Wiser With Age

Tag: advice

  • A Love Story Between Two Lovers of Nature

    A Love Story Between Two Lovers of Nature

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Audrey and Frank Peterman (Courtesy Audrey Peterman)

    I’m a Jamaican-born immigrant to America where I met a man so elegant and gorgeous, he reminds me of James Bond. After seven years of friendship, when I tried to fix him up with all my most beautiful girlfriends (sometimes they took an instant dislike to each other), we finally realized that we were perfect for each other and got married within six months. We’re now approaching our 28th wedding anniversary, and we love and trust each other more than ever.

    Three years into our marriage, we got in our truck and drove 20,500 miles around the country, visiting the spectacular destinations such as the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington State. That journey gave us a lot of time to talk and get to know each other even better. When we didn’t have even one blow up, Frank says he knew we would make it.

    He had been married twice before and gently shared the lessons he learned. For example, one day he said,

    “Honey, there are three of us in this marriage…â€

    “Wait!†I exclaimed! “I didn’t sign up for that!â€

    “There’s three of us in the marriage,” he continued unfazed. “There’s you, there’s me, and there’s the relationship. The relationship is made up of how we treat each other, how we speak to each other, and whether or not we make each other our priority.”

    Well, that made sense. So we decided that, whatever happened, the two of us would make the decision together, then consider our mothers, our children, and our family and close friends, followed by everyone else.

    Another time he said, “You know, each of us is going to go crazy sometimes. But it is very important that we don’t both go crazy at the same time.”

    He explained that, if I was upset about something, it would be his job to listen and hear me out, then repeat back to me what he’d heard to make sure he got it right. If he had, he’d explain what had happened to produce that result. If I said he hadn’t got the point, we’d start over. I would do the same for him if he was upset.

    Realizing that communication is difficult and that meaning doesn’t come directly from one person’s mouth into another’s head in just the way it is intended, keeps us open to being gently corrected.

    I share some of our key principles for a successful, smooth and happy relationship in my brand new book, “From My Jamaican Gully to the World,†which tells the story of our environmental journey resulting in the White House taking action. As a result of our efforts to protect the national parks and share them with all Americans, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum promoting diversity and inclusion in January of 2017.

    This Valentine’s Day, I wish everyone the privilege of looking at their partner with new eyes and appreciating what you saw in the beginning. No one is perfect, including you, and once you accept that, the relationship can become much easier and happier.

    Read our interview with Audrey Peterman to learn more about her, and Frank, (and how they live on a boat in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) here.

  • Author Francisco Stork: Letting Go

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Photo by Francisco Stork

    On this late autumn day, the elms and oaks around my house seem determined to let go of all the leaves that have died on their limbs. Everywhere I look there is a letting go. The sky has let go of blue and allowed itself to be covered with a thick mantle of gray.

    I am reminded of the letting go that I need to do. I am 66 (not that old as actuarial tables go) but like you and everyone and everything else that has been born, I am on my way to that final, total, letting go and I believe that it is time to shed what is no longer needed in this final stage of the journey.

    It’s not a long list, the things I need to detach from. They are internal things mostly, like the ambition for worldly recognition that served me so well when I was young and yearned to be somebody. Now ambition and the search for glory and rewards are a heavy burden and I would like, if at all possible, to travel light.

    Whenever I try to explain to people that in this phase of my life, I wish to let go of no-longer-needed wants, they get worried that I may be in the grips of depression. Sometimes, I see disappointment in their eyes. I am bailing out on the American dream to strive, always to strive for more, to never quit. I am giving up on living life to the fullest. Why, there are people older than me running marathons, running billion-dollar enterprises, running for president of the United States. A few of my more literary friends have even taken to quoting the famous lines from Thomas Dylan’s poem:

    Do not go gentle into that good night,

    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    I try to explain that, actually, raving and raging are at the top of the list of what needs to go. And if there is any burning inside of me, it will be more like the gentle flame of a candle that stays lit in the windstorm. But isn’t rage needed now more than ever? Isn’t giving up on rage the equivalent of not caring, of standing silent in the face of suffering and injustice? Am I being irresponsible? I respond that anger is not the strongest force, the fiercest weapon, but my words are taken as defeat.

    I want to keep on working, fighting if you will, by being as useful to others as I can. What I am letting go of is the old motivation and the old methods of work. I let go of working for the fruits of my labor and focus on the sincerity of the effort. If I work with honesty and truth the outcome will not matter. I embrace work as a gift. The energy and ability to work, the talent, the creativity behind it, all is a gift and my only hope is to pass the gift successfully to others. The method too will change from hurried and anxious productivity to work done with the urgency and seriousness of an inner calling, a sacred obligation. Waiting with receptive attention, listening, silence, the fecundity of leisure – all these will be part of the work.  The value and priority of different daily tasks will change. What if everything I do each day is equally important? What if playing with my grandchildren is as significant as writing a story? What if I write a story with the same love with which I hold my grandchild? And what if love becomes the burning purpose of my work?

