Advice from Jennifer Morse, MS, PhD

Trained as a marriage and family therapist, Jennifer has spent her life studying mysticism, striving for balance between conventional life and the mystical. As an author she has blended the lessons of fairy tales with the tools of Positive Psychology with The Way of The Fairy Godmother. And as a single woman navigating online midlife dating she has written an insightful and fun novel Letters From the Land of Midlife Dating. If you have a question regarding any of the subjects below please email Dr. Morse at redemptionswarrior@gmail.com My answer line will be open from today through the month of October, 2015. Enduring happiness/self esteem/dating/spiritual healing/meditation/motivation/inspiration/developing a positive attitude....or, your subject. Remember to keep your question (one question only please) as brief as possible. And if you are seriously troubled always seek out medical attention or a spiritual adviser in your community. Jennifer's books are available at Amazon Kindle. For a quick link www.redemptionswarrior.com

Beauty as a guiding force for freedom and transcendence in midlife….

By Jennifer Morse, MS. PhD

 

                                      http://goo.gl/sC9yBf

 

I’ve recently completed my book, Letters from the Land of Midlife Dating. It forced me to answer the question: When we are torn away from years, sometimes decades, of ‘coupledom’ and thrown into empty-nest-solitary life; too often losing financial security, friendships and lifestyle, how do we find our way back to wholeness?

In part, the answer to our search for wholeness lies in the radical transformation, within the primordial rigors, underlying beauty. Whew. The journey is not for the faint of heart. Creating beauty is the guiding force in middle age.

Beauty reflected in the whispered prayer of a yoga practice. It is perhaps a beauty barely discernable but deeply felt. There is the beauty reflected in your willingness to understand another’s opinions, feelings and choices. These empathetic underpinnings of a conversation contain beauty. A kindness freely given creates beauty. Cleaning the house with intention and care until it shines with love is both ordinary and extraordinary beauty.

Let me clarify. I’m not talking about fairytale beauty, although fairytales and their beauty are close to my heart. I’m talking about authentic beauty grounded in the tasks of daily life. I’m talking about beauty filled with the raw and mystical, the kind of beauty that could uplift or crush us. It could be bold or infinitesimal; instantaneous or drudgery, I’m talking about the crucible of creativity. Does beauty live in creativity or does creativity live in beauty?

In midlife we shoulder the awareness of creating tangible beauty and carry it forward with intentionality or we fall more deeply into the slumber of the material world disconnected from the beauty and creativity that brings meaning and wonder to our efforts.

Did you catch that? Intentional beauty born of the crucible of creativity will transform our lives bringing meaning and wonder to our efforts.

Let the younger generation seek only superficial beauty. As mid-lifers we take up our responsibilities to carry the deep and mysterious beauties, in conjunction with superficial beauty, forward discovering our alchemical nature in the process. Yes, this shouldering of deep beauty ushers us into the unknown, the Great Mystery, the origin of alchemy, returning us to wholeness.

Beauty as a motivating force has infinite expressions. Life is transformed from the ordinary to the sublime within the vehicle of beauty’s creativity. As midlifer’s thrown from the container of the nuclear family into singledom, lost and confused, beauty is our saving grace.

Letters From The Land of Midlife Dating is an insightful peak into the world of dating laced with humor. It is one woman’s journey, a return to wholeness, and the vehicle is deep beauty. Explore the myriad expressions of beauty, funny, poignant and occasionally awful. (Yes, it’s a fact beauty can be both awful and awe full.) Read Letters from the Land of Midlife Dating @amazonkindle.

For more….find The Way of the Fairy Godmother, Letters from the Land of Midlife Dating, and Awaiting the Fairy Godmother all here......

           www.redemptionswarrior.com

http://goo.gl/baZoky

 

All Women want to be Queen….

By Jennifer Morse, MS PhD

We return to fairy tales over and over again throughout our lifetime. Something glittering in the heart of the story compels us. So what exactly is their purpose?

Fairy tales are designed to impart wisdom. They are a map to living a life of wonder and purpose. When we follow the story we learn to overcome universal challenges.

In the story of Cinderella, on the surface, we see she wants a first date with the Prince. She wants the opportunity to love well in a reciprocal relationship. It will be a relationship where each partner is a version of their best-possible-self. A relationship where together they are stronger, empowered by each other.  

Pealing away another layer of the story we find the universal quest of all women to become Queen. But is Cinderella’s version of Queendom different from her stepsisters? Absolutely.

Cinderella’s stepsisters want the circumstances of becoming a Queen. In geometry terms the stepsisters want the circumference of what it means to be Queen. Or in medical terms they want the symptoms of becoming Queen. (I’m just playing around here, don’t get impatient.)

Disconnected from their Deepest Desires, disconnected from their personal strengths, their purpose in life, and without serving a greater purpose Cinderella’s stepsisters want to become Queen in the most superficial way.

For them becoming Queen will mean they won’t have to work. People will do favors and give them gifts. The will have the most beautiful clothes. Their jewelry will be the biggest and shiniest of all women in the land. Finally they will be married to the second most powerful person in the world, the Prince.

