Sharing a Song of Hope

Song of Hope

V. 1

This is a song of hope,

For days beyond this day,

For life after the death in this moment,

This time when all but pain seems far away.

Don’t be pulled down.

Don’t let these lies become your truth.

Let the light into your darkness

And hear the hated voices inside you become mute.

Chorus

Here’s to a better day,

A better time,

When the streaming tears are from laughter.

You know now’s not the end.

There’s more to come.

Let’s push toward a better chapter.

In this life

We’re writing

We can choose to be the heroes

And heroes push for hope beyond the hurt.

V. 2

Yes, today is rough.

Life is never fair.

Dreams seem falling down all around us

And our best isn’t good enough.

Lies will surely be our death.

So let’s release them to the living air.

Let’s let them die this very moment,

And as they shrivel, breathe a healing breath.

Chorus

Here’s to a better day,

A better time,

When the streaming tears are from laughter.

You know now’s not the end.

There’s more to come.

Let’s push toward a better chapter.

In this life

We’re writing

We can choose to be the heroes

And heroes push for hope beyond the hurt.

V. 3

Please hear this song of hope,

For days beyond this day,

For life after the death of this moment,

This time when joy could be a page away.

Raise yourself up.

Reach out for all that’s good and true.

Let the light into your darkness

And step back into your story with your strength renewed.

Chorus

Here’s to a better day,

A better time,

When the streaming tears are from laughter.

You know now’s not the end.

There’s more to come.

You can push toward a better chapter.

In this life

We’re writing

We can choose to be the heroes . . .

You can choose to be the hero . . .

I’ve always seen in you that hero.

And heroes reach the hope beyond the hurt.

Please sing this song of hope.
                                               -Me

My earlier musings about the similarities between midlifers and teenagers and the potential trouble brewing in our house with two of each age group have been playing themselves out with much passion . . . and drama . . . oh, the drama. We’ve had our share of screaming and crying; OK . . . I, as the only female here, have had my share of screaming and crying and have been pleasantly surprised that one of our teenage boys has been training me to speak calmly instead of yelling in the midst of extreme anger, frustration, and powerlessness. In turn, I’m persevering in the attempt to train my boys to become men of strength, and honor, and hope, training that cannot be as direct as the “use your inside voice” training I’m receiving.

As a result, I’ve become a novice song-writer now. The music actually came to me, and I put the message I needed at the moment to the music. I’ve started getting the notes down, mostly because the song is inspiring me to inspire my guys. I’ll share the words with you . . . simple enough thoughts in progress that may go no further  . . . just in case you, too, could use a simple message of hope as you face your today and tomorrow.

God be with you, friends.

-a blog post by Tammy Fletcher Bergland  tbergland.blogspot.com

A Bird-Brain and Emotional Instability

Ode to the Red Bird Who Slams Into our Window

1

Once our west windows stood tranquil, unruffled, and clear.

The living room within served as a place of rest,

Where I could hear

My mind, rejuvenate through every test.

It was a place to dream, to meet good cheer.

Times have changed. Our home’s no longer calm.

The peace has passed;

Turmoil has amassed.

My contemplative space has lost its inspirational balm.

2

One ordinary early morning,

Near the windows, in my comfy chair,

With some now unremembered thought just forming,

I was startled by events, then most rare.

A clumsy-sounding bang

From outside the windows rang.

The indoor-cat who at my feet lay sleeping on her back

Shot to a shelf, ready to attack.

Uncertain of what had just occurred,

The cat and I peered outside and saw a bird.

Still, the bird lay upon the ground,

An unmoving lump of red,

And I, I was sad to see such beauty downed;

The cardinal, stopped in flight, there was lying dead.

The cat, crouched above me on her perch,

So suddenly awake, prepared to lurch

Through the window glass,

Mostly to prove that she was fast.

I sighed and retreated toward my day.

Cat tensed. And resurrected bird flew away.

3

Oh, how I wish this story had a happy end,

But, alas, it does not—

I’m constantly reminded what unsettling onslaught it has brought.

The red bird, revived from death, flutters again.

He hates his glassy apparition. He’s obviously confused.

He slams himself into the pane. He must be feeling bruised.

His continued crashing leaves me unamused.

The place that once was my paradise of peace

Now reveals self-inflicted torture without cease.

My bedroom is above it, and every morn when cat and I awake,

We hear the bird-song and smack. How long will this dying take?

He castigates himself unyieldingly.

He serenades his own reflection unabashedly.

I keep hoping he will learn

And fly away free, never to return.

As he recurrently attempts to barrel through the glass,

A reality that can never be,

Musings and months pass.

