Category: Writing

SARATOGA TRUNK STARTED IT ALL

The year was 1945. Going to the movies was the great escape. It was entertainment that helped everyone escape the stress of WWII. My mother loved the movies. As early as I can remember sitting on my mother’s lap during an afternoon matinee was an important part of my life; memories that have stayed with me throughout the years.

I fell in love with Gary Cooper while sitting on my mothers lap. So much so that I struggled free, escaping from my comfortable perch to join Gary Cooper on the screen. Movies and movie stars. My love of both started with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in Saratoga Trunk when I was five years old.

I never outgrew my passion for movies. Moving from teenage crushes on Tab Hunter, then William Holden in Picnic and then Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief. I absorbed the lives I saw on the screen and made them mine. I wanted to be a part of that life. I wanted to be an actress. I never lost that dream.

Well, life happened and I wound up, not on the big screen, but the small one. Television. For most of my adult life I was in television in various rolls. Romper Room, talk show host, news anchor and syndicated host of my own financial show. My plan for my life was different than my five-year-old dream.

Then, before I could blink my eyes it seems, my fiftieth birthday rolled in. My hair was starting to gray, I had just celebrated an anniversary with my husband of five years. Somehow all of these changing factors, milestones in my life, proved to culminate in an ‘aha’ moment. I was going to go for it.

For forty-five years I had put my life’s dream on the back burner. Never say never. I was going to be an actress. Maybe not a movie star, but I was ready to work at building a new career and living my dream.

I immediately got headshots, made the casting rounds, and auditioned for a theater group. I used the same persistence that had helped build my television career. I made new friends and connections and soon was working in theater, film and television. I was older and didn’t have to compete with ingenious like I would have had to years ago. I had a chance at a second act and life was good.

Well it still is. I rarely audition anymore, though, because I am in what I consider my third chapter. My husband and I have resettled to Florida. I write books, this blog, lecture, have a presence on social networks and have a YouTube channel. But one thing has remained constant. I love movie stars of the 40’s and 50’s. Those glamour girls with great acting chops and charisma.

What’s the proof of that? I am doing a retrospective on Instagram (sandrashart) of the actresses that kept me company in many darkened movie theaters while growing up and dreaming of being a movie star. Let’s remember the good days of movies together!

Copyright Sandra Hart©️2018

All Rights Reserved

THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANTI-AGING

My mother had beautiful skin with minimal care. She washed her face with Palmolive soap, put lanolin serum on with a touch of Coty power and she was good for the day. She always wore a hat that protected her face from the sun and for ninety-two years she had beautiful skin.

Today we are inundated with a plethora of products that the beauty industry tell us we need or else we will all wind up looking like prunes before we reach forty-five.

What has changed? Well there are real factors our skin is dealing with today. We have lost some of the ozone layer that makes the sun more damaging to our skin. There are more damaging free radicals in the air. Our diet contains more processed foods and the world we are living in today is more stressful. All of these things are directly related to the health of both our bodies and skin.

Unfortunately, our current culture has a deep-rooted habit of valuing women largely in terms of their attractiveness.

For women, it also means being turned from a coveted object into a disposable one. We spend our whole lives fighting our own disappearance.

We nod and agree that we should embrace our wrinkles while quietly understanding that none of us, individually, want to be the one who actually looks old.

Let’s face it. We are all getting older. But we should start “Changing the way we think about aging by starting with changing the way we talk about aging.” I’m not suggesting we give up our retinol or retinol, but maybe we should change the way we think about aging by changing the way we talk about aging.

In this culture, as a woman to age is to be erased — to be deemed irrelevant, disappear from magazine covers and popular films. For women, it also means being turned from a coveted object into a disposable one. I feel my whole life has been focused on fighting my own disappearance.

Each sign of wear on my face might be taken as evidence of my failure as a person.

I would like to read you and example: A 1926 ad for an in-store facial treatment blares, “Poor Lois — see how old she’s growing!” Female self-loathing was acknowledged openly. One ad asks, “Is it the greatest crisis of a woman’s emotional life?” Meaning: “that sudden, merciless message from a mirror’s crystal depths … ‘you are fading, just a bit.’

1930s and ’40s, Palmolive ran a series of bluntly shaming ads in magazines like Good Housekeeping and Farmer’s Wife. The soap company invented the problem of “ ‘middle-age’ skin,” a condition it claimed could afflict women as young as 22, then blamed it for all kinds of romantic disappointments, from “girls with empty date books” to the wife who “loses love.” (One ad featured an illustration of Cupid, sitting with his head in his hands, crying, “I give up!”)