Don’t take my word for it, have a look at the people around you. Those people who have only the superficial symptoms of wealth are bored, angry and disappointed. Becoming Queen without a context of greater meaning is one-dimensional. Life is a cardboard imitation of what’s possible. The stepsisters only want the surface of becoming Queen, which is why they are doomed for failure before they even begin.

Cinderella’s dream of becoming Queen signals the beginning of her journey becoming whole and complete. In mathematical lingo Queen is the zero point, or the circumference and the interior. In medical terms she is both the symptoms and the illness. (No. Wait. That can’t be right. Hold on. I’ll stop fooling around)

Cinderella will be Queen from the depths and the surface. She will embody the superficial and the authentic. While becoming Queen she will fulfill her Deepest Desires to love well. She and the Prince will exchange love, in a context of the authentically reciprocal relationship. The key words here are Deepest Desires, love, authentically, and reciprocal.

Your Queendom lives within the depths of Deepest Desires you might hide from the world and yourself. When you engage with Deepest Desires you are authentically living. You are interacting with life in reciprocal terms, because believe it or not, the world needs your Deepest Desires both in their raw and evolving states.

Becoming Queen, Cinderella will interact with her Deepest Desires, igniting her strengths, bringing beauty and originality to the world. She will choreograph well-being, within the context of Deepest Desires, using her strengths. She will live in the glow of realizing her ambitions. Her Deepest Desires create beauty-health-well-being, for herself, and for all those around her.

It’s a natural outcome of living Deepest Desires that bring us the superficial coatings the stepsisters seek in conjunction with realizing goals and evolving our ambitions. Our Queendom reveals itself in the context of living our purpose, engaging our strengths, cleaving to the transcendent function of love and beauty in their infinite expressions as related to our purpose and Deepest Desires.

My final question for you: (Why is kingdom accepted by the computer dictionary while queendom is considered a misspelling?)

Jennifer Morse is the author of Awaiting the Fairy Godmother, the story of Cinderella’s life prior to meeting the Fairy Godmother. And the motivational book: The Way of the Fairy Godmother

                           

                http:goo.gl/sC9yBf

 

 

                      WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING  

           

 

      5 STARS  'Hold on! I just turned fifty. When does that kick in? When do I look in the mirror and see a younger version of myself?', August 6, 2015

By 

Grady Harp

This review is from: Letters From The Land of Midlife Dating (Kindle Edition)

Arizona author Jennifer Morse, M.S., PhD, trained as a marriage and family therapist, has spent her life studying mysticism, striving for balance between conventional life and the mystical. She first published a Young Adult novel REDEMPTION'S WARRIOR. THE WAY OF THE FAIRY GODMOTHER was her second venture in publishing but it would not be at all surprising to expect future books - this sensitive person knows how to write! For all the self-help books available today few have taken on the stance that Jennifer has. Now she adds another level of assistance to her readers with LETTERS FROM THE LAND OF MIDLIFE DATING.

Making no bones about the topic, Jennifer opens her books with The Geography of Midlife Dating: ‘The geography of midlife dating is stranded between the misty realms of I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing-with-the-rest-of-my-life and the post-traumatic stress of divorce. Unfathomable depths of resentment, accusations and trickery can precede the gateway to midlife dating. Men and women arrive torn out of a life designed for a couple, with or without children, and find themselves in the emptiness of a future unmade. Within the dream of marriage no one is prepared for midlife dating. For woman, midlife is a confluence of change. When I say change I’m referring in part to “the change.” A hormonal swing signaling infertility, historically terrifying to both men and women, but for different reasons. As a teenager, enmeshed in the world of TV, I watched interviews in the talk show format. (My interest was a forecasting of my undergraduate degree in Sociology.) The taboo topic for the day was menopause. “The change” previously only whispered about, was a daring subject for the times. The host asked the group, “What has changed in your life post-menopause?”
…In the days before our separation he slept with a flashlight gripped in his hands. Menopause turns docile women into fierce combatants. Imagine being thrown into the pool of midlife dating a fierce menopausal warrior, an empty nester, and unskilled worker having spent the last fifteen years raising children. Thrown into a world we are unprepared to deal with, midlife women seek sanctuary….Men dating in midlife want fresh looking women. Same age women in the dating pool look tired, haggard and old. Men have said to me, “women my own age seem bitter.” Midlife men seek a softer, less jaded partner. They’ve have survived the trauma of divorce. They have survived the wrenching pain of sharing assets. They are tired from the strain of realizing their ambitions in the work world. They want fun.’

You can easily see how Jennifer is taking an untrodden road to this subject. Some of her chapter headings include I am not a Hippie!, Midlife Hair Removal: MRSA and Duck Tape, The Mathematics of Beauty, I am not a Booty Call, More Self-Sufficiency will kill me, Trapped on the Dating Treadmill, To Dye or not Dye, Living with the Homeless and Drug Dealers, - all in the format of letters.

Said once, saying again: though not a phrase used often, I love this book - it strikes an inner chord, makes me embrace Jennifer's wise and brilliantly warm writing, and produces the urge to share this fine book with every caring one. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, August 15

 

 

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