    So many world traditions recognize old age as a special time. A spiritual time when a person can let go of the business of making a living and spend time looking care-fully at creation or searching for the presence of a creator, or developing virtues like humility, patience, kindness. Here in America that kind of letting go seems like giving up or, worse, cowardice. But letting go is an act of courage. It is choosing to finally, finally, follow the beat of your own drum. It means, if it comes to that, living on the margins of what is approvable by the world you live in. Courage could mean a solitude that is entered bravely, but not without fear. I am letting go of the images of myself that have served me well since I was a child. Who am I if not the talented boy who could read hardcover books in first grade? Or the dutiful lawyer or the Latino writer? Who am I, really, without these comfortable images?

    These old, old, trees let go of their leaves effortlessly. For them, the process of letting go each year is part of their becoming and their becoming happens just as it is meant to happen. It is, unfortunately more complicated for me. The acorn “knows†it will become an oak tree. My own becoming takes some figuring out. Not just who I am but who I am supposed to be. Who is the person I am finally to become? For I feel the presence of becoming in my old heart and it is not the same restless energy of forty years ago. To find out where this becoming is taking me, I must let go of all that is not true, of all that belongs to others, of all those cherished fantasies. No one said it wasn’t going to hurt.

    And yet, this letting go is not without a quiet joy, like the joy of the trees swaying in the wind, or the joy of the spiraling, falling leaf. I don’t know how to describe this joy. It is a paradox. It is joy filled with a light that is both dying and living.

    I let go of trying to understand it.

    Francisco X. Stork is a former attorney and an award-winning author of teen fiction novels. His eighth one will hit shelves in 2020. He often uses themes of his own life as inspiration for his writing. “The Memory of Light†is inspired by Stork’s own experience with depression, and “Marcelo in the Real World†is about a teen boy labeled as having a developmental disorder. Read our interview with him about his personal journey here. 

  • Grandmother, 81, releases debut album with grandson and is nominated by Latin Grammys for “Best Norteño Album”

    Grandmother, 81, releases debut album with grandson and is nominated by Latin Grammys for “Best Norteño Album”

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Irma Silva singing with her grandson, Jorge Loayzat, with the band Buyuchek on their family’s ranch in General Terán, Nuevo León, Mexico. (Courtesy Universal Music Latin Entertainment)

    Irma Silva was born and raised on her family’s ranch, “Rancho El Naranjo,†in General Terán, Nuevo León, Mexico. Ever since she was a little girl, she dreamed of being a singer like her uncles who were members of the Norteño band, Los Alegres de Teherán, which formed in the 1940’s. Instead, due to her family’s wishes, she became a seamstress. 

    However, because of the encouragement from her grandson, Jorge Loayzat (singer and bajo sexto player of the Norteño band Buyuchek), to pursue music, Silva – now 81 – says her days are currently spent doing interviews for press around the world. She has not only completed her first album, “Las Canciones de la Abuela†(“The Songs of Grandmotherâ€), but it has been nominated for “Best Norteño Album†by the 20th annual Latin Grammy Awards. This week, they traveled from their home in Monterrey to attend the red carpet event in MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on November 14.

    • A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.











      Irma Silva and her grandson, Jorge, arrive in Las Vegas on November 11 in preparation for the Latin Grammys. (Courtesy @JorgeLoayzat)

    “I loved to listen to my father sing, and I used to love to sing,†says Silva in Spanish, explaining that during the era of her youth, it was looked down upon for girls to pursue singing as a career.

    She repeats often that she thought her dream of singing was over forever and still can’t believe what is currently happening.

    “I really thought that at 81, that it wasn’t the right time…†says Silva, “I didn’t want to do it, but my grandson is very stubborn. I am very happy now…very happy.â€

    Working on the album, which took approximately a year, was also therapeutic for her because the 14th of November additionally marks the one year anniversary of the death of her oldest child of four. 

    “We filmed the music videos on the ranch of my family,†says Silva. “Working on the album this past year…it helped me.â€

    Creating the album also meant a lot for her 28-year-old grandson.

    “I remember the songs she used to sing me when I was still in the crib,†says Loayzat, explaining he has felt so many emotions working on this project with his grandmother who worked hard her whole life, and gave her all to her family. “I’m happier for her, more than for me. She has never even been to a concert, not to mention on a stage. I’ve already been singing for 16 years.â€

    He says he had always wanted to record an album with his grandmother since as long as he can remember.

