An Internal Intergenerational Dialog: On Returning to Paris and Finding My Lost Inner Twenty Year Old As I Turn Sixty

Check out this guest post from author and activist Gail Straub, who will be at the Omega Institute’s intergenerational conference that we’ll be at this fall.

This past May in celebration of my sixtieth birthday I returned to Paris where I had studied Marxism at the Sorbonne as a twenty year old college student. I thought I was returning to Paris because I loved everything about the City of Lights including her museums, churches, cafes, concerts, wine, patisseries, parks, and yes, the stubborn proud Parisians too. All this was still true as I fell head over heels in love with Paris just like I had forty years ago. But something else, something unexpected, was waiting for me in Paris. I turned into a twenty-year old young woman again.
As I revisited my old neighborhood haunts my whole being seem to lighten. I felt open, excited, as if everything were new and possible. I had the energy of four people and my imagination was on fire. Studying at the Sorbonne in the aftermath of the historic student revolution of 1968, I returned to those streets where we had protested and I sensed a quickening in my old bones, my passion to change the world fully reignited. Unselfconscious about my miserable French accent, I engaged in myriad of lively dialogs about Obama and Chirac, arts and culture, with every imaginable sort of Parisian. I could even eat like a horse gaining not a single ounce as had been true four decades ago. Oh the joy to be in Paris and eat anything I wanted, whenever I wanted!
Alas coming back to my mountain home in the Hudson River Valley, once again I turned into my sixty-year old self; overly responsible, stuck in old habits and patterns, working too hard, longing for more energy, caring too much about what others think, and a bit arrogant. But fortunately my awesome “Parisian internal intergenerational dialog” had lodged in my heart and wasn’t about to let go. My brief return to the energy and spirit of my twenties was one of the greatest gifts of turning sixty. It was a crucial reminder that in order to stay vibrant, creative, engaged, passionate about changing the world, willing to take unabashed wild actions, I simply must have my younger sisters teaching, inspiring, and lightening me up.
And this brings me to Omega’s Women and Power Connecting Across the Generations Conference. What a wonderful invitation to laugh and cry and sing about the issues that we all care about as women. What a rare opportunity for a focused discussion among generations about important things like power, voice, and feminism; men, family, and relationships; work, creativity, and spirituality. All these central issues mean something quite different to me as a Boomer informed by the era of the sixties than they do to a Millennial shaped by very different times. What if we put together our understanding, our confusion, and our heart’s longing? What if we co-mentor each other? As an older I really do need to learn about the true benefits of a blog. And exactly how is it that you younger sisters are transcending the old boundaries of race and gender? As a younger woman you could be intrigued with my experience of how compassion deepens with the passing decades and how the presence of death becomes a precious advisor. And I bet you might be interested to know what I learned as a young woman during the student revolution in the streets of Paris forty years ago.
Bio after the jump.

Considered a pioneer in the field of empowerment, Gail Straub cofounded Empowerment Training Programs in 1981. Since then she has offered training to thousands of people throughout America, Europe, Russia, China, and East Asia. She codirects the Empowerment Institute Certification Program, a school for transformative leadership. With her husband David Gershon, she coauthored the best seller, Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life As You Want It. The book has been translated into five languages and is used worldwide as the basis for empowerment life coaching and support groups.
A seasoned social activist and citizen diplomat, she has trained Russian activists in the empowerment methodology helping them build a visionary leadership model for social change. She has done similar work in China where the empowerment model was adopted by the Chinese Women’s Federation, the largest women’s organization in the world. Gail served as the International Director for the historic First Earth Run, a global initiative co-sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and ABC Television. In 1986 during the height of the cold war, a torch of peace was passed around the world mobilizing the participation of 25 million people, 62 countries and 45 heads of state. The event raised several million dollars for UNICEF which was distributed to the neediest children in the world.
In 1992 Gail created Grace: A Spiritual Growth Training Program designed to integrate spiritual development with social and ecological responsibility. Hundreds of students throughout North America, Europe, and Russia have participated in this program of engaged spirituality. Based on its success she wrote the critically acclaimed, The Rhythm of Compassion: Caring for Self, Connecting with Society and Circle of Compassion: Meditations for Caring for the Self and the World. Her most recent book is the feminist memoir Returning to My Mother’s House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine, which has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Nautilus Silver Award and ForeWord Book of Year Award Finalist.
Gail received her bachelor degree with honors in political science from Skidmore College. She has served in the Peace Corps in West Africa and on the Board of Directors of the Omega Institute and the Russian American Humanitarian Initiative. She is a faculty member at The Edge International School for Leadership and Spirituality in the Netherlands.