Is That Really Me? by H.V.Hendrick and J.K.Feltner (e textbook reader .TXT) 📕

IS THAT REALLY ME?

WRITTEN BY: H.V.HENDRICK AND JANET FELTNER

FORWARD

Sitting in the kitchen the other day, having coffee with my best friend of some 20+ years, we were enjoying the break in our daily lives. Suddenly, Janet,my best friend said, “I've got a great idea for your next book!” She was right.

This book is a co-ordinated effort between myself and Janet. We are both over 50 now and we have both looked into the mirror and wondered... “Is that really me?”

CHAPTER 1

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

When we are about 13 years old, life is fun, full of expectations, dreams, thoughts of love, dating, what outfits to wear, what jeans are cool, etc. At about 15 or 16 we are anxious to start driving, its that ultimate right of passage, into pre-adulthood. Around 18, we still have our cute little figures, and are anticipating graduating from high school, possibly entering into a college, perhaps we may even be looking at marriage. Even so, we have the world by the tail. We look into the mirror and see a young, vivacious girl with perky breasts, a waist that can fashionably wear a belt if we want, tight fitting jeans or short shorts. Long, slender legs, smooth as silk and perfectly defined.

At 21 we are “legal”! Legal to drink if we want, we can enter into binding contracts, even legal to make major adult decisions. Whoopee!! We may have put on a couple of pounds from all that starchy college mess hall food and fast food that tends to start accumulating in the form of slight love handles, wider hips and fuller thighs. But we still have those perky breasts. We look pretty good. We feel pretty good.

Thoughts of bad cholesterol, high blood pressure, varicose veins, arthritis, Grey hair, and a low sodium diet are no where in the sight of our thoughts,dreams or even in our reality. We are young, beautiful, perky, energetic, healthy and desired by men. We, ladies, have the world by the tail!

Fast forward...we are now 30. Probably married with a child or two, breasts aren't near as perky but still not in too bad of shape. The “baby fat” is lingering around the hips and waist and the energy level is about 1/8 to ¼ of what is was 10 years ago. We have schedules to keep, play dates to make, PTA meetings, soccer games, ballet classes, business meetings, jobs, careers, supper to prepare, skinned knees to kiss and make feel better, a mortgage to pay, bills to maintain, and by 10:00pm we literally fall into bed. “Make love? Tonight? Are you kidding? I'm exhausted!”

10 years into the future at 40, we schedule with our spouses a time and date to spend some quality, intimate time together; perhaps even twice a month, if he's lucky. The kids are wanting to learn to drive, still involved in sports, school events, their friends, etc. You are the Taxi! Your job/career is more demanding than ever, you don't eat right, McDonald's is your favorite restaurant and Rolaids your favorite dessert. Those cute little jeans that you've had since you were 22 that always made your husband swoon....well....you can't even zip them up if you lay down flat. You're finding it extremely difficult to even paint your toe nails (if and when you have the time)because that kangaroo pouch you have in your lower abdomen (left over from baby making days). You notice that you've been using more creams, moisturizers and foundation make-up to hide the dark circles under your eyes from lack of restful sleep and stress, and Lady Clairol is becoming your best friend.

You're 50! About 20-30+ pounds over weight, you've got a chicken neck and chicken wing upper arms, spider veins on your legs, breasts are saggy and soft, and suddenly the “laugh lines” at the corners of your eyes aren't so funny anymore.

The alarm goes off at 5 am., you roll out of bed, sleepily pour a cup of coffee, maybe even light up a cigarette, sit at the table and speculate on the day ahead of you. The bathroom is the beginning of your morning routine. That's when it happens...you step out of the shower and into the full length mirror. A loud shriek is heard throughout the neighborhood. There...staring back at you in the mirror is a pudgy, sagging, wrinkled woman looking you square in the face. You run out of the bathroom and down the hall yelling for your husband. He rushes out of the bedroom (expecting to see a bloody gory sight) to find you bare naked, out of breath and apparently frantic. You step back in front of the mirror and desperately ask him “Is that really me?”

When we are children growing up we are often asked what do we want to be when we grow up?
The standard replies are usually a fireman, policeman, mommy,movie star, etc. But I don't ever recall anyone asking me Who I wanted to be when I grew up. I'm sure that I would have been taken aback somewhat with that question. But perhaps that's the one question we should be asking our children. Since no one asked us who we wanted to be, did we ever ask ourselves that question?

