Tag: friendship

Walking To Catch Up
fitness · nature · walking

Walking To Catch Up

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

I think I am developing a new Sunday habit – a walking chat.

Or maybe a chatting walk?

Either way, I’m having a great time catching up with friends while we walk along various trails in my community (and near by.)

A selfie - I’m sitting in the driver’s seat in my car wearing sunglasses, a black  baseball cap, and a blue fleece jacked with a Fastsigns logo. The sign is shining on the lower part of my face and I’m smirking.
I always bring my smirk on a walk. You know, just in case. Image description: A selfie – I’m sitting in the driver’s seat in my car wearing sunglasses, a black  baseball cap, and a blue fleece jacked with a Fastsigns logo. The sign is shining on the lower part of my face and I’m smirking.

In the Before Times, I probably would have just waited until we could swing a time to sit down together in someone’s house or a cafe and we’d catch up on each other’s lives while we snacked and drank tea.

I’m still strongly pro-snack (and pro-tea) but here in the During Times I don’t find it as relaxing to be in cafes or even in other people’s homes. I’ve met a few people for tea – sometimes on patios and sometimes inside – but I’ve also missed seeing a lot of people who I would normally catch up with in person every few months.

Recently, my friend Elaine wanted to bounce a few ideas off of me and I was about to suggest that we meet on Zoom on Sunday morning when I impulsively suggested that we meet for a walk instead.

As I was starting out on my ideas walk with Elaine that Sunday, my cousin Sheri, who I haven’t seen in ages, texted me about walking with her later that day. I jumped at the chance for two walks and two chats and I really had a relaxing, connected-feeling Sunday as a result.

This past week, my friend Sandy and I realized that we had gone too long without a chat and decided that this Sunday, we would take our conversation on the road. (Ok, so it was actually a path but it had the same effect.)

We did an hour’s walk and crammed in about 3 hours of conversation. I suspect that anyone overhearing us thought we were on fast- forward 😉

And, once again, my Sunday found me feeling relaxed and connected.

Two people's shadows among the shadows of leaves on a gravel pathway. There are fallen leaves among the gravel and there is a patch of greenery on the upper left side.
Sandy and I are VERY shadowy figures indeed. Please note that Sandy is not that much taller than me nor does she have a triangular head. Shadows can be deceiving. Image description: Our shadows among the shadows of leaves on a gravel pathway. There are fallen leaves among the gravel and there is a patch of greenery on the upper left side.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d still love to cozy into a chair with my hands wrapped around a cup of tea and have in-depth conversation but right now those conversations aren’t as relaxing as they once were. I get distracted by the ambient anxiety of living in our Covid-world.

And Zoom chats are good but they can’t fully replace being in someone’s comforting and invigorating presence.

Walking to catch up is the perfect solution for me. I get to have a bit more movement in my day, I get to actually SEE my friends and, we get to have the sort of wandering and satisfying conversations you can really only have in-person. 

I’m definitely making plans to do this regularly and catch up with everyone I have been missing. 

Who’s up for a walk next Sunday?

A wide gravel path with trees and grass on both sides is in partial sunlight. A park bench painted in rainbow/Pride colours can be seen ahead on the right side.
This not the road less travelled, it’s the path we took! Image description: a wide gravel path with trees and grass on both sides is in partial sunlight. A park bench painted in rainbow/Pride colours can be seen ahead on the right side.
aging · blogging

Silver Sam

Sam B1 Comment

Tracy and I often joke about all the things we have in common. We’re both immigrants to Canada who came here with our parents when we were young. We’re very close to the same age. We both have American PhDs. We wrote disserations in ethics. We started our careers in the Philosophy Department at Western in the early 90s. And we’ve had a multi-decade friendship and conversation about body image and physical fitness in our lives and the lives of women more generally. Then there’s the “fittest by fifty challenge,” this blog, and our book.

“[Fit at Mid-Life] reinforces the message that fitness can and should be for everyone, no matter their age, size, gender, or ability.” ––SELF

What if you could be fitter now than you were in your twenties? And what if you could achieve it while feeling more comfortable and confident in your body? 

Here’s what we looked like when our book was published. Promotional photos are from the Amazon site. Thanks Ruth! (Ruthless Images)

Tracy and Sam as blondes

Now we’re aging and going grey together. Tracy first! See Tracy enters the grey zone. Tracy’s move to grey/silver was deliberate and planned and involved hair salons. Mine was accidental and a result of COVID-19.

I love Tracy’s silver hair and think it looks beautiful. I confess that silver envy is part of my motivation but I am not sure mine will look as good.

Luckily Sarah owns clippers and has been tidying up my undercut as it grows. Here’s my latest bikes and boats haircut. Gradually there’s less and less blonde and more and more of my hair’s natural colour.