He’s reminding me of me

As I soar toward visions that I almost see,

Obstinately proceeding, reverberating to the ground and so far re-arising

In spite of impossibilities.

                                            -Me

Recently one of my boys presented his brother with a birthday card that read, "Get Well . . . I hope you recover from your mental instability soon." Although the card had been carefully selected months in advance specifically because it was a crazy, misfit of a birthday wish, the words of the card, when read aloud on the actual birthday, made us all laugh a little too sincerely. The card was humorous because of the truth in it . . . for all of us at the moment. Our dear cardinal who has forcefully joined the daily interactions of this family of two young mildlifers and two youngish teenagers is one of many elements adding to our collective insanity these days.

And so runs our reality story as I see it this week. Sometimes one can find comfort in any kind of predictability, even the unsettling regularity of a bird living a long life of failed, loud, slow, and senseless suicide. Even so, I'll push on to something higher; surely there will be a better time soon. 

-a blog post by Tammy Fletcher Bergland  tbergland.blogspot.com

Time Will Tell

While I’ve enjoyed a semester of considering Gen X meeting midlife, I’m ready to move on, but a little closure is in order first.

I think that the psychology of midlife will remain much as it has been for other generations who have experienced midlife . . . at least for GenXers who slow down enough to realize when midlife is upon us. 

I don’t think we can deny that there is a certain psychology of “middleness” throughout human experience. The fact is, midlife IS in the middle of the lifespan. It is a time when one starts rubbing shoulders with death and illness more than during younger years. It is a time when one’s own body starts to feel some aging. It is a time when, at some point, each person will probably seriously consider his/her own mortality and try to figure out how the certainty of mortality will affect him/her in the here and now as well as in the years to come. For such reasons, midlife will surely continue to be a time of liminality in some manner, when people must come to terms with who they’ve been, embrace who they are now, and head toward a limited mortal life in the future. I think the time is ripe for new experiences of God and spiritual growth.

I also expect midlife in the coming 10 years or so to gain a flavor of GenX. First of all, we Gen Xers have seen Boomers and the Silent Generation go through midlife and are quite aware that life, for most people, can continue to be rich well past 60. We have, in fact, already incorporated the reality of a long life-span into our lives as can be seen by our later marriages and later child-bearing years. Many of us are not sandwiched between parents and teenagers as previous generations have been. More of us are single and without children. More of us have toddlers. Those of us who were born to Baby Boomers may not even expect to have to tend to our parents for many years to come. Some of us, even in midlife, have living grandparents while we are at the age to be grandparents ourselves. Many of us have confused family trees due to up to two previous family generations plus our own marriages that have dissolved in divorce; the sense of family and caring for the older generation is much more complicated than it has been for previous generations. Homosexual couples with and without children struggle with how the partner/children will financially survive should one of couple die because their family is not recognized as legitimate by laws as are heterosexual families. More children with autism have been born to us than to previous generations, and midlife parents whose children have special needs will certainly be concerned with long-term care for their children. As Gen X studies show, we have been cynical throughout life, and many of us will enter midlife with relatively few economic resources as compared to our parents when they were at midlife. 

As my questionnaires show, we will not be surprised if we find ourselves struggling to have basic needs met as older adults, and such a concern may impact our midlife in some way, whether making us more cynical or spurring us to work harder in an attempt to save more, I don’t know. While many of us expect rich midlife full of adventure offered by the small world we now live in, many of us expect that retirement age will be raised before we get there and that we will need to work longer into our old age than previous generations.

In addition, I am intrigued by Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational cycles. If their observations that large crises happen during the fourth generational turn in each four-generation cycle are accurate, then it is quite possible that the ebb and flow of life as we know it may substantially change around the time most Gen Xers have moved into midlife. According to observations and research by Struass and Howe, the fourth generations in each cycle (Gen X in the current cycle) in the past, have hit their peak of life as midlifers because they rise to the need to become crisis managers, guiding younger generations. 

I would be interested to know how the psychology of midlife played out in the lives of the previous fourth-generation groups in each cycle as identified by Strauss and Howe. I suspect, if the previous generations such as us were busy managing society-altering crises, they likely lacked the energy to invest in their own midlife crises. I imagine they simply survived day-by-day, trying to maneuver successfully through the bigger crisis at hand. Gen X, I think, would easily fall into such paths should massive crisis strike. As a generation, we are well educated. We have survived raising ourselves and have become problem-solvers who avoid idealism in lieu of the practical, and we have invested much effort in raising our children for whom we would do everything in our power to help if they were the young adults on the front lines of massive crisis. 

I don’t internalize doomsday predictions, and I certainly hope Strauss and Howe’s observations from the past don’t come to pass in this particular 4-generation cycle.

