V1.2 - The Joy of Spiritual Moxie
The Art of Starting Over: Awakening Your Swell Dame
The Joy of Spiritual Moxie
One is not born; rather, one becomes a woman.
--Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
French writer, philosopher, and feminist
Did you know that the “Queen of the Andes,” a seed-bearing spiky wonder which blooms only once every 80 to 150 years, grows to gigantic heights in the harshest conditions possible, the highest altitudes on earth where no other plant can survive? The African marvel, the Madagascar Palm, which has been on the planet for the last 80 million years, was only discovered in 2008, for she blooms only once every century. Think of a woman’s spiritual moxie like the sap of these extraordinary botanical stunners.
Every woman is born with spiritual moxie, but we can’t access this feminine strength on our own or even at our own choosing. Divine Grace always knew we would come to this turning point—when we would be forced to give up or go forward. All we need already has been provided for us, tiny seeds hidden in the secret recesses of our hearts containing resilience, restoration, and self-reliance. And like new sprouts of Sequoia Redwoods, they can grow only from the ashes of our previous existence.
The Becoming of a Swell Dame
Swell Dames often are late bloomers. Only after we have been emptied of all pretenses; only when we have learned that imitation is the deadliest form of self-sabotage; only when Divine Mystery takes us on this quest beyond the landscape we can see right now, only then, do we become a Swell Dame. But Babe, I promise you, it is so worth the wait. Not a day in our lives was wasted, not even the painful ones.
I believe with all my heart that the ability to Start Over is entrusted to us when we need it most but expect it least. As someone who tries to understand the “whys” of life, it reassures me to take a more expansive view of misfortune, mistakes, uncanny coincidences, mystical chains of chance, and the consequences of unconscious choices or not choosing at all. I’m gradually becoming comfortable again with trusting my sense of “Knowing,” and you will too. Isn’t rescuing a daily life you love second only to the miracle of life itself?
There is something so splendid, abundant, and redemptive about life’s “second chance” that arrives each New Year. Perhaps it’s because second chances (or third, fourth, fifth, ad Infinitum) are the golden opportunities we thought too good to be true the first few times around. Now we know better, and we’ll be beginning again with all the wit, wisdom, aplomb, verve, and determination we’ve accumulated along the way – ironically, the gifts that have come from all those mistakes, misalliances, misadventures, and “Oh No!”s.
How fabulous to realize that all our mistakes (and there have been some doozies for me) have been spiritually transformed into the astonishing compost needed to grow into an iconic Swell Dame! Let’s savor this new understanding, for it will enable you to put down your heavy baggage of regrets, finally.
I hope you will think of The Art of Starting Over as a fortnightly confidential letter of personal prompts meant to help you reclaim your lost dreams or create entirely new ones. It’s a chance to build from the ground up your yearned-for lifestyle, which, I suspect, has been waiting for you for decades.
What dream is so sacred or wish so treasured that it remains an unspoken prayer because you’re even afraid to share it with Heaven?
For so many years, we have thought that Starting Over is our choice. We study for a particular degree, take a new job, move to a new part of the country, date a new person, call off the wedding and marry another. The older we get, the more we realize that Starting Over is compulsory and always was. My prayers have become very direct and to the point: “Please God, don’t let me die before I’ve truly lived. Please bless me with the courage and faith to begin again. Please let me Start Over.”
The Naming of Things: On Swell Dames, Women of a Certain Age and Babes
I understand why one wants to know the names of what [she] loves. Naming is a kind of possessing, of caressing, and fondling.
--Jessamyn West (1902-1984) American Quaker author
I think it best before we continue if we have a brief chat about my choice of words so that you will understand that everything you read in my dispatches is written with the deepest affection and respect for you as my dearest reader and friend.
“Over the decades, centuries, and millennia, thousands of entertaining, poignant, mischievous, and brilliant expressions have been birthed by cultural vogues and just as quickly fallen victim to them as well. Some of the rejects are far more nuanced and descriptive than the modern words and idioms conjured up to take their places—and in many cases, no satisfying substitute has been offered up at all,” Lesley M.M.Blume tells us in her pithy compendium Let’s Bring Back--The Lost Language Edition: A Collection of Forgotten-Yet-Delightful Words, Phrases, Praises, Insults, Idioms, and Literary Flourishes From Eras Past.
During the twenties, thirties, and forties, when the good life was portrayed on the silver screen in glorious black and white, the highest compliment you could pay a woman was to call her a “Swell Dame.” It was an accolade not easily bestowed; beauty, glamour, money, fame, or social position could not guarantee being considered swell.
Gee, you’re swell…
A Swell Dame lit up every room she entered because of her irresistible lightness of being, which is why her celluloid life at 24 frames per second always seemed like a romantic comedy even when it wasn’t -- such as during the Great Depression and World War II. Think of Myrna Loy’s arched eyebrow wit in the Thin Man film series (1934-1947); Constance Bennett’s insouciant supernatural naughtiness in the Topper movies (1937-1941); or Carole Lombard’s sophisticated screwball sexiness in My Man Godfrey (1936).
We remember these women in a certain way now because they were deliberate in their choices, superb at guile and mystery. “I live by a man’s code, designed to fit a man’s world, yet at the same time, I never forget that a woman’s first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick,” Carole Lombard once admitted frankly. She wasn’t being glib, camp, or condescending. Swell Dames knew how to lace frankness with charm to outthink, outsmart and outplay the dark suits running the movie studio system that controlled every aspect of their lives, loves, and fortunes. It was their brains and bravura that made these women Swell Dames, not the bias-cut satin dresses they sashayed in across a crowded dance floor.
Or perhaps you hear “Swell Dame” and immediately think of a showgirl. A flibbertigibbet, all curves, and no class. Well, the most fabulous showgirl of them all was the sensational Josephine Baker. She couldn’t get a job in the United States because she was “too dark” but set the world on fire in 1927 dancing in Paris’ Follies-Bergères wearing a skirt made of rhinestone-encrusted bananas and ropes of pearls. However, Josephine Baker isn’t a Swell Dame in my heart because she set so many pulses racing from behind the footlights. She’s a Swell Dame because, during World War II, she was a member of the French resistance, then during the sixties a civil rights activist at the behest of Mrs. Coretta Scott King. Josephine Baker refused to perform in American segregated clubs and concert venues.
Oh, yes, and as a single mother, she adopted 13 children.
While Broadway musicals like 1949’s South Pacific (Richard Rogers score, Oscar Hammerstein II, lyrics) put the choreographed oomph back into why we should remember that “There is nothing like a dame, nothing in the world…there is nothing you can name…that is anything like a dame.” In the far-flung outposts of the British Empire, a noblewoman being elevated to the status of “Dame,” the feminine equivalent to knighthood, has been a royal privilege since medieval times.
So, here’s my definition of a Swell Dame: an extraordinary woman of wisdom, wit, and wiles, who courageously face continuous reckonings and fights Life’s challenges toe-to-toe (even in high heels.) A Swell Dame may be down on the mat, but she’ll stagger back up before Life’s referee calls her out. And in exploring the lives of our historical Swell Dames, we remember them with awe and admiration because every one of them got up and started over, wiser and more determined than ever to get what she was born for: that brave and beautiful life.
