches. I miss you. We all do. I can only begin to imagine the laughs we would have had over the last 25 years. Thank you for the short, sweet, very wacky, zany, and poignant moments with you.

Ellen DeGeneres – 56

(January 26, 1958)

“Just go up to someone on the street and say, ‘You’re it’.  Then run away.”  – Ellen DeGeneres. If humor is the best medicine, Ellen doctors us all – including herself.  She Loves Life Now through her gift of laughter.  Her life has been no joke, however.  She’s seen it all: abuse, rejection, hatred, joy, and wild success.

Our lesson from Ellen is to keep on laughing, even through the tears.

“Laugh.  Laugh as much as you can.  Laugh until you cry.  Cry until you laugh.  Keep doing it even if people are passing you on the street saying, “I can’t tell if that person is laughing or crying, but either way they seem crazy, let’s walk faster.”  Emote.  It’s okay.  It shows you are thinking and feeling.” ― Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously… I’m Kidding

No, life hasn’t been a giggly game of Chutes and Ladders for Ellen.  As a teen, she watched her mother struggle with breast cancer while secretly struggling against sexual abuse from her stepfather.  In 1997, she declared to the world “Yep, I’m Gay” on the cover of Time Magazine.  For that courageous coming-out, she paid a price: losing her Ellen show, the near end of her partnership with Anne Heche – and the resulting media swirl that led her into 3 years of deep depression.

Laughter literally saved her life.  In 1980, when she was 21 years old, she lost the first love of her life abruptly to an auto crash.  That incident caused her to write her first monologue: “A Phone Call to God.”  She made us laugh about mortality.  It was her first stand-up job, emceeing at a New Orleans comedy club. Her performance won her the 1984 Showtime’s Funniest Person in America award.

After many loves and breakups, Ellen married her beautiful girlfriend Portia de Rossi in 2008, at their L.A. home.  She says, “What can I say.  I’m the luckiest girl in the world!”

For other fun factoids about Ellen, check out this article in People Magazine.

Like the rest of us, Ellen’s ridden the roller coaster of life through the ups and downs, the pain and the joy.  She teaches us to love ourselves just as we are, to laugh through it all – that life is always worth the chance to enjoy the ride.  You just have to keep going.  She’s the epitome of my message to many of my clients, “What if it were just fun?”

Please comment about what Ellen means to you.  Also, if you have suggestions for other women 50+ that deserve honoring, please let us know.

So there we were, my daughter and I, nestled in our seats at an off-Broadway play in the Big Apple. The show was Mr. Burns, a smart, offbeat play in which cartoon character Bart Simpson and his friends help a post-apocalyptic America recover.

Since every word counted, my daughter and I were the picture of rapt concentration. Yet we struggled to hear what the actors were saying.

Now, it’s easy for anyone who’s had too much wine at dinner beforehand to fall asleep in the darkened theater. And someone apparently had. We heard deep, regular breaths. Loud guttural snoring.

The entire theater audience started to fidget. A woman three rows ahead of us stood up to see who had fallen asleep. Assuming it was a man, I said to my daughter, “Wouldn’t you think someone sitting near him would wake him up?”

No one did. The snorer was so loud that he was upstaging the actors’ rapid-fire dialogue. And the snoring continued for the entire first act.

How could someone be so rude?

I decided the snoring was intentionally being pumped through the speakers as another way of eliciting emotion from the audience. Especially since the actors didn’t seem to be bothered at all. How clever of them, I thought. It was a ploy.

Still, I decided that I was tired of being “had.” Whether this was a real person disturbing us or a trick of the play, I would leave at intermission. At Intermission, I turned to the couple next to us to share my irritation. The theater had emptied as patrons streamed into the lobby for the short break. That’s when everything changed.

We all saw her. At the far end of our row, an older woman sat in a wheelchair next an oxygen tank, which was hooked to a ventilator in her mouth. The “snoring” was her ventilator. She was alert, though unable to move. It dawned on us that she was here to enjoy the play. Just like the rest of us.

It’s all in your perception, isn’t it? The second act began, and I tuned out her “snoring.” Of course, it was only right that she shared the play with us. We could hear over her.

This story reinforces what I tell my audiences and clients on a regular basis: Your brain believes everything you tell it. In that scenario, I chose not to remain offended.

Our five senses constantly deliver data for our brains to interpret. At the play, I let my assumptions get in the way of really hearing. In my six-step process, step two, which is Adjust, allows us the precious freedom to redefine how we hear and see the world around us.

Next time someone disrupts your life, tell yourself, “I choose not be offended.” You may just find a woman on a ventilator that explains it all.