Diva Do Over

The Letter

The phone rings. My daughter is calling from California. Not unusual – but imagine my surprise when she excitedly informs that she secretly nominated me for a Diva Do-Over at Body & Soul in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It’s a six-session program for women fifty years old and over.
Well, bless my soul. Here I am – a decrepit old lady – and I’m being offered an opportunity like this!

Samantha emails me the letter she wrote to nominate me:

Hello Diva Do-Over,
My mother used to be a romance writer. Before I was born, all she did was read every novel she could find and write her own. Then she got married (romantic) and had kids (including me – terrific) and a stressful job (that put me through school at Steiner). But all the happiness she used to feel from writing novels evaporated during those years of commitment to us.
Two years ago I started college and my brother will be heading off this year. Over the course of the last six months, she wrote the first novel she’s written since we were born. It’s called Heaven Falls. When I read it, I couldn’t put it down. Heaven Falls, as well as being the most breathtaking waterfall in the northeast, is the most glamorous spa in the world. It offers not only nutrition programs, skin care, style consultations, and plenty of fitness advice, but something no other spa in the world offers: Romantic love. Dedicated ‘sweethearts’ – as they’re called – are hired to make their clients fall deeply in love with them, whether it’s for a snuggly weekend in a Swiss chalet or a camping adventure in the Galapagos. Well, my mom’s novel takes the reader on an enjoyable, passionate romp through a wildly wicked and unusual family’s complications – like all her novels, it’s definitely a page turner. But I feel there’s a gap in her description of her heroine that isn’t quite as lively and adorable as she herself is (and just doesn’t realize). I thought that if she could experience not just the amazing benefits of Dr. Hauschka facials, pampering massages, and good advice about how to dress (which she REALLY needs), but also the quality you have of making whoever comes to Body and Soul feel like a real heroine (I know from personal experience – my mom’s gifted me with your fabulous teen facials over the years), she would imbue her own heroine with self-confidence and the beauty of a fifty-three-year-old diva. The experience would give her novel the ring of authenticity that would make it a bestseller.
Long ago my mom repeated something you told her when she was about to miss an appointment with you because she had an unexpected something happen at work. You said, “When you’re on your deathbed, Winslow, you won’t be thinking about your work.” Mom never forgot that (and she immediately dropped everything and tore downtown to the soul-soothing facial you gave her). I remembered this when I was visiting recently and saw your ad in the Shoppers Guide for your Diva Do Over. I just can’t think of a person who would benefit more than my mom. So… I nominate my mom WINSLOW ELIOT for your DIVA DO-OVER!
Thanks for reading this,
Samantha Stier

I’ll tell you, there aren’t many letters like that out there. Not to sound maudlin, but… hey. Well, anyway.  And then to find out that I’d won – without knowing she’d nominated me – was just amazing. Thank you, darling daughter!

The next day Doone Marshall, owner of Body & Soul, calls to confirm Samantha’s news. Six women, all over fifty, will meet every Wednesday for the next six weeks. We’ll start at 10:30 a.m. for a ‘service’ (like a facial, massage, body scrub, and even – if I want it – a new hairdo! I’ve had the same hair style since I was a teenager!). Then we’ll meet for an hour-and-a-half workshop.

The first one is going to be weight management and nutrition. The following week will be skin care.  Fashion advice. Even a life coach!

Just listening to Doone’s elegant, soothing voice I feel myself standing straighter, feel my skin glow, my clothes drape more gracefully. I am in heaven, just thinking about it. I can hardly wait to begin.

Week 1

Diva for  Day – Diva for a Lifetime

I don’t know what to wear. And should I put on some makeup or not? My first scheduled ‘service’ is a facial. I smear on a little makeup but leave off the mascara which would definitely smudge.
Clothes – clothes. Something I can take off easily for the facial. It’s still so gosh-darned cold outside I simply am not inspired. I grab an old flannel skirt and oversized sweater. My one concession to fashion – in spite of the snow – is a nice pair of lace-up boots. I don’t want to look like a complete slob at one of the most elegant spas in the Berkshires.

