Prime Time - Jane Fonda [16]
In doing my life review, I read books by the famed psychologist Alice Miller; The Drama of a Gifted Child was especially useful. It is about people who survived emotionally and physically abusive childhoods with narcissistic parents because they developed adequate defense systems. Also useful was I Don’t Want to Talk About It, by the therapist Terrence Real, which addresses men’s depression and their difficulty in expressing emotion. My goal was to better understand my father. As it turned out, however, these books also helped me understand my three husbands! Terrence Real writes about the many ways men unconsciously disguise depression with addictions, and about how hard it is for them to allow people to see their underlying sadness. It isn’t manly! This permitted me to view the significant men in my life with forgiveness and compassion. What a wonderful gift to bring into my Third Act!
FORGIVENESS AND GRATITUDE
Forgiveness is at the center of it all, and gratitude. I was able to see how many people had given me so much, had believed in me even when I hadn’t. On a deep, noncerebral level, I could separate who I was from how my parents had behaved toward me.
MY LATE FORTIES AND FIFTIES
When I looked back at Act II, especially my late forties and fifties, I saw that I got stressed out so easily then. I remember feeling like Sisyphus trying to roll a boulder up a mountain. I thought that this was just life. I’d wake up in the morning and my first six thoughts would be negative. I realized that my negativity had been increasing as I aged, and I grew concerned.
Today I do not suffer from the “poor me”s; there is no longer a blanket of negativity weighing me down. I no longer react to today’s dramas with my own drama, partly because I’ve replaced stress with detachment. By that I don’t mean indifference but, rather, an ability to step back and observe events with greater objectivity, fairness, and perception instead of so much subjectivity. This detachment can be one result of doing a life review. Understanding leads to the realization that it’s not just about you! I have been able to carry this newly discovered perspective and wholeness with me into my Third Act—proof that it’s never too late!
With Vadim on our wedding day.
Tom Hayden with Vanessa and Troy.
With Ted at one of his ranches in Montana, in 1977.
© ANNIE LEIBOVITZ/CONTACT PRESS IMAGES
Decommissioning Our Demons
What the experience of doing a life review has taught me is that while we cannot undo what has been, we can change the way we understand and feel about it, and this changes everything. It helps us decommission our demons, frees us from the past, and gives us a boost as we go forward, in new ways, into the rest of our lives.
Self-Confrontation and Transformation
While researching this book, I was surprised to find that a number of psychiatrists advocate the life review process, not for the purpose of wallowing in past problems or pathologies or enshrining our early years in either joy or pain, but as a means of self-confrontation and transformation. We look back, we take responsibility for ourselves, and we move on.
The late Dr. Robert Butler, who was the founding president of the International Longevity Center in New York City, said, “There is a moral dimension to the life review because one looks evaluatively at one’s self, one’s behavior, one’s guilt.” He believed that a life review can lead to atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and affirmation and can help one find a new meaning in life. He noted that “if unresolved conflicts and fears are successfully reintegrated, they can give new significance and meaning to an individual’s life.” I know this can be the case; I have experienced it and the freedom it brings. So, step one in making a whole of your life is spending time on a life review.
As mentioned earlier, Viktor Frankl’s idea that you have the freedom to choose how you respond to a given situation influenced