The Stories of our Lives
As part of this course at Meridian University, I am asked to keep a running journal of my reflections on the “offerings” of the week. In addition to what pops for me, I will find at least three other theoretical sources to support the numerical age range on the human timeline.
The course opens with Elderhood, the years after the halfway point as I like to call them, the station on the timeline of life that Ilchee Lee calls the Cycle of Completion. After reading the course description and the direction of the culminating writing project I surmised that underlying themes will be
- Adjusting to Aging
- Life is a Story
In reviewing the topics for the SIGs (Special Interest Groups) and the required texts, I have a sense that we are going to hop around the human timeline of Childhood, Adolescence, and so on. The first week assignment on Death Awareness hints that fostering an awareness and imagining into the end of life can be a source of richness for the entire life span.
I coined a phrase unknown to me and not something I could google around 2022: “Later Literacies”. I wrote on this topic towards the end of my coursework in a Masters of English degree at NAU. Learning to age, being a Life Long Learner of our own lives, was part of the puzzle pieces of my thinking at the time. It keeps coming forward especially when I come across the concept of the work of the Death Doula. I had a doula “help me” through the live birth of my son. I have been introduced to a doula specializing in bringing in life with another guiding others at the end of life.
Is my mythopoetic identity as Depth Docent to guide individuals through the aging process? Am I a guide and a helper? My Soul is doing a bit of jumping up and down, twirling, clapping, and more than smiling as I express all of this in words onto this journal space.
The Power of Story 