I’m not much of a prophet, I confess. I simply cannot see into the future, nor do I want to. So, time will tell what will come to be, and that's sufficient for me. I’m glad to finally be understanding my Gen X-ness, have enjoyed the journey so far, and am looking forward to more living . . . today, tomorrow, midlife, older adulthood, whatever tomorrows come. 

Wishing you all more tales to be told, whatever your generation or stage of life!

God’s blessings!


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Cyclical Time: Is History Repeating Itself?

As I’ve looked at generations and generational mindsets, I’ve wanted to talk to more generations than are alive today to help me understand what experiences are human and what experiences are colored by how a generation fits into history.

William Strauss and Neil Howe have examined Anglo-American history through a generational lens all the way back to 1443. They believe they’ve discovered a pattern of generational personalities. They believe that four basic generational types exist throughout history and have cycled through in pretty much the same order over and over again based on the way adults raise children and interact with society and the way children respond to each kind of nurturing and the society around them. So, generations impact society, and society impacts generations as they influence new generations.

By Strauss’s and Howe’s definition of a four-generation cycle, as I’ve looked at Gen X and the three current living generations older than Gen X, I’ve been examining one cycle of four generations that exemplifies most of the other generational cycles throughout history. According to Strauss and Howe, almost seven consecutive times, Anglo-American history has cycled through high times, followed by times of awakening, followed by unraveling of society, culminating in crisis in repeating succession. (Note: the “almost” seven consecutive times is because the U.S. Civil War era was a little off of the usual order, skipping the unraveling and going straight into crisis.)

During crisis, Heroes come to the forefront to help society through massive crisis, that, when resolved, results in high times. Children born during the crisis are usually sheltered out of necessity due to the dangers around them, and they gain their generational identity as young adult Artists. Although Artists speak to the soul of society and have high expectations, they are not considered to be as strong as the generation of Heroes ahead of them nor as strong as the generation of children born after the Artists. During the high times of history, Heroes birth a large generation of Prophets during prosperous times. Prophets dream big dreams and challenge society to push through existing boundaries. As prosperous times give way to an unraveling society, an alienated generation of Nomads is born and much abandoned by society as children, growing up with low expectations. Widespread, massive societal crisis, according to Strauss and Howe, has almost always hit just about the time all the Nomadic generation reaches middle age. The Nomads--overlooked children who learned to manage alone--become the crisis managers, leading the younger and stronger generation who have been nurtured by society to become the Heroes through during much danger while highly protecting the youngest children, the new generation of Artists, as the generational cycle begins anew.

Through the words Strauss and Howe use to tell the generational story of history, Gen X is a Nomadic generation. In the book, The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe look at times of societal unraveling evolving into massive crisis and the generations who lived at such times back to 1433; that is, the book focuses on the fourth turn in four-stage generational/societal cycles. Based on what they see as historical precedent, Strauss and Howe expect the Silent Generation to fade away as Baby Boomers become the political leaders of an upcoming, large-scale crisis. They expect Gen Xers to pick up the reins of crisis management as Millenials hit young adulthood at a time when society needs them to become a strong generation of Heroes. They expect the children born during crisis to be highly sheltered and sensitive Artists.

Interesting view of history with an eerie perspective on today’s world . . . hmm? I was reading Strauss and Howe when the recent tsunami hit Japan, so I was especially fascinated by the photos coming out of the crisis, noticing the ages and roles people were playing in response to it.

Questions? Thoughts?

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Middle Ground

Youth

Shrieking from deep within

Silent eyes dryly stare

Through benevolent adversaries

Who never quite understood

The impetus that is you.
                              -Me

-written by me as a 21-year-old high school teacher as I sat quietly with one of “my” adolescent rebels through an after-school detention

Undeniably, there is a psychology of humans in the middle that we have experienced or encountered in conversations or popular media: the middle child syndrome, feeling overlooked and slighted as the one who is neither the baby nor the oldest; the teenager in between childhood and adulthood, understanding more than a child while growing into an adult body, not ready for adult responsibility and not understanding that adult perspective has not yet arrived; the middle manager, discontent with incomplete authority and insufficient recognition or pay in spite of experience or education; the middle-aged adult with the potential of a midlife crisis, on the verge, perhaps of becoming wise, but struggling to come to terms with the of brevity of life, particularly one’s own life. 

We as humans seem to struggle a bit with not having quite arrived at wherever it is we think we’re headed or whatever it is we think we want. Being in transition puts us on edge, often pushing people away or pulling people too close, feeling smothered and lonely at the same time; who amongst us likes limbo or would claim that we want to feel stuck in the middle of . . . well, of anything? Often, nothing seems fair in the middle, especially where we're concerned as we view those who are the bookends to our middle.