Well – slob or not, Doone certainly makes me feel like a queen. Or Diva, rather. The mix of friendly welcome, chamomile tea, soothing music, and unique, subtle fragrances is intoxicating. The facial is heavenly, as only facials using authentic Dr. Hauschka products can be. My esthetician is Ashleigh, a young lovely flawless beauty who, in spite of her own beauty, seems sincerely to not mind working with my aging, flawed skin. She steams, massages, polishes, washes me in lavender, with that objective tenderness unique to estheticians. Then she uses a magic ampoule on my skin. I emerge refreshed and cherished – a diva. I glance in the mirror. Where are those pasty wrinkles? Are the bluish bags under my eyes really gone? Who is that woman, her cheeks flushed, her skin smooth and firm, her eyes glowing. Me? There’s something about a Dr. Hauschka facial that is transformative. I vow I will do this at least four times a year – once at the beginning of every season.

But this is not about feeling younger. This is, as Doone tells us, about feeling one’s age – and feeling one’s best at whatever age one is.

I think about this a lot. I think that women’s bodies are extraordinary. The transition from girlhood to adolescence is so enormous. And then pregnancy… And now the physical changes to the after-fity years are just as dramatic. People seem to expect us just to slide into little-old-ladyhood, as though womanliness was over with. But, regarding Doone with awe, I realize it doesn’t have to be so. One can be a woman who looks, feels, and glows with her next beauty. It’s not a nine-year-old beauty. Nor a twenty-year-old one. It’s a fifty-plus beauty. So that’s what this Diva Do-Over six-week program is all about.

Workshop – Weight and Nutrition
After the facial I am scheduled to participate in a weight management and nutrition consultation. This is my weight story: at 5’6 I’ve never been thin, but I’ve had a steady weight that I was fairly okay with (figured you can’t be too rich or too thin, so why waste time trying). Suddenly in my fiftieth year I gain 25 pounds, just by breathing. Horrifying. So as we gather in the cozy room with my new women friends, I’m looking forward to any help I can get.
“Diva for a day – healthy for a lifetime.” That’s how our workshop leader, Elyse Marrone, opens her talk on health and nutrition. Lots of promise here.

I take notes conscientiously – and I’m determined to follow the sensible health rules Elyse presents. Like popping fish oil pills, walking regularly, eating six times a day.
Elyse tells us about the company she represents: Metagenics. The benefits of UltraMeal – nutritional support for the management of conditions associated with metabolic syndrome – are tempting. A good nutritious shake every morning may be just the thing I need – breakfast is the most difficult meal for me to sustain. Even though I know it’s the most essential.
Did you know that you can actually train your palate, even make yourself look forward to eating breakfast every morning? Not just that, but you might think you ‘like salty food’ or that you ‘crave sweets’ but you can change your likes and dislikes. And I had no idea that a good oil actually reduces fat cells. And that it’s an inti-inflammatory. I immediately purchase the Metagenics Fish Oil.

Elyse gives us lots of other good tips, great advice, strong encouragement, and a road map to set us off in the right direction. For instance, eat slowly! It takes twenty minutes after you normally finish eating for your stomach to believe that it’s full.

Good nutrition and exercise are the building blocks of health, and of feeling and looking good. There’s nothing more essential. I leave my first Diva Do-Over session already feeling prettier and much more intelligent as well.

Week 2
“First Stain, then Polish”
My second week begins with a massage by Linda Fries. It’s been a long time since I’ve had one. What bliss – how peaceful, how soothing, how kind. Knots in my shoulder melt under her strong and yet sensitive touch. My brain relaxes. My hands relax. My feet are soothed and tenderized.
I am reminded all over again how important it is to have this kind of care and attention – even if one is happily married and into all sorts of cuddling. But the intensity of the hand to muscle authority of a professional massage is healing in a completely different way. I swear I’ll treat myself to a massage once a month from now on. Or, at the very least, once each season.
Workshop

This week’s workshop is on skin care.  Our leader is Kelly Kynion, who introduces us to the best of the best skin care products: Dr. Hauschka. If you don’t know about Dr. Hauschka, it is one of the finest skin care companies in the world. Created from bio-dynamic plants, everything is hand grown, hand cultivated, in accordance with the mysterious but certifiably beneficial methods indicated by sage Rudolf Steiner.