Men are raised to be men...real men. Men with honor, integrity, valor, level heads and business sense. Men are raised to be role models, strength for those they love and care for. They are to be leaders in any aspect of their lives. In their careers they are to be ones who lead others up the ladder of success, at home they are to be the head of the household, the main bread winner...yada yada yada.

As girls, we are raised to be honest, pure, trustworthy, reliable, caring, nurturing, and of course we are told that we can do anything a man can do, we just have to work harder to gain the same kind of recognition for it. We are encouraged to marry, have children and have a career.

Around the age of 40, men experience what we have lovingly come to know as a “mid-life crisis”. They cheat on their wives or leave them for a much younger woman, they buy sports cars, change the way they dress and basically just go totally stupid for a few months to a couple of years. One day they wake up and wonder what were they thinking! They then try to put everything in reverse and go back to the way it was only to find that the wife (ex-wife) and the kids believed him to be mad and have moved on with their lives.

Women don't have mid-life crisis'. They have “Man Do I Need To Pause!” (menopause). We don't go off the deep end and leave our husbands for young studs or buy fancy sports cars. We may have plastic surgery but most of us do not. Instead, we get the feelings that because our biological clock is slowly running down and will soon stop, our whole reason for being placed on this earth will be
done. We will no longer be able to reproduce. No more going forth and multiplying (as if at this age any of us would really want too!). It is at this point that many of us Pause and give way to the thought that we don't know who (not what) we really are. We have been so busy being Mom, wife, taxi driver,chef, Dr.,psychologist, cleaning lady, bookkeeper, dishwasher and the list goes on, that we have forgotten who we are.

Janet has spent her entire life being somebody's mom and yet she was never a mother. At a very young age, she had to become the “woman of the house” when her father and mother divorced. She cared for her younger twin sisters and a younger brother. Her father was a farmer and worked long hours working the farm and trying to earn a living for his family. Janet and her siblings spent many long hours out in the hay fields and barnyard helping their dad as much as small children can. Fortunately, she gained some relief when her grandmother moved in with them. At age16 she became Brady's “wife”, and with that “instant Mom”! Brady was a widower with 2 young children. Now she is also “mom”, then onto foster “mom” to several others, then adopting her own baby niece after the baby's mother died in a house fire. Mom again. She never had the opportunity to have any children of her own, but we will learn later that this is a blessing. Janet has been Sgt. Feltner's wife, mom to Brady's two and Cindy's mom, foster mom, and mom to many others in one way or another because of her big heart. Her and her husband Brady have been married for over 37 years but it wasn't until the kids were all grown and she started her own home based business that she became “Janet” again. But who is Janet?

Janet is a very smart woman. She didn't finish high school but there are other ways to gain knowledge. She is an independent business woman. She is a budgeter, the best kind of friend anyone could ever wish for. She is funny, caring, honest, full of integrity, loving, is an animal lover. She is a Christian, she is Janet, and she loves who she is.

Janet, like so many of us, stepped out of the shower one morning and ran screaming down the hall. She didn't like the “physical” Janet in the mirror but she knew that could be fixed. But what she didn't know was.... “ who is that in the mirror?” Of course, Brady,being the loving and devoted husband that he has always been, tried to reassure her that when he looks at her he still sees the 16 yr. old girl he fell in love with. (yea! What a line of garbage!) What he means is, that because their love is so deep and time tested, he loves “Janet” not the vessel that carries her around this earth. But she still didn't know “who Janet is”. She decided to find out!

First things first, she knew that the “pudgies” and the “sagging” and “wrinkles” needed to go away. After some research, the answer was simple: diet and exercise . Not a “fad” diet or low-carb diet or the “Dr. of the Month diet”....simple nutrition and changing her eating habits. Exercise, that's almost a dirty word to most of us! But it's a necessary evil in changing our habits and improving our looks, our opinion of ourselves and our health. Exercise doesn't have to be those terrible set ups, push ups and pull ups; you can start (like Janet did) with walking. Her business gives her lots of opportunity to walk short trips from her car to a customer's door but she needed more. Janet decided to share her walks with her husband, grandson, dogs and sometimes her younger daughter. They walk at a rapid pace down the road in the evenings, after dinner. This keeps her from becoming a couch potato after eating dinner, gives