While I, personally, am not anticipating midlife to throw any new psychological pitches at me, I think my own opinion on the matter of midlife is less reliable than research, observation, and the experience of many others. Times of limbo are notorious for distorting perspectives, so my anticipations of what life may soon hold for me developmentally are probably as off-base as a 13-year-old explaining how he/she will develop during the upcoming seven years.

I do think it is interesting that the majority of GenXers who completed questionnaires for me suspect that we will experience midlife differently than previous generations. While there is no research I am aware of to support that such a theory is playing out, I would not be surprised if each generation’s midlife years are colored uniquely by their generational personality and the societal forces around them; after all, such is the case of teenage years and early adult years. 

How much, though, is the basic psychology of midlife affected by generational experiences?

Before I’m ready to attempt to answer at that, I want to share an interesting theory on generational cycles, the idea that, throughout human history, a cycle of four generation types has recurred over and over again in the same pattern. It’s interesting stuff that I’ll save for another day.

Question: Do any of you LIKE being in the middle? Actually, I kind of do . . . many roles I've held over the years have required me to stand in the middle of different people/groups/opinions, to hear and attempt to understand all, to act as a kind of conduit. I haven't studied personality types. To those of you who have, is there a personality type that is particularly drawn to such in-between situations?

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Voices from the Middle: Gen Xers Consider Midlife

Time to let other real people talk about Gen X meeting midlife. These are voices of friends and friends of friends who were nice enough to respond to my questions earlier this year. (I love this part . . . kind of like a birthday party, unwrapping what people gifted me with . . . and I'm happy to share the gifts. You're all great. Thanks!)

I think most of us are in denial about middle age. I am....

I'm choosing to take the scenic route and not go through middle age.

Boomers still insist on thinking of themselves as middle aged. I, for one, am willing to let them keep the title.

Either I have never had a mid-life crisis, or I've had one every day since the age of 13.

---------

Question: Do you think GenX will approach midlife differently than other Generations? If so, how?

Answer: YES . . .

We had our children later so we will postpone midlife – we, I, am the mother of young children but I am only 6 years shy of when my mother became a grandmother and she was a late grandmother for her generation. Thus, we will stay “young” longer – soccer mom, PTA, etc.

People have been waiting longer to have children and so at an age like 43, definitely the “grandma” age at one time, my friends are having children. The “empty nest” syndrome may be taking longer to develop – that feeling that one big segment of life is completed with kids going off on their own and then what to do next that creates a need for self-reflection and restructuring of goals. Also, seems like people my age expect a much longer healthy and productive future for themselves than a generation or two ago.

We will, generally, not be as well off as our parents in retirement . . . no pensions, no social security.

Right now, as I work with seniors, many whom are in the dying process, I have concerns about Medicare, and Social Security, and programs that are currently available to my parents, but that may not be available when I need them. At bear minimum, they may be so spent from and taxed, that Generation X-ers may only get a small portion of what we have paid-in.

I think we may have it harder than others. We are balancing so much: family and the broad sense of caregiving for our parents and kids, work, social activities, and our worship, if we are the 1/3 of Americans who actively have time to worship. We are the "in debt" generation, not only financially but with our time as well.

I think my focus is on staying active and taking care of my health from a more wholisitic perspective rather than focusing on what pills or doctor's cures can mask the signs of aging is different from my parent's generation.

Well I do think I will approach this age differently than my parents, but not necessarily any different that the generation before me. I think we will enjoy ourselves more, and think more about our health. I think we have learned from watching our parents that we will probably live a long time, and it is important to make sure the quality of that time is optimized.

We live life for the most part.  I am probably more active than I was 20 years ago. 

YES. I've noticed among my friends and counterparts a willingness to take a leap into the void and do things that our parents wouldn't have done. Turn 40 and decide on a total career change? Sure, why not! It's possible. You're 38 and you suddenly decide that Marketing sucks and you want to go to med school, even though it'll be 10 years before you're in practice? Sure! Do it! That has been the general attitude of my peers. We seem to have more of a willingness to take a chance and leave the confines of "but you have a good job with health insurance" behind. So many of my friends are currently in their "second act" - either willingly or as the result of a layoff - and every single one says the same thing: "It's the best thing I've ever done." For the generation before us, life changes seemed to only be allowed to occur in your 20s, and wherever you were when you hit 30, that's where you stayed forever. You lived in the same place, stayed in the same job... but not the Gen X'ers that I know. We seem to not mind moving around a lot, trying to find a place to live that makes us happy. My family before me never traveled, and I love being able to hop on a plane whenever I want to, and go to a different country. The whole world is more accessible, and I feel like Gen X'ers are all the richer for it.  And 40 suddenly doesn't look like what 40 used to look like. I look at Jennifer Aniston on a talk show, who seems very 30-ish to me, and I realize that she's 42. And that's a great example of how I feel collectively about my generation: we're not aging the same way the previous generation aged. In fact, I fully expect that at some point in the 50-60 range I'll have to slow down, or maybe I'll have some kind of ailment that young people don't get, and I fully expect to be completely shocked by my sudden physical limitations, and my first thought will be "but how can I have THAT? I'm so young...." -- when, in fact, I'll be pushing 60.  