Kelly tells us how, as we age, our production of sebum slows down. Well, yes. Then she says that our natural cell turnover is related to planetary cycles of the moon. The twenty-eight day cycle that makes the tides ebb and flow is pervasive throughout nature – especially anything pertaining to moisture. Like our skin. So, lots of things happen during that 28-day cycle, not the least of which is that our skin’s natural dynamic cell grows, rises up, and sloughs off as a dead cell – all in a 28-day cycle.
I used to be finely attuned to the cycles of the moon. For example, I’ve known for years that it’s best not to begin projects during a waning moon, and that one’s energy increases as the moon waxes. Crystal gazers need to use their balls differently during waning than during waxing moons. And now I learn from this woman with perfect skin that not only the ocean tides are affected by the watery magnetism of the silver orb, but our casing as well.

How appropriate, then, that tonight’s the full moon!

Kelly is an ideal skin care consultant, especially in this group of older women who are curious about and interested in our options. When we reach a certain age, for the first time we encounter a stronger inner self.  And yet just as we feel more empowered inwardly, our skin goes in the opposite direction:  it’s sensitive to everything in the outer world. It’s thinner. It conspires to lose the radiance, color, elasticity, and tone that we have relied on as a barrier all our lives.
Dr. Hauschka products are unique because of the way they’re made: the renowned bio-dynamic process respects the soil, every single plant, the planet itself, as a breathing, living organism. Having been raised in a Waldorf/anthroposophical household, this is all familiar to me. I take for granted that the “life force” in plants and the respect with which plants are grown and treated imbue the products themselves. It makes sense. But it’s great to hear Kelly explain why it makes sense, instead of just knowing intuitively that it does.

Now Doone hands us warm towelettes sprinkled with lavender oil. You just want to breathe and breathe. You can feel your skin is invigorated and soothed at the same time (a unique feature of lavender). If you do nothing else, encourages Kelly, infuse Dr. Hauschka bath oil into your anti-aging routine.

The rhythm of using certain products are important too, Kelly reminds us: if your body begins to anticipate a lavender-sprinkled warm washcloth on your face just before you go to bed in the evening, you’ll trigger an expectation of ‘bed’ after a few weeks, and the process will be soothing and relaxing. (continued next page)

The other classic thing to do, according to Kelly, is to use Dr. Hauschka rejuvenating ampoules. Did you know that you really should not be smearing your delicate face with heavy moisturizing cream at night? This is because, as Kelly explains so clearly, our skin switches functions during the day and night:  the skin protects itself during the day. At night, on the other hand, our skin becomes an organ of detoxification. Coating our skin with cream at night gets in the way of its natural function.

She tells us that these rejuvenating ampoules created by Dr. Hauschka are harmonizing and rejuvenating. Her words make perfect sense to me, but, to be honest, it’s going to be really hard for me to put nothing on my skin but what feels like droplets of water for a whole month. Still, I’m definitely going to try it. Kelly says that, used regularly, these ampoules will actually regulate my natural skin moisture, bringing color to my pale, March-ish skin, strengthen weak connective tissues, and balance any ph issues. The fact is that my skin has its own intelligence, and if I coat it with a night cream it will begin to believe that it does not need to produce its own.
There is much, much more I learn during this workshop – including about the benefits of rose cream, cleansing options, aging, and beauty – all of which is inspiring, lively, and incredibly informative.

I cannot possibly leave without my lavender bath oil and my ampoules. And I can’t resist a fresh new Dr. Hauschka lipstick for spring as well. And a lipliner. “First you need to stain your lips with the liner,” says Kelly, “Then you polish them with the lipstick.” Every time I put it on I feel I’m being kissed by the plant fairies.