    “I was thinking a simple album,†remembers Loayzat. “It was my bandmates that motivated me to make a complete professional album. A lot of people got involved to help us complete it.â€

    “I have a lot of friends whose parents sing very well, but they don’t record them thinking that it won’t result in anything,†says Loayzat, “but I’ve witnessed, in doing this project, that working on something noble brings many rewards…one of them being learning that it’s never too late to achieve your dreams.â€

    It has also opened up more ideas for the duo to work together. Coming next is an album with the Norteño artists of his grandmother’s youth, which is her next dream.

    “We already recorded the song, “Nueve dias†(“Nine daysâ€),†says Loayzat, adding that his grandma sings it with Norteño legend Poncho Villagomez, and it will drop on November 22. “Unintentionally, she has just started a music career.†

    “I now want to tell young people to fight for your dreams,†adds Silva. “I had once thought that I was too old, but here I am singing a very old song, ‘La Pajarera’ – the same song my teachers would make me sing when I was seven, and now I’m singing it again.â€

    This time, however, she is singing on an international stage.

  • Author Francisco Stork: Advice to Young Writers

    Author Francisco Stork: Advice to Young Writers


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.

    “What advice would you give a writer starting out?†is the question I am always asked at the end of one of my talks to high school students. I have thought about this question long and hard trying to come up with an answer that will be truly helpful. There are so many possibilities. Do I talk about developing skills or do I talk about attitude, about the mind-frame needed to write something that matters, something capable of touching hearts? In the end, I tell the young person about the one thing that helped me the most: writing every day in my journal.

    I started writing in my journal when I was a sophomore in high school and have been doing it almost every day since then. I am now 65 years old. I’m too scared to do the math and count how many entries this makes. In a closet in the basement of my house there is a stack of notebooks that goes almost to the ceiling. If I were to search for the first entry, I would probably find something very melodramatic about the unbearable sadness of unrequited love . . .and a few pages later, something with a lot of restless adjectives about a new possible love. These days the entries are more like silent prayer.

    I became a writer in those journals. At some point in my mid-forties there came a facility, an ease of vocabulary and imagination that allowed me to create characters that were part of me, yet were not me, and stories that were connected to yet separate from my own life story. Looking back, I see the journal as the equivalent of the scales that the pianist plays or the free-throws that the athlete repeats, alone in his back yard, one after another. My journal is where the habit needed for every skill was formed. The journal is where thought turned into instinct. The words that drip out slowly at first eventually start to flow as if they needed time and attention to feel fully welcomed.

    My journal gave me the gift of unconsciousness and of consciousness. Unconsciousness, because what I really want to say to that young person asking for advice is to forget about all those things she thinks writing will bring: fame, security, lots of people admiring you and loving you. Forget about the results, which more than anything else will paralyze you, or push you to write words that will not last, and instead focus on the effort. Love the trying, if you can. Offer your work to God, or life, and let them take care of whatever happens to your work after you finish. This is what I would like to say, but instead, I talk about writing in a journal every day because the practice of writing with the knowledge that no one will read what you write will, if you keep at it, eventually give you the freedom of knowing that what you write matters even if you are never famous, even if no one ever reads your words. This is the gift of unconsciousness that journal writing gives.  The journal’s gift of consciousness is the awareness that develops inside of you. The awareness of feelings and thoughts and of the universal humanity that is reflected in you and of which you are a part. You explore sadness and joy and ugly things too, like envy and anger, and when it comes time to invent the characters in your novels, you can create their souls from the first-hand experience of your own soul.

    This is what I want to say to the young person that wants to be a writer. But I can tell that she won’t like an answer that involves day after day of dedicated purpose. Start now, and maybe in 10 years, or 20, or 40, you will have something that the world finally recognizes as valuable. My dear young person doesn’t want an answer that requires years of working without anyone knowing he is working. She wants something that will happen before the junior-senior prom. Still, I go ahead and tell him about writing in a journal, about writing day after day to save my soul, sometimes my life. I tell him. Write in a journal every day. Write as if your soul and your life depended on it. The rest will take care of itself.

    Francisco X. Stork is a former attorney and an award-winning author of seven teen fiction novels. He often uses themes of his own life as inspiration for his writing. “The Memory of Light” is inspired by Stork’s own experience with depression, and “Marcelo in the Real World” is about a teen boy labeled as having a developmental disorder. Read more about his personal journey here. 

  • How the film, “Mamacita,” became a lesson on the power of forgiveness

    How the film, “Mamacita,” became a lesson on the power of forgiveness


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.