Gen Xers probably place more emphasis on less important things than earlier generations. We're somewhat ego-centric. Past generations seem to revel in their family life as they age. We tend to focus on what we don't have anymore... looking in the mirror and seeing an unfamiliar face looking back. We're also very into our careers and maybe don't value ourselves for who we are but for what tangible things we can accomplish.

---------

Answer: MAYBE/ MAYBE NOT . . .

Not sure. We have a tendency to work in several different fields, so we might feel more well rounded in mid-life.

That is a 50/50 answer.  I believe that life approach (politics, socio-environment etc.) determines ones path!  This is true of any generation!    

Don't really know. I guess we might update our Facebook status or something.

---------

Answer: NO . . .

I don't really think so. Regardless of generation, I see middle age as a time where you sort of get used to being in your own skin. Most of your important decisions are in the past, so you just play the remaining cards you've got.

No, it's midlife, move on.

---------

So . . . yesterday, psychologists and researchers and my own ponderings . . . today, several Gen Xers stepping into the experience of midlife. Am I ready to draw conclusions or not? Hmm . . . 


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com 

What's the Big Deal About Midlife?

As a person who has acted 35-years-old since she was 3 and who has acted 18 since she was 30, I figured I’d understand midlife well enough. I was expecting to be confused by Gen X. As it turns out, quite the opposite is the case. I understand and often enjoy my generation. But midlife . . . what’s the big fuss all about anyway? Maybe the rest of you will resonate with what others have written about the midlife experience. Here goes:

“When life is no longer seen from a perspective of beginnings through a fantasy of continuous expansion and growth, but rather from the perspective of ends and of death through a fantasy of fate and limitations, midlife has arrived.” —Stein, Murray. In Midlife. Dallas: Spring Publications, Inc., 1983, pp. 41.

“Midlife can be a time of personal reorganization due to an increasing awareness of one’s mortality.”

—Kirasic, K.C. Midlife in Context. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004, pp. 121

“It is almost as if middle and late adulthood are the human laboratory in which existentialism is grounded. The preeminent issues are death (one’s own death), finitude, time, anxiety, dread, nothingness (and the threat thereof), and courage in the face of a threat to personal nonbeing.”

—Olson, Richard P. Midlife Journeys: A Traveler’s Guide. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1996, pp. 16.

“In midlife, the assumption of nearly every role one will assume peaks. Because of the number of roles, and corresponding number of selves, the midlife adult can be viewed as psychologically fragile. Cultural, familial, and personal expectations for one’s self may clash, resulting in a time of confusion, discontent, and personal disorganization.” —Kirasic, K.C. Midlife in Context. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004, pp. 40.

“As we move onto the second curve of new growth, our lives will expand into a richer, more fully developed maturity. This abundance of life cannot be attained in one’s twenties or thirties. Ripeness comes later.”

—Sadler, William A. The Third Age: Six Principles of Growth and Renewal After Forty. Cambridge, MA, 1999, pp. 45.

According to Erik Erikson, midlife is a time when people work toward guiding the next generations, work that often feels as though it is battling a standstill. Changes in thought during midlife tend to bring about new awareness of self, other, environment, and community. Within such issues, the midlifer faces the pull between positive urges to guide/leave a legacy for future generations and negative urges to let life pass while focusing only on his/her own wants and needs. Midlifers who successfully negotiate the struggle tend to become more caring in addition to developing a religious attitude.

“Midlife crisis” is a common topic of authors examining midlifers. Murray Stein eloquently explains that the root of the crisis is the in-between space midlifers find themselves in, “when the ego is a has-been and a not-yet.” Carl Jung suggests that, in order to successfully navigate through midlife, a person must move from ego-centricity to God-centeredness, to descend into inner life in order to emerge as the Self. Stein explains that moving from young adulthood to older adulthood cannot successfully happen unless the midlifer buries the earlier identity and embraces the person he/she is becoming, which is what Jung meant when he said that whoever “carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning . . . must pay for it with damage to the soul.”