Week 3
Change as a Guiding Light
My third week I entered the beautiful Body & Soul Day Spa feeling 100% different than I had three weeks before. I stood up straighter. I felt more fit. I felt – yes, prettier! I was wearing the Dr. Hauschka lipstick that Kelley had recommended – a warm, neutral/brightening look.
Today, though, is an even more exciting skin treatment than the Dr Hauschka facial I had my first week at the Spa: today I am scheduled for a holistic face-lift! Called the La Fleur Reparer Anti-Aging System, the gentle but effective treatment works by nourishing the skin and all its cellular composition. It actually stimulates blood circulation using electric pulses, and brings oxygen to your skin. It’s a little like an ion charger. The process also removes waste products and impurities by oxydizing free radicals, which I strongly experienced by the strange metallic taste in my mouth. According to Ashleigh, my La Fleur operator, other benefits of the La Fleur Reparer Anti-Aging System include strengthening and toning of face muscles and smoothing fine lines and wrinkles, in bringing a fresh, toned skin glow.

Did I look different afterwards?

Well, I went into my office the next morning and Sarah, my co-worker, looked up from her desk and exclaimed, “What happened to you?! You’re just glowing!”
I’m definitely going to do it again. And, of course, just as going to the gym doesn’t work completely right away, and you’ll need to continue if you want those muscles to stay strong and supple, so the La Fleur Reparer Anti-Aging System is an on-going process. But it feels so good during and afterwards, and it’s actually good for you! Instead of leaving bruised and battered to heal behind bandages, you leave being told that you’re ‘glowing’. I’d say it’s certainly worth doing this on a regular basis, like taking walks or eating fresh summer salads. It feels that good and makes you look good too.

Workshop
Lin Schreiber – Consultant Coach

Next on the schedule is our workshop session with Lin Schreiber. Lin is a life coach – or a Retirement Revolutionary, as she calls herself. Lin is on an important mission: to open up limitless opportunities to us all. She’s found her purpose: to guide us all towards a healthy, happy purposeful life.

“I like to use change as a guiding light,” she tells us.

Many of us think of change as something scary – or, at best, inevitable.

Lin doesn’t.

“All change involves loss,” she says. “And we don’t want to ignore that.” But, she goes on,  resiliency is crucial to getting through the shoals and currents of growing older. It’s something each one of us can develop, and it’s crucial to developing a healthy, happy, purposeful life.
What was particularly fun and productive about the workshop was using tools that Lin provided us – to write down our fears, for example, and then talking about them.

Did you know that studies have proven that diet and exercise is actually less important to your well-being as you grow older than personal self-development? In our country we’re raised to regard aging as a terror; that youth is some sort of bizarre heaven. But the new statistics show that – with the guidance from people like Lin! – a new, deeply positive aging is possible.

One of the most important guides that Lin urges us to turn to in the coming years is our own IGS. If it were only for this one tool – trusting our own intuition in the years ahead – this enlivening workshop would be worthwhile. Lin assures us that we can develop this inner GPS, train it, and absolutely rely on it. All the answers are inside each one of us.

The last thing she said was that coaching – which is what she does so well! – is about getting rid of the box – not fitting into it.

I loved Lin’s session, her vibrancy, her encouragement, her compassion. I signed up right away to download her free starter kit (you can do this too by going to her website:  www.revolutionizeretirement.com).

I also made some decisions and determinations that are going to change my work situation significantly in the next few weeks – more on that later.

Week 4
Getting Stronger
The reason we all need pedicures and manicures is that we feel better when we look good. That’s all there is to it. I had no idea!

And so I am introduced to my first manicure in over two decades.  My manicurest is Jonia, a warm-hearted woman originally from Peru, so since both my children have stayed in Cuzco and climbed Machu Picchu there’s a lot of conversation that revolves around the luxury of having one’s hands taken care of.

