Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being Read Free Page B

At the same time, you can decrease cellular inflammation, which, as I’ve said, is the root cause of all chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes. All wellness and vitality come first via your connection with your spirit. Let the program in this book serve as your template for vitality.
    In the Introduction, I explained Dr. Mario Martinez’s model of cultural portals, or expectations that we internalize about what different stages of life mean. Cultural portals can also work in positive ways. A patient of mine went to China and said her hip pain, which she associated with growing older, vanished while she was there. She believes that’s because elders are so respected in China that while she was there, her perspective on herself changed and so did her biochemistry. And Dr. Martinez gives the example of menopausal hot flashes in Peru versus in Japan. In Peru, the term for hot flashes means “shame,” whereas in Japan, hot flashes and menopause are considered signs of a second spring when a woman goes deeper into wisdom. The inflammation Peruvian women experience with hot flashes is higher than it is for Japanese women because of the negative association. Similarly, in the !Kung tribe in Africa, there’s no word for hot flash. A woman’s status in the tribe increases as she enters menopause. In the West, we need to recontextualize the experience of menopause so that we see it as positive instead of a portal into decline. 11
    ALPHA GODDESSES
    We are in the era of the Alpha Goddess, the perimenopausal or postmenopausal woman who has come into her own. Advertisers are beginning to realize that women in their 50s and 60s are spending their money on themselves and the people they love, without apologies, embarrassment, or hesitation. Women over 50 were the first adopters of e-readers, changing the face of book publishing, and they continue to be the number-one group ofbook buyers. They know what they want, they’re open to trying something new, and their buying power has a major effect on the economy. 12 In a recent editorial entitled “The Smart Money Is on the 50+ Crowd,” Robert Love, editor-in-chief of AARP: The Magazine, wrote, “We the people over the age of 50 are 100 million strong. We will soon control more than 70 percent of the disposable income in this country. We buy two-thirds of all the new cars, half of all the computers and a third of all movie tickets. We spend $7 billion a year shopping online. Travel? More than 80 percent of all the premium-travel dollars flow from our credit cards. Add it all up … and U.S. adults who are over 50 ka-ching as the third largest economy in the world, trailing only the gross national product of the United States and China.” 13
    Women who aren’t as well off financially are not necessarily plunking down money for a tablet or a designer perfume, but they don’t hesitate to nurture themselves, either. Self-care and self-development become priorities when a woman has entered her second spring. At wellness expos, crowds of women are exploring all the many ways they can increase their well-being. They are getting massages and acupuncture and becoming massage therapists and acupuncturists. They and their girlfriends are off to the meditation center on Sunday mornings or to a condominium in a resort area for a weekend of talking, hiking, and wine tasting. Alpha Goddesses are finding their tribes. They know that if they don’t have anything in common with the other women they see each day at the local pool, they can simply enjoy having someone to chat with in the locker room, and they can expand their tribe of friends outward by meeting up with people in any number of ways. As the old summer camp song goes, Alpha Goddesses know how to “make new friends but keep the old”—but they only hang on to those longstanding friendships if they’re vitalizing instead of draining. Alpha goddesses are ageless goddesses.
    And Alpha