Good skincare is an important part of anti-aging. We have truly come along way with research and products that genuinely will help slow the process of aging skin. But there are also a lot of products with promises that are bogus. Nothing will made us look twenty years younger. Nothing.

Copyright©️Sandra Hart. All Rights Reserved

12 Moments In A Woman’s Life

Some thing never change even though centuries have gone by. One of those is the story of Ruth in the Old Testament. Within the four chapters of Ruth lie 12 Moments in a woman’s life that are still so relevant today.

I am 79 and, even at my age, can relate to her story all of these centuries later. As a woman every one these 12 moments have touched me during my lifetime. I would bet that they have touched you, as well.

No matter what your core beliefs or non-beliefs are if you are a woman today the lessons found and taken from the book of Ruth will apply to you.

Ruth was a Moabite woman, a foreigner from a hated country. But she married a Hebrew immigrant in Moab, and after his death she left her native land and went with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem in Israel.

The 12 Moments for us contemporary women are:

  1. Loss
  2. Change
  3. Transformation
  4. Aging
  5. Independence
  6. Respect
  7. Recognition
  8. Insight
  9. Empowerment
  10. Self-definition
  11. Invisibility
  12. Fulfillment

Within the video below from my Youtube channel, Life Over Sixty With Sandra, I discuss how each one of these 12 moments are related to us as females in today’s society. Sit back, relax and see if you can relate to Ruth’s moments from the Book Of Ruth.

Copyright©Sandra Hart.

All Rights Reserved

Age Is Only A Number

I recently celebrated an almost milestone birthday and someone recently asked me how it feels to be almost eighty.

Hummm…. I never really thought about it. Honestly. Age to me has always been just a number. It does not define me, nor does it have anything to do with how old or young at heart I feel. I certainly don’t feel old. Whatever wrinkles I have I have earned them by living.

There are those who might chime in that I’m only fooling myself. Not really. I know the year I was born, but I’ve lived my whole life on the premise that as long as I can put my feet on the floor at sunrise, I’m going to enjoy every minute of the day ahead. I’m going to tackle whatever monster comes my way and know that I have never been given anything that is too tough to beat. I will survive.

Sure. I have made bad decisions in my life, but I haven’t let that stop me from learning from them. Making lemonade out of lemons is part of the deal in this human life we are all living if we want to have a good journey.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2018. All Rights reserved

Stepping Out Of The Box

One big positive about being a mature woman is that the bonds of restriction that had me tied in knots most of my life are untied. I am finally free to be me. 

As a young woman, I followed the trends, was afraid to be different and never stepped over the line when it came to fashion or being proper.  Sure, I took some risks career wise, but I never dared to be out of step as to what was expected of me. 

 I don’t think I was alone in that mindset.  After all, it was the early 60’s, my childbearing and mothering  years, before Woodstock and the hippie generation.  All that ‘freedom-to-be’ passed me by with diapers and nurturing others. 

It must have been in my fifties when suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I started taking risks. I started to realize it was okay to be me. It was okay to step out of the box. 

Knock. Knock. Let me out of here! 

Copyright Sandra Hart 2017©

Dreams Aren’t Accidental

I can be alone at a table of one. I can be alone in a crowded room.  It’s all good.

If anything has taught me the biggest life lesson, it’s aging.  I am finally comfortable with who I am.  It took me so long to get here, maybe longer than most, but I have arrived at that place  where it’s okay to be the imperfect me. 

Although our culture encourages otherwise,  as a woman, it is not all about the outside. Cosmetics, surgery, hair extensions and designer clothes are not the answers to becoming visible again.  How we live our lives is the answer to keeping and growing your beauty. 

If we have the joy of waking up each morning with gratitude, if we actually look around us and drink in our surroundings, if we live our lives with wonder, if we live with purpose we remain beautiful and forever young.  

My view is that living life to the fullest hands down beats  all the man-made  beauty treatments.  Immerse yourself into life doing what makes you passionately happy, whether it is growing by educating, writing, creating, giving to others,  

Dreams are not planted by accident. They are there to be nurtured and realized. If we don’t feed them, instead of blossoming into reality,  they wither and die a torourous death. 

Today start living your beautiful life. It is never too late to make your dreams come true. 

Copyright ©Sandra Hart 2017

All Rights Reserved 

Believe It Or Not… You Are Creative

Who me? Creative? Don’t think so.