Next – the toes. Toes are different, at least for me. When I was living in Hawaii I learned about pedicures. Few women there don’t have their toes done regularly. It’s normal – it’s like washing your hair. And, again, it’s not about the way your toes look. It’s about having your feet massaged, and oiled, and scrubbed, and rubbed, and your toes tenderly tended to, and then the polish bit at the end is just the icing on the cake.

I don’t have a good eye for detail – I tend to be a big-picture person. There’s nothing that helps me become aware of the sweetness of the details of daily life than having one’s toes taken care of.  And it’s important to polish our toenails all through the winter. It’s not so that anyone else can admire them: it’s so that when we step out of the bath we get a frisson of pleasure in the prettiness of our toes. When we lift a glass, we enjoy the experience more if our nails are well-shaped and polished. Color is not necessary – it’s the care that creates the glow of appreciation.

Workshop – Health and Fitness
After the manicure and pedicure it’s time for a walk. It’s not too cold today (ha ha), and before we go we are given a terrific introduction to the new Health Vest, invented by a local doctor, from fitness instructor Keiron Lee. The Health Vest is a simple design that makes you work out twice as hard in half the time, using a bungee-cord design so that as you walk you can stretch and strengthen to your heart’s content while you hardly realize what’s happening!
Keiron is a certified spinning instructor and fitness expert. She demonstrated the Health Vest, but spoke most importantly about breathing. Breathing isn’t just about surviving. Changes take place much more easily when you breathe deeply and properly. Growing conscious of your breath can have many positive effects on our life. It can alter the way you cope with things on a daily basis.

Physical fitness enhances the way we exist by balancing dichotomies like relaxation and strength. Focus and suppleness. Flexibility and discipline. The desire to become stronger can lead us to happiness.

We drive to a beautiful walk on the back of some Great Barrington Hills. The air is cold but not as cold as it has been; and we all agree that walking every day, no matter what the weather or the temperature, whether it’s raining or steaming or blizzard – walking every day matters. It’s not just the exercise, is Doone’s feeling about it, it’s being out in nature.

I agree. Give me trees, and birdsong, and a pine-needled path any time over the loud, stuffy sterility of a gym.

Walking builds a different kind of strength inside us.

And as Keiron says, We get strength from getting stronger.

Week 5
A Date with Destiny
Today is my makeup session with Keiron Lee! How do I look when I enter ? Not great – especially not in the mornings. My eyes are puffy, my skin creased.

Keiron begins with the magic of Dr. Hauschka’s rose day cream – a tinted moisturizer that I’ve been using ever since. She works particularly on my eyelids, making my eyes more pronounced. She advises me about the tired circles under my eyes, applies lipstick (I’ve fallen in love with lipstick), sweeps on some luscious mascara, and I feel charmed again.

Now I look pretty good, and some elegant women begin to arrive for the workshop. Some I know, others I meet for the first time. One thing I can tell about all of them: they are gorgeous, and they dress really, really well. The more casual they dress, the better they look.

I feel frumpy and chubby in my big skirt and buttondown chintz blouse – especially when I’m introduced to one of the most exquisite women I’ve ever met: Aline. She’s straight out of a Paris boutique, with her short bobbed hair, chic scarf, an exceptional shirt, and marvelous casual Turkish trousers. Aline owns Tanglewool, an elegant, chic store in Lenox, Mass.

One of the best pieces of advice we receive today from Aline is this: You don’t need a lot of clothes. You need a few key pieces that will last. Fabric is important; good quality is important.
Well, that fits into my glamorous grandmother’s adage: “We can’t afford to be cheap.”
It also fits into the way I raised my children – in the Waldorf methodology one (organic, expensive, unique) doll is better than lots of dolls. Children learn to love, to appreciate, to revere if they have one of something; and the opposite if they have lots. So Aline’s words resonate, and I wonder why I haven’t applied the same philosophy to more areas of my life.

Simplicity is good. Less is more.

So, she advises, buy a few choice pieces – one cashmere cardigan – one white blouse – a great little blazer – and be done with it.