I understand in my head what all this is about, but don’t think I’m experiencing what psychologists call "midlife crisis" any more than I ever have. Honestly, I think I’ve gone through this sort of thing so much that it’s just kind of ordinary, not wonderful, but kind of typical to realize that I’m once again living in a state of “liminality” . . . a land of limbo . . . of being a has-been and a not yet with doors closing while other doors haven’t quite opened. I've always been acutely aware of death and the beautiful fragility of life. I've always had a religious attitude . . . I'm not talking about a specific religion, I'm talking about humility that comes from respecting time and an individual life in comparison with all time and creation. I've always been concerned with leaving a legacy and guiding the next generation . . . well, maybe not ALWAYs, but probably since I was 7 years old. I've been content with who I am even as I change, feeling that I am who I need to be since I was maybe 17. What psychologists call "midlife crisis," I view as adult human life, and I've already been living it and hope to continue until it passes on to something else.

Midlife is sometimes compared to adolescence, and I am quite aware that teenagers cannot see the big picture of all the changes they are going through until their teen time is over. Is that why I feel the way I do about midlife? Am I blinded by the storm? Or is there no new storm? And what kind of a potential hazard is our house with 2 young teenagers and 2 early midlifers? Should someone step in and save us?

I’ll share what other Gen Xers I know have shared about what they think midlife might be in a later post. Until then . . . any insights from voices of experience?


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Before X

Gen X isn't the only generation who has travelled through midlife. During midlife, people tend to learn to appreciate generations that came before in new ways. Older generations, after all, are the ones who raised us and are the ones we will be looking after in our families should they need our assistance. Today’s older adults were born before1951.

The GI Generation was born between 1901 and 1924 (currently ages 87-110). The GI Generation has also been called the Greatest Generation. In their childhood years, the American population was primarily rural but was moving quickly to the cities. Ford’s Model-T automobile came on the scene in 1908, but many in the country certainly relied on other forms of transportation. Women gained the right to vote. Radio reached American homes. Prohibition and the roaring 20s lifestyles clashed. Evolution was on trial in Tennessee. Country-wide crises hit during the generation's teenage years with the stock market crash, the collapse of other world economies, masses of homeless and unemployed people, and the Dust Bowl. The GI Generation found their identity as young adults as they were thrown into World Wars I and II on foreign soils and were sweating to increase homeland production to meet the needs of war.  In The Greatest Generation (an interesting book with photos and stories), author Tom Brokaw said, “Black Americans were called Negroes or Colored in polite company and official documents, but the hateful epithet nigger was a common expression, even when referring to black Americans in uniform. They had few champions of racial equality outside their own ranks.” Japanese Americans at home found their citizen rights removed. White members of the generation became heroes, found their meaning as heroes, and will always be remembered as heroes. They entered post-war life especially mature as a result of their war experiences. They continued to hold to the values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith. Brokaw noted, “They helped convert a wartime economy into the most powerful peacetime economy in history. They made breakthroughs in medicine and other sciences. They gave the world new art and literature. They came to understand the need for federal civil rights legislation. They gave America Medicaid.” As a generation, they have been characterized as frugal, team-oriented, loyal to institutions and causes. To their generation, marriage has been a binding commitment, and divorce has been unacceptable.

The Silent Generation was born between 1925 and 1945 (currently ages 66-86). The Silent Generation, born after the stock market crash and before the end of World War II, has also been called, the Postwar Generation and Seekers. Their earliest memories are memories of hard times. In the words of Strauss and Howe from the Fourth Turning (a book I’ll probably talk about another day) the Silent Generation “grew up as the suffocated children of war and depression. They came of age just too late to be war heroes and just too early to be youthful free spirits.” In a blog written by a Silent Generation man reminiscing about his generation's past, I read, “Because they had to look after their worried parents, they became empathizers, mediators, and conciliators.” From postwar times on, other descriptive words about the generation included, “withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, and unadventurous.” A a 1970 Time essay of generational self-examination, noted, “Our aloofness stemmed from an early skepticism. As youngsters during World War II, we collected paper, stomped on tin cans and weeded victory gardens to help the heroic Russians and defeat the hated Nazis and Japs. Before most of us were in our teens, we were taught that the Germans (no longer Nazis) and the Japanese (no longer Japs) were our allies and the once heroic Russians our enemies. Small wonder that in our college years we learned to be wary of ideologies or political passions.” According to Wikipedia, as young adults, the generation displayed confused morals, “expecting disappointment but desiring faith.” They worked hard, saved little, and women desired careers and families. When the Baby Boomers came along, the Silent Generation as mid-lifers felt especially crunched in the middle of powerful voices. The 1970 Time Essay on the generation said, “We can understand, as the young cannot, why the older generation is afraid, and more sadly, why it is resentful of those who seem to have everything but gratitude. To both young and old, we are almost invisible. The young often see us as the cop-outs—as the shorthaired, button-down junior exec or the suburban housewife in a station wagon—and many of us are.” In the 1960s and 1970s, the Silent Generation racked up the highest divorce rates in the country’s history even though they claimed to hold to the value of marriage. The Silents, as a generation, made a strong mark as artists, journalists and mediators including such people as: The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Clint Eastwood, James Dean, Little Richard, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Quincy Jones, Tina Turner, the Beat Poets, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gloria Steinem, and Jimmy Carter. I don't know about the rest of you Xers, but the Silent Generation's outlook reminds me a bit of us. Strauss and Howe actually say that Xers are the shadow of the Silent Generation.

