I am the mother of three adult children and six grandchildren. The nurturing part of me wants to protect my family from all evil, wrongdoing, and unsavory individuals. I want them to grow up in a peaceful world where all men and women are created equal, where music brings us together, and where everyone has a chance to self-actualize. This may be idealistic, but that’s the way I feel. My dreams for my grandkids are as lofty as they were for the three beautiful children I brought into the world.
The Experiences of a 50s Child
I was born in the 1950s and raised in New York in the midst of the hippie generation. I hung out in head shops in the suburbs of New York City, wore beaded necklaces, walked barefoot in the park, burned incense, and listened to music under black lights.
Because I had asthma, I never got into smoking marijuana, but I did protest the war and say good-bye to friends who went to fight in Vietnam. I fought for numerous causes and wore cut-off jeans that swept the dirty streets. Incidentally, I illegally wore the American flag slung like a scarf around my shoulders. As a writer, I filled my journal with musings about the Utopian world of my dreams.
The hippie generation was, in essence, an emotional rebellion against the mindless direction in which our world was headed. The ’60s counterculture asked questions and begged for answers and/or peace. There have been predictions that this intellectual rebellion will soon return because of political and racial oppression, and my sense is that it might emerge sooner than we think. Maybe we also need a resurfacing of counterculture music, sex, and verbiage.
New Urge for Activism
Recently, a childhood friend called to wish me a happy birthday. We shared memories of the peace and loving spirit of the 1960s. I felt the same stirrings in my blood – the same desire to join together and instill change, the pull to help bring a sense of peace to unsettling times. I felt the same compulsion to engage in some type of activism that I felt back then.
What I see and feel now are all reminders of the many similarities our current situation has to the hippie generation, which was a time of excess – racial violence, war, corporate greed, and a buildup of intolerance and dissatisfaction. Drugs were widely used then, of course, so the recent legalization of marijuana in many states is indicative of another parallel with the hippie generation. And, social media has encouraged people to speak up and voice their concerns – political and personal – which can easily lead to a revolution.
Make Love Not War
I want to be the messenger to my kids and grandchildren and inspire them to keep the faith, be compassionate, and promote the power of interconnectedness. As we used to say in the 1960s, “Make love not war.” This is not just a slogan; it’s vital to our collective well-being. The resurgence of the hippie revolution merely means that we need to reevaluate old thoughts and bring in fresh and poignant new ideas.
It might also be a good time to revisit books such as The Hippie Dictionary by John Bassett McClearly (2002), which is really a history book that casts a beautiful picture of those times. The author highlights some words in the book’s introduction, which I think still apply today, such as: “Hang in there, and keep on trucking.”
Most important, let’s keep in mind some of the words in that dictionary and the core of what this country was built upon: “A democracy is a society or form of government in which the population is given the opportunity to contribute to the decisions that govern them” (p. 126).
As an aside to this conversation, I also recently joined with a colleague and friend to create an anthology called, Women in A Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond (Gunpowder Press, 2025). We wanted to celebrate women who honor the aging process with resilience, wisdom and transformation.
It’s a collection of 175 poets to celebrate the 175th birthday of the state of California. Us elders have so much to offer and it’s my hope that younger generations will avail themselves of all of it. Like McCleary said, it’s important that we make our opinions known through writing, in whatever is the genre of our choice.
In my book’s introduction, I share my poem which I think will resonate with the readers:
Create a Revolution
Incite change, look for a patch of difficulty amongst the glistening clouds, hunt for an need unmet, or a journey you want to take. Stretch your arms to the sky’s glow, find peace within yourself offer a donut to the homeless, tap into the closet never opened and pull down old journals written before wrinkled foreheads and children expanding like spiders crafting their webs. Sink your teeth into good books write the author to share your enthusiasm for their warm words which make your heart twitch and your muscles flex upon the seat which holds the oldest bones in your family all gone, as you sit in your senior position in the same way you were once the youngest and most boisterous of the group. Teach the world how life circles and how change never really occurs it just begs for a new sunlight. Let yourself go be the one who they all talk about when you are gone.
Have a beautiful day!
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What do you remember about your hippie years? Can you draw parallels with the world today? In what activities did you join back then, and do you see a resurgence of something similar?