Style – having style – being stylish. How does one find one’s own style? Here are some style types:
•    Gamine. playful, slim
•    Sporty, natural
•    Ingenue – flowing garments and feminine
•    Romantic – lace and satin
•    Classic – the woman who is always perfectly coiffed and accessorized

Which are you? Cut out pictures of the models you like the best, suggests Aline. You’ll see that they tend to be similar. They show you what you like. And that’s what you need to go after in your ‘look’.

Aline remembers visiting Paris when she was in her early twenties, and sitting at the brasseries and watching the Parisian women walking past – eighteen-year-olds, forty-year-olds, and sixty-and seventy year-olds – all of whom moved with a seemingly effortless elegance and grace.
As she speaks, I remember my trips to Paris. I’ve been there many times but one stands out as I listen to Aline: I’m seventeen years old, just arrived for a month of studying at the Alliance Francaise and because of a mix-up I don’t have a place to stay. In my confusion, I do the only thing natural to me: I head to a bookstore. I find myself on the left bank at the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, where I wander through the three floors of books for hours. Eventually, as dusk falls, I make my way to the front desk where I ask George Whitman (I had no idea who he was!) if he has any suggestions of where I can stay for the night. He asks if I am a writer, and I have a strange moment of realization. Of course I immediately say yes, and I am invited to stay at his legendary bookstore for the next few weeks, meeting extraordinary writers and thinkers, serving coffee, cleaning the store during the very brief hours it is closed, and being grateful to this remarkable man who said once: “Never be inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.” Ever since I’ve tried to match his hospitality to me.

I digress. The fact is that at the time I was completely unaware of style or glamour or elegance.

All I cared about while I was in Paris was reading some scrawling letter, carelessly pinned to the wall of the bookstore, written by Hemingway or Faulkner.

But that’s what Aline is addressing! As Paris comes back to me in a rush of nostalgia, I hear her say, “True elegance is a real encounter with yourself.” Learn to be yourself. Accept yourself.
I realize that the grace and style she is speaking of can even relate to me! I just have to find it somehow. And that’s the great gift Body & Soul’s Diva Do-Over has given me: the guideposts to finding my own grace and style – no one else’s.

Coco Chanel said once: “I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little, if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that’s the day she has a date with destiny. And it’s best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”

Week 6
Samson and Delilah
Today is the grand finale – my hair is going to be cut. I can’t remember going to a hairdresser except when I was ten years old and living in Rome – my mother had thought it would be fun for me, I think. I remember the hair dryer burning the tips of my ears, and thinking, never again. I’ve had it long since my aunt graciously cut it before I went off to college when I was eighteen. She gave me an elegant pageboy which had long since grown out. So… I’ve had long hair that I trimmed myself, through three decades – hippy, belly dancer, romance writer.

Now it’s time – at this new middle-century age and after –  to shift my persona, and, as Doone has instructed us over and over these past six weeks, to find out what we really look like now and how we want to make the most of it.

I’ve decided I’m ready and I’m actually rather excited. She tells me a dream she had about Rita, the hairdresser she has selected to cut off my locks, which isn’t encouraging, but I’m still willing. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? My hair will again.

Hair is a funny thing. It means different things to all of us. For Samson it was something very different to my son, who carefully leaves about a centimeter of hair to mold his elegant skull. For women who have always had short hair it’s as though they hardly pay attention to it. And there are those, like Rita my hairdresser, who says she feels compelled to change her hairstyle as often as possible – “ blond, short, dark, curly, long … I like to try things out,” she says cheerfully as she hacks away at my hair.

I feel cheerful as well. I feel lighter, and refreshed, and my face looks not so bad in the mirror. I actually look almost pretty, as Rita cuts and blows and we discuss our shared love of romance novels. Doone and Rosemary ooh and ahh they both claim I’ve lost ten years with those ten pounds of hair.

Maybe I’m lighter too. Seriously.

I glance at the piles on the floor and wonder if I should feel sentimental, but instead I see the hair like a mound of cut-off fingernails. It’s over with. Long hair is no more for me. Just as the hair cut I had when I was seven and eight would not have been okay for me at sixteen.

Times change – and our task is to change with it.