The Baby Boomer Generation was born between 1946 and 1964 (currently ages 47-65). Baby Boomers were born after World War II, often to young, married GI couples during a twenty-plus year era of economic prosperity. They number more than any other living co-hort, are just now hitting retirement, and are accustomed to having society respond to their needs. As adolescents and young adults, Boomers took up causes and pushed hard to spur societal change. They ushered in a time of being more carefree as individuals and of thinking outside the box. Boomers seem to have broken the mold for expectations at each age they’ve hit along the way. Theirs is the generation of Vietnam, Woodstock, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. They were the long-haired, hippy, Flower Children of Xers' childhoods. As a group, Baby Boomers had more access to education than previous generations, and they also have tended to hold steady jobs with pensions and to own homes at an early age. They are currently the strongest, most active political generation in our country. In the late 1980s, a sociological report to the American Academy of religion said that as many Baby Boomers raised their families, they were returning to churches and religion in a search for meaning. Research shows Boomers to be a generation of religious seekers who do not necessarily view religion as their parents or grandparents did. The activism of Boomer youth is evolving into volunteer activities of older Boomers. Most of them are still mid-lifers, just ahead of Xers. The oldest 5 years of the Boomer generation has walked into older adulthood, just as the oldest 6 years of Gen X have hit midlife.

My grandma who I wrote about in the last post was born in 1901 and shared most of her generational characteristics with the Lost Generation, the generation just above the GIs. The Lost Generation is pretty much extinct from the planet now, which is kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around.

I've enjoyed considering life and generational experiences of living U.S. generations that are forging ahead of Xers and hope you've enjoyed the brief exploration as well.

OK all you non-Xers out there (or Xers, for that matter) . . . do I have anything here wrong? Should anything be added/ changed? What do you think has characterized generations other than X and why?

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

An X in the Circle of Life

Bequeathing Incognito

And the man begat man begat another

begat the father no son remembers,

a tissue-covered residue

molding in a grey photo

extinct by resounding

years and blood

replicating hollow mirrors of himself.

And each man breathed a boy breathed another

breathed men abandoned to foretime,

a foreshadowing legacy

inherited by surviving sons

reproducing generations,

men and boys

breaking old apparitions and creating new ghosts.

And each sire bore his sons bore his son

bore his boy who buried the bequeathor

except for the blood

grey eyes stretching from a page

into a breathing likeness

foreseeing future

failing to recall men and years

before he shatters.
                                -Me

-something I wrote at age 22, after Grandma had given me a stack of tin-type photos of relatives I’d never known

I don’t know about you, but thoughts of midlife, of looking ahead and behind, are familiar friends to me.

My dad was 36 when I, his first child, was born in the tumultuous year of 1968, and his mom was 31 when he, her first son, was born a few years into the Great Depression. My paternal grandma took over many mothering duties for me when she was 71, serving as something between mom and grandma, remaining my strongest female influence until she died at age 91 during the first year of my marriage.  

Every summer Grandma prepared me and herself to celebrate her last birthday, but one summer kept following another with yet another last birthday cake. My lifetime of memories of her begin after her first stroke, when she started using a walker to get around, when her toenails grew thick, her bones ached from arthritis, she talked about blood pressure, and her flesh bled and bruised easily. She lived alone on the farm where she had raised her sons. Dad told me that Grandma was crabby because it was difficult for her to give up the control she’d always had over the farm, her adult sons, skills she’d always been strong at, and her body. He was sandwiched between raising two kids, farming, and looking in on his mom.

The spring after I was married, her body just slowed down enough to stop one day, not quite getting her to one more last birthday cake. She was a strong, stubborn woman who spent laborious but fun hours during 90 degree days without air conditioning teaching me to can green beans, tomatoes, pickles and whatever other food my dad grew to keep the two of us busy. She taught me to make pies from scratch, scrub floors, fold laundry, hammer nails, prune rose bushes, and grow flowers. She let me parade her old hats and dresses from the 1920s during my one-girl fashion shows and practice walking with her walker or cane or feeling my way around her downstairs with my eyes closed, practicing being blind just in case I ever accidentally poked my eyes out. We laughed, sweated, and rested a spell outside under the shade trees with lemonade or cold tea together.

