“I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life.” —Louise Hay
Hello Reader!
Welcome to Grief, Grit & Grace: A Heroine’s Journey of Aging.
My name is Marcella Friel, and I’m a 60-something woman who gets gob-smacked, slack-jawed stares just about every time I tell someone how old I really am.
Why would a woman who looks half her age be writing a Substack about aging?
Because, contrary to popular belief, appearance alone is not a hall pass when it comes to falling prey to the ravages of time.
Just like you, I have to make peace every day with those “bitch lines” furrowing the sides of my mouth.
Just like you, I’m learning—slowly—to love the orange-peel cellulite on my belly and the crepey skin on my forearms.
Just like you, I feel the sagging and dragging and aching and paining in my low back, hips, and knees.
And just like you, I have regarded these struggles as a personal failure—until a simple, obvious truth took root in the marrow of my bones:
Aging is the nature of life.
Every single living being—the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, those that fly, those that swim—those we see and those we unsee—are inescapably bound to the time-space continuum.
It stands to reason, then, that there’s nothing personal about aging.
And yet we—especially us gals stepping into the third act of our lives—experience it profoundly personally.
Having studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism since 1987, I’ve been well trained (at least theoretically) in surfing “the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death” as hallmarks of the ever-changing kaleidoscope we call reality.
But now it’s gettin’ real.
And so, my quest in Grief, Grit & Grace is to find that Buddhist middle way between, on the one extreme, succumbing to the worn-out narrative that aging is a depressing decline into decrepitude, dependence, and dementia and, on the other extreme, trying to eradicate aging by pursuing some Jane Fonda fantasy of preserving youth like a moth trapped in amber.
Getting old is really hard. Some days it’s downright terrifying.
Yet, when we work with that reality rather than against it, there’s a magical liberation that occurs when women like us shake off the regrets of our past, get ourselves into present time, and claim the wisdom that comes to us only through years of experience.
What’s more, we third-act ladies have opportunities our great-grandmothers could barely dream of.
I believe firmly that we owe it to them—and to ourselves—to chuck the old-biddy stereotypes overboard and make the rest of our lives the best of our lives.
So if you’d like to join me on this magical mystery tour, I’d love to tell you a bit about what you can expect from joining my Grief, Grit & Grace tribe.
What You’ll Find in Grief, Grit & Grace
The essays in this journal range from my own musings on the issues that face all of us as we get older to interviews with badass midlife women writing their own happily-ever-after third-act story to research findings that up-end the myths about aging that we’ve all been brainwashed to believe.
Did you know, for example, that never-married childless women are the happiest subgroup of people in the Western world?
(Move over, Madam Spinster. Make way for the Foxy Crone.)
A Heroine’s Journey of Aging
Even though I’ve worked over the years as a book editor, a natural foods chef, and, most recently, a food and forgiveness mentor for health-conscious women, my true vocation, ever since my Catholic grade-school days, has been that of an armchair theologian.
You could call me a Joseph Campbell wannabe.
So in these pages you’ll also find my insights on aging as a Heroine’s Journey: one that begins in the breakdown of grief, progresses through the grit of conscious transformation, and culminates in the grace of blessings that only time can give us.
I’ll also be looking at aging through four archetypes of feminine power:
The Maiden, who represents our ability to take a fresh start at any age
The Mother, who guides us in extending the same love toward our aging selves that we do toward our children and grandchildren
The Queen, who transforms the sorrows of her past into dignity, majesty and leadership
And of course the Crone, she who becomes more spirit and less matter as the embodiment of timeless wisdom
A Note to Men
Gentlemen—you’re welcome here too. I address my work to adult human biological females (a.k.a. women) because 99.9 percent of the people who seek out my services fall into that category.
Natural Human Spoken Here
My commitment to you, Dear Reader, is that the writing in this journal is 100 percent natural human intelligence–generated.
Chat-bot AI hoo-ha might be all the rage for some writers, but for this Heroine I intend to keep my brain youthful by crafting every word of my original copy.
Ways You Can Join
As a free subscriber, you’ll receive my more-or-less twice-monthly writings directly in your mailbox.
I’d be mighty gratified if you would share these essays widely with girlfriends at any age who would benefit from the wisdom found here.
The Heroine’s Circle
When you become a paid subscriber you’ll enter The Heroine’s Circle, a vault that gives you access to resources—journal prompts, videos, and audio files—that you can use to clear your fears around aging, so that you can radiate your timeless essence without having to shell out megabucks to go under the botox knife and hope for the best.
More About Marcella
In 2018 I founded the Women, Food & Forgiveness Academy, an online community of women who support each other in restoring metabolic vitality by healing the emotional roots of yo-yo dieting, binge eating, sugar addiction, and chronic body shaming.
You’ll hear lots about the Academy and the women in it as I share my posts with you.
I’m also author of the book Tap, Taste, Heal: Use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to Eat Joyfully and Love Your Body, available everywhere books are sold.
Over 70,000 students have benefited from my online courses, "Lose Emotional & Physical Weight with Tapping" and “21 Tapping Meditations for Emotional Eating and Beyond,” both of which are top-40 bestsellers on DailyOM.
I’ve got a third DailyOM course on “fearless aging” coming out later this Spring and will tell you more about that as the time draws nigh.
I’ve been interviewed on tons of podcasts and online summits and have had my writing featured in BRAINZ Magazine, Elephant Journal, the Drala Mountain Center Blog, Sivana East, and a few other places I probably should remember but can’t at this point.
My Secret Sauce: EFT Tapping
The main tool I use in my work is Tapping (you might have heard of it as EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, Meridian Tapping, or some other moniker).
I like to think of Tapping as positive brainwashing. It’s a simple, gentle self-help tool you can use anytime, anywhere, to reduce the negative emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger stress.
Some folks like to call Tapping “emotional acupuncture,” as it involves fingertip tapping on points at or near the ends of major acupuncture meridians. The tapping disrupts the stress signals that link negative emotions to a particular experience.
Since 2014 I’ve used Tapping to help women like you
Stop your binge-food cravings in minutes
Or release the belief that you have to deprive yourself in order to lose weight
Or learn to love your body no matter what the scale says
Or get back into yoga headstands at age 60
When you become a paid subscriber and join my Heroine’s Circle, you’ll get journal prompts and video guides to help you use Tapping to resolve the negative beliefs and residual regrets that have oxidized your soul.
You’ll have the tools at your disposal not just to think younger but actually turn back the hands of time in your body-mind continuum.
What Women Say
When I asked the students in my Women, Food & Forgiveness Academy to describe me in two words, here’s what they had to say (I guess they couldn’t quite contain themselves):
“Intuitive and wise, Marcella sees from her third eye. She can move mountains in assisting women on their Heroine’s Journey.” —Emma D.
“Marcella is intuitive, wise, and passionate about empowering women to find their inner peace and strength.” —Brenda M.
“Marcella is an incredible mentor who ignites transformation in her students. It’s evident she wants to help others live their best life.” —Camille G.
“Marcella shows her excitement when guiding people through messy stuff while acknowledging concern. She’s confident we can all get healthier.” —Leslie I.
“Marcella possesses a powerful light and a way of sharing it that makes me feel lifted and at peace.” —Charmaine B.
When I’m not staring endlessly into computer screens, I’m usually pumping iron at the gym, leading my Friday-night Happy Hour Yoga class, or soaking in the half-dozen hot springs around the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Southern Colorado, the land I’m so very proud to call Home.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