After the hair is shorn, we return for a final farewell and pep talk guided by Doone. She reiterates the concept that as aging women we’re at a point now that we can really discover a whole new way of living, and looking, and loving, and being. But in order to do so, we need to take care of ourselves in an entirely new way.

“You don’t have to become invisible,” she points out. “That’s so often what happens after a certain age, when we’re so used to being noticed for how we look.”

My biggest concern is that I’ll ‘fall off the wagon’ and won’t keep up my determination to look at my changing self in a positive, refreshing, enlightened way.

“Well, what would make you stay with it?” Doone asks.

We all talk about ways to sustain the lessons I’ve learned during the past six weeks. The most important one, we all agree, is consistency.

“Remember that our bodies crave rhythm,” Doone points out. “Our bodies thrive on rhythm, and we begin to expect certain things at certain times.”

In other words, if we can continue certain rituals and things to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, then we’re good. My budget won’t allow me a weekly facial, or even a monthly one, but I’m going to go through this process on a quarterly basis, at least for one year, and see if I can get it into my system.

We learned during Week 1 that it takes twelve weeks for our bodies to change a habit. I’m thinking if I can present myself to the world as though each time I emerge into it I might encounter a date with destiny for twelve weeks, maybe I can do for the rest of my life.

Grande Finale – ANOTHER one!

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[Look at the slide show above by clicking on ‘View with PicLens’ and then read this post. All photos are by Sarah Dinan.]

An amazing unexpected additional gift is an invitation from the Diva of Clothes, Aline Sosne, owner of Tanglewool, to try on clothes and be advised as to what suits me. We arrive on a cool but sunny April morning to the famous Lenox store that feels as though it is straight out of Paris. Doone, Hope, Sarah Dinan, the photographer, and I are greeted by Aline and Barbara Green, her assistant.

I’m the only one who’s nervous.

At first I feel I am in a museum, and only want to shyly peek at the items, but the enthusiastic ladies gather items off the racks by the bushel and herd me into the dressing room.

The design, the colors, the drapes and cuts are all out of this world – but most of all the fabrics are what blow me away. From silk chiffon skirts to smoldering gold blouses, to midnight blue evening gowns, to a delicious red cocktail dress by artists like Trelise Cooper, Annette Gortz, Jarbo, AnneClaire, a scarf that seems to float away by180g, Paris and a pink fedora by Une cerise sur la chapeau, Paris, that transforms everyone who tries it on.

As I parade, and reflect, and dress and undress, and dress again, I think a lot about what I have gained during the Diva Do-Over. Obvious reminders of things like the importance of rhythm for your entire sense of well-being and how essential it is to be active – even simple walking – every day, and how important it is to be happy with what you are doing…

If your job isn’t satisfying, now is the time to do something else. If you always wished you could focus on something else, now’s the time to begin. Today. And as I dress in Aline’s amazing selection of outfits, I keep thinking about the novel that Samantha mentioned in her letter: Heaven Falls. The book is ‘almost there’ – I have known that for a long time. One editor likened it to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca so I know I am almost there. But something is missing, although I can never quite single out what that is. But now I know. It is not a question of my believing in my older heroine’s dynamism and beauty – she does not believe it! But now she will.

I regard my new friends with admiration and appreciation, trying to see myself as clearly as I see them: they are all so elegant, and lovely, and self-confident, and pretty, surrounded by Aline’s store that is both glamorous and welcoming.  The most amazing thing is with how much enthusiasm they respond to every single item of clothing I try on. It is not only because the extraordinary designs would make a bag lady look like a queen! No, they are also vehement about the fact that I need to wear much more shapely outfits, instead of the baggy skirts and sweaters that I usually wear. I am much slimmer than any of them had imagined, and taller, and lovelier, and older, and – finally – even wiser.

Many, many thanks especially to Doone Marshall, owner of Body & Soul in Great Barrington, who offers  this amazing Diva D0-Over program, and helped me to understand that aging gracefully is not about growing old – it’s about finally becoming who we really are.