Once, frustrated that I’d been made the gatekeeper to prevent her from literally crawling up to the second floor of her house to clean, she uninvited me to her funeral, and we cried and raised our voices through the experience because each of us sure had a mean streak. I never doubted she had the ability to make me go find and cut a hickory switch for her to whip me with if I ever got out of line, and while I’d never seen her use the shotguns hanging above the washing machine near her front door, I could easily imagine her aiming one at strangers, probably chicken thieves, who may have come to her door from time to time as she was raising two boys and tending to a bed-ridden husband out in the middle of rural Illinois.

Pictures on Grandma’s walls were black and white. Pictures in photo albums were made of tin. We would sometimes rummage through trunks with wedding bands, obituaries, letters, and family secrets all tied together with old strips of aprons. She would let me select musty-smelling books I had to be gentle with while reading, belonging either to people she’d loved who had ceased living before I was born or to an earlier version of herself that I’d never known.

I left home for college at age 17, venturing into territory not experienced by the people who raised me, and I certainly felt as though I’d arrived in a new and strange land. It wasn’t until then that I really experienced unburdened youth or many influences of my own generation, which, as it turns out, weren't exactly unburdened. When I reached somewhere around age 35, I felt as though I’d finally arrived at the age I’d been most of my life. I’m still pretty much there.

Human developmental theories are based on the idea that, as we grow and change, we’re still all the ages we’ve ever been. Somehow, I don’t expect any age I reach to seem like foreign land. Through my family, I think I’ve always been all human ages that keep on cycling. I got to relive childhood when my boys were little, and now I’m reliving adolescence with them. Today my dad is the age Grandma used to be, and I’m the age in middle. Life and death is rich when generations walk together; through such life I’ve tasted eternity where life continues anew forever.

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time, little girl,

Grandma was little like you.

I ran all around

And jumped up and down.

Yes, what I’m saying is true.

Once Upon a Time wasn’t long ago.

“Behave yourself,” I was told.

I never sat still

And couldn’t swallow a pill.

No, Grandma wasn’t always this old.

Someday soon, little girl,

You will be tall and full-grown.

The years will go fast;

They’ll go speeding past;

Someday, you’ll have a 
“Once Upon a Time”

 Of your own.

-written by me during the second year of college after Christmas break with family 

God be with each of you through the circle of life.


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

A Moment to Marvel

Humans are astoundingly complex, and the way we’re shaped by our generation is merely a fragment of our complexity. As a mother and an adult, I’ve often lost myself in moments of marvel.

Both my children were born tongue-tied (my dad probably wondered why I hadn’t been born with such a gift for him), but until I became a mother, I’d never considered how many countless biological details have to come together perfectly to create human life before our flesh touches air.

I accidentally bloodied my first child’s nose on my first Mother’s Day as a mom, his first night home after his birth. My second child and I battled each other’s stubbornness early on when I realized he was the kind of child who slapped me in the face when I smacked his hand to keep him away from things like hot ovens and electrical outlets and when he realized I was the kind of mom who wouldn’t allow even his cute little toe to cross over a line once it had been drawn. I wonder how who I am and what I do will affect my children and their children.

My children were born in different states, played with kids whose skin was a different color than theirs in the church nursery, never knew life without computers, and traveled to almost half the U.S. states and eight different countries before they were 9 years old. As I mother them, I can draw limited lessons from my own childhood where the world was mostly our gravel road, my own family, and the nearby county seat with the population of 1700 people. I'm brought to silence as I consider how my dad’s mom must have experienced life with all changes of the 20^th century during her lifetime, 1901-1993. I remember how her most common summary of her life experiences was, “You just can’t even understand how different everything is now; I can’t even explain it.”

I’ve grown to know and care about friends in Ukraine who live in a country that bore the name of six different countries during the lifetime of my grandma who couldn’t put words to her U.S. experiences. I want to understand how politics, starvation, and wars from the last century along with their culture, families and experiences impact the lives of people who seem so very much like me, stemming from quite a different history on the other side of the world. I’m embarrassed about how little I still know of other peoples’ lives, experiences, and histories from thousands of other places on this earth we share.

All of humanity—strangers, friends, family, and I—have been scarred by addictions, illnesses, and sorrows and have known joy. Oh, how we hurt ourselves, each other, and how much we overcome.

I marvel at life, death, our world, each of our journeys, and the God I’ve known and who has walked with me from childhood.

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. -Psalm 139: 8-15 


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com