But the thing is I never was someone who coloured her hair to cover grey. Here’s 80s me with a similar haircut and colour scheme. In wilder times it was also pink and purple. I’ve also never coloured the undercut bits and hiding my age was never part of my intention. I’ve always thought of hair colour as fun. I like tattoos rather than jewelry because they can’t get lost. And hair colour rather than make up because you don’t have to put it on and take it off each day.

And yet.

Here am in, in my 50s, in an administrative role as an academic, frequently sitting around tables with men in suits and women in dresses, almost of the women my age with blonde streaked hair. It’s ubiquitous.

I know why we do it. It’s easy. Highlights aren’t that expensive. The blonde is easier on your complexion. It’s closer to the lighter colour your hair is naturally turning. It’s forgiving in terms of growing in. It’s flattering.

But what if it no longer feels fun? It looks (except for my secret graying undercut) mainstream. What if it starts to feel mandatory?

Blondness is also complicated.

Apparently just 2 percent of adult white women in North America are blonde naturally. You wouldn’t guess that looking around campus or at the mall.

I hadn’t thought of blondness as connected to normative identities and whiteness until I read this article, The Pursuit of Blondness.

“Blondness, then, exists as a complicated form of self-expression. It can signal youth, beauty, privilege, and conformity. But it can also represent rebellion, independence, and the demand to be looked at and respected. It’s a choice that’s both distinctly personal and deeply intertwined with what society has taught people to value. Rankine and Lucas have a term for that: complicit freedom.“

Anyway, I’m growing it out because of #PandemicHair. Maybe I’ll keep it its natural colour. Maybe I’ll revert to blonde. It’s easy to do. It’s shockingly more dark than I remembered!

Cheddar, by the way, is a completely natural blonde.

Sam and her yoga dog

What are you doing with your hair colour during the pandemic? Any post pandemic hair colour plans?

fitness

Friendship, fun movement, and false dichotomies

Sam B1 Comment

This weekend’s hot New York Times Health story, Smash the Wellness Industry, appeared multiple times in various social media newsfeeds. A few blog readers and Facebook page followers even messaged me about it. That’s how much up our alley it is.

Here’s a quote from it:

“If these wellness influencers really cared about health, they might tell you that yo-yo dieting in women may increase their risk for heart disease, according to a recent preliminary study presented to the American Heart Association. They might also promote behaviors that increase community and connection, like going out to a meal with a friend or joining a book club. These activities are sustainable and have been scientifically linked to improved health, yet are often at odds with the solitary, draining work of trying to micromanage every bite of food that goes into your mouth.

The wellness industry is the diet industry, and the diet industry is a function of the patriarchal beauty standard under which women either punish themselves to become smaller or are punished for failing to comply, and the stress of this hurts our health too.”

Mostly I liked the message. That story quotes from an older piece in Scientific American about the health benefits of social connections.

“A long lunch out with co-workers or a late-night conversation with a family member might seem like a distraction from other healthy habits, such as going to the gym or getting a good night’s sleep. But more than 100 years’ worth of research shows that having a healthy social life is incredibly important to staying physically healthy. Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis.

The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study’s numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity.”

But that’s a false dichotomy, exercise or social connections. (What’s a false dichotomy,? From Wikipedia: False dichotomy is a dichotomy that is not jointly exhaustive (there are other alternatives), or that is not mutually exclusive (the alternatives overlap), or that is possibly neither.)

For many of us, exercise is a thing we do with friends. It is our way of connecting with others socially. I know very serious athletes train alone following a personalized training plan but that’s not my world. My exercise world is mostly about doing fun physical things with friends.

There is a group of us associated with the blog all training for a long cycling holiday in Newfoundland. We’ll have the time away together but we’re also ramping up our weekend riding. We’re putting kilometers on the bike, stopping for coffee and lunch and mid-afternoon ice cream. Here’s Sarah, David and me.

Samantha, Sarah, and David having second breakfast at a cafe in Hespeler.

While I was out riding with Sarah and David, Susan was out riding with Cate, and Tracy was out at hot yoga + brunch with friends in London. That group’s photos shared on Facebook often make me wish I still lived in London and could go to hot yoga + brunch with Tracy. They look like they’re having fun

Now I will say that my recent knee woes have made me rethink doing all my social activities in the context of sports and working out. I’ve given up soccer and Aikido and I miss those communities so much. I thought that I’d just move and find a new martial arts community but the injured knee can’t take that. Snipe sailing has been a good alternative. It’s outdoors and active and I like the people even if it’s not as physical as the stuff I used to do.

So maybe don’t put all your social connections in one basket. But still, my main point is that social connections don’t compete with physical activity. For the curlers and the golfers and the runners and the cyclists and the derby girls these things definitely go together.

Let’s go for a bike ride, friends!