    It was a chilly October night when “Mamacita†had its New York premiere at the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History. However, Mexico-born and raised filmmaker/director José Pablo Estrada Torrescano warmed the auditorium as he announced his first feature-length film – a documentary about his grandmother, a self-made entrepreneur who proudly created an empire in Mexico’s beauty industry.

    “I made it with my heart – struggling, sweating…†said Estrada Torrescano, 37, on the stage.

    In the film, he also mentions a painful period in his life when, at 13, his mother passed away, and because of that, he lived only with his two brothers who were 16 and 18 years old. During this time in his life, he says he felt alone and abandoned by the rest of his family. Little did he know that embarking on this filmmaking experience would lead him to encountering some much needed personal inner-healing, as well as to establishing a bond with his usually emotionally distant grandmother.

    Here is a Q & A with Estrada Torrescano about how making this film ended up being a life-changing experience for him, as well as for his grandmother (who turned 100 today):

    What made you decide to make a film about your Mamacita, and how long did it take to complete?

    Before leaving Mexico City to study film in Prague, I told my family during a Christmas party that I was quitting mathematics, after it being my profession for 10 years, in order to follow my heart and study film. My grandmother, Mamacita, was very excited about it and made me promise to make a film about her life. I didn’t take it seriously at the moment, but after finishing my studies, I didn’t know what to do, so I told my professors about Mamacita’s life, and their reaction was amazing, so I finally decided to do her film. This was six years ago! The film took all these years to be finished, since I did it completely independently. At the moment of shooting, I decided not to have a script, or anything to guide me, except my intuition…I managed to get the resources to shoot thanks to a crowdfunding campaign…We managed to premiere “Mamacita†at HotDocs in Toronto, and even received the Top Audience Pick…

    What really stood out to me in your film is your focus on the concept of forgiveness. Why was this important to you? And what made you realize this is what Mamacita needed to do?

    Since everything was made intuitively, I didn’t know that forgiveness was going to be part of the film. Life just guided me in that direction. It was what was needed to be done, and I just did it… Now that I see things behind, and the fact that I managed to forgive Mamacita and my family, it has been crucial for my own development. And after having experienced that, I want everybody to know that forgiveness is the key! Would you imagine a world where we have all forgiven our family, friends and even our enemies? Where we have managed to let go all our regrets, our pain, our suffering? That would be paradise! And we could achieve it, if we would have the courage to confront our internal world without judging it – just seeing it, learning from it, understanding it. Being open to knowing that what others have done to us is because of their own ignorance and limitations – ignorance and limitations that we also have! We might not have the same limitations, but our own. And if we accept that, if I forgive myself for having them, then I can forgive others for having them as well.

    Did the forgiveness element of the film take place at the end of your stay? 

    Yes, “the secret thing that I did†to Mamacita for her to achieve forgiveness was in the end of my 3-month stay in Mexico City. It took me a long time to decide to do “it.†When Mamacita sensed that I was doubting, she said, “You know José Pablo, there are times when one needs to take a risk and do things,†so I took it as an invitation and did it.

    Do you think she has had a healing experience? How would you describe how she changed?

    I think that the whole process of doing the film was a healing experience for her. Before arriving to Mexico to shoot, Mamacita –who was 95 years old at that time– was constantly in a really bad mood. She was continuously fighting with her daughters, and with the people who work for her in her house. But having a camera in front of her, and somebody doing a film about her, made her so happy. She was the best person to work with! When I left Mexico, her daughters and the rest of the family started to come to eat at her house with her everyday, like in the old times. Mamacita is super happy now that her film is being seeing all around the globe in festivals.

    What about for you? How did this whole experience change/heal you?

    This has been possibly the best thing that I’ve done in my life. It was a life-changer. Not only because now I am a filmmaker, and have some kind of success, but most importantly because of having achieved forgiveness. For me to having forgiven my family was a HUGE thing, but it was not easy at all!

    After finishing the editing of the film, I had to confront many feelings that came out after more that 20 years of being repressed. This was probably the most difficult thing that I have experienced in my life. Those three months were like being in hell, and I’m not exaggerating. But after the worst night of them all, I woke up as if I was in paradise! All the terrible feelings just came out of my system, and peace and bliss were there now. I even thought that I was going to die. Anyhow, I’m just telling all this very personal stuff so more people dare to confront their fears, confront their pain. Look at yourself as you really are, learn from yourself, without judging.

    What is the most important thing do you think you learned from your Mamacita?

    Mmm…The logline of the film is “It’s never too late to forgive,†and just now, thanks to your question, I understood that’s the most important thing that I’ve learned from my grandmother, Mamacita.

    This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.