I have news for you. Everyone of us has some type of creativity inside of us, whether it be singing, playing an instrument, cooking, gardening, or creating a beautiful vision through makeup everyday. 

Life is more satisfying when we use our creative souls with an outlet. Expressing yourself boosts your brain, gives you satisfaction, boosts energy, relieves stress and most of all, brings us joy. 
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There are five types of creativity:

• Artisan

• A-Lister

• Activist

• Game Changer

• Sensitive Soul
Let me explain the types and how important using our creativity is to us.  

Copyright Sandra Hart© 2017. All Rights Reserved. 

It’s Hard To Be A Writer

I know it’s much more difficult to write about ones life than it is to pen a novel. The latter is fantasy, make believe. Journeys you take in your mind that release you from your own reality.

Facing the truth in front of your typewriter is another story. Sometimes is extremely painful to write about ones own life’s reality.  Those events are never erased, but lived over and over again. Pages ripped from your past that come back to haunt you and resurface things that you had hope were buried so deep that they would never resurface. 

It’s hard to be a writer. It’s hard to write about the truth. 

Copyright Sandra Hart©.  All Rights Reserved 

It’s Never Too Late

It is never too late to follow your dreams no matter how old you are. We all have different chapters in our lives, going to school, choosing a career, earning a living, raising a family and finally planning and enjoying your retirement years. Maybe life’s early realities pushed your dreams aside, but there is no reason you can’t pick up those dreams now and make them happen. Where there is a will, there is a way. Learn to play an instrument, go back to school. If you want it badly enough, you can make it happen. If I can do it, so can you!

I Had A Dream

I had a dream that I awoke to a world of rationality, patriotism, non-partisan peace among men and charity to those who mean no harm. Love, hope for the future and for those willing to roll up their sleeves and work hard the opportunities were there.  The churches and synagogues were an integral part of  jointly helping their rebounding communities ….and I felt safe. Malice, greed and hatred were words unfamiliar to us.  The year was 1947 and I was 8 years old.  

This morning I opened my eyes and the forward flight of  seventy years brought me back to reality that has no dream attached to it, but all the realities of our 2017 collective nightmares.  How did this happen?

I have lived through 14 presidential elections, my family’s preferred candidate not always getting elected, but my parents were patriots who lived through the depression and respected our Constitution and the democratic process.  With hate and malice toward none, they placed patriotism and love of country before politics. I am grateful for their strength that has allowed me to move forward in my life, sharing their same values.

My father always cautioned me that if I couldn’t say something nice, keep it to myself.   “There are other ways to give positive reenfircement than hurting someone with negative speech or actions,” he would say.  “Think before you speak. Always give someone the benefit of doubt and a chance,” he advised. “Do as your faith guides you, not as ‘they’ do.”

Well, it is evident everywhere I turn, all of this sage elder advice from my father years ago has evaporated in today’s divided political and hateful rethoric. 

 With  fake news running rampant on the internet and passed around greedily like Krispy Kremes, everyone salivating to get  their ‘two cents’ in to see who can be the most hatefully  divisive, politicians holding up the democratic process because they angrily feel like it, Facebook ‘likes’ attached to vile negative posts, it seems we are doomed to perpetual division. 

Where oh where has my country gone? Is everyone drinking denial Kool Aid? Hey folks, if you know civics, we have a new democratically elected president.  The electoral college has spoken. I understand, reality bites for some, but acceptance and support of our Constitution is part of the privilege of living in this great country.

 

I am off Facebook and only sharing my blogs. I have turned off the television and instead I am reading more and working at my own craft and thank God everyday for the beautiful  adoptive children in my extended family life who wouldn’t be here today if their birth mothers had had an abortion. 

 I am boycotting my once respected union peers out in Hollywood. I want to see them ply their craft and I care not a twit their stance on politics. Whether folks agree or not with you, fellow actors,  award events are not the platforms to share your political rage. Just because you can, doesn’t make it right, or even interesting.  

So, I don’t know how long my withdrawal from the political insanity will be, but  with malice toward none I am giving the new president a chance to keep us safe, improve the economy, and move us forward. If he doesn’t, then, lucky me, democracy will allow a change. 


In the meantime, for someone,  do or say something kind today, will you? One small step for mankind may collectively save all of us in the end.

Artwork by Norman Rockwell

Copyright©Sandra Hart 2017.      All  Rights Reserved

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