Lisa Barlow’s Green Tiger Print Pajamas in Vail

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 2 Episode 12 Fashion

As it turns out Lisa Barlow’s green tiger print pajamas in Vail (which we just reported on Garcelle Beauvais wearing in navy zebra print!) are actually an under $100 Saks Fifth Avenue find. Therefore making them the perfect holiday gift for those of you who can’t afford to gift your fashionable friends a Louis Vuitton handbag, Chanel clutch, Christian Louboutin boots etc. 

Fashionably,

Faryn

Click Here to Shop Her Averie Sleep Pajamas

Click Here to Shop a Shorter Version

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Originally posted at: Lisa Barlow’s Green Tiger Print Pajamas

The phrase “aging gracefully” implies that there is a way to age disgracefully. If you’ll pardon my badly-disguised chuckle, I’m so happy to be aging in the first place, given our times, that the idea that there is a way to mess this up is frankly hilarious.

We live in a time when much of what we know, or thought we knew, is being upended. To some, this is terrifying.

To others, it’s an extraordinary chance to redirect, refocus our lives, even late in life.

Neither is right nor wrong; it’s how we’re wired.

If I may.

This morning I started an article on living an epic life. The results annoyed me, and I dumped the piece. Here’s why.

First, what constitutes “epic” any more could be simply making it to the store and back. For some, that is a perilous outing. It depends, doesn’t it?

For others, it means getting on a plane for Mongolia again (that would be my epic).

Epic Is Overrated

Epic, kindly, is tired. It’s done. The word is so overused. And if you’re like me, facing down 70, and having had quite enough of the Instagram comparison-culture… just, please.

Living an epic life has become overrated. The idea of epic was once along the lines of Beowulf, or perhaps Star Wars, or more recently, Lord of the Rings.

Somehow, we’ve gotten to the point where if you and I aren’t supergeezers, aging Olympic athletes, we’re not enough. Our lives have to be epic to be worthwhile.

As someone who does what others may well consider pretty epic things, I beg to differ.

My life is righteously boring most days. While every so often, assuming planes fly again, I head to distant lands to do adventurous and athletic things, most of the time I am supremely average. I exercise, eat well, recover from self-inflicted injuries.

Like this fractured pinky toe, which, had I been just a wee bit more mindful in the middle of the night, I might have avoided smashing against a piece of furniture. Now, more than two months later, I am still limping around in a boot.

Average. Everyday. Nothing to look at here.

Yet, with any luck, sometime next year I’ll be riding reindeer in Mongolia.

Epic? Nope. It’s just what I like to do.

What you like to do is likely very different. And to me, that may look “epic.”

How We Age Is a Unique Journey

How you choose to live out your later years may mean tons of time with grandkids – allowing for all appropriate safety measures – and all the joy and delight that brings. You may start a hobby farm with a new hubby. You may launch a brand-new online business.

If you’re anything like I am, which means I’m about as graceful as a dyslexic camel (with apologies to my even-toed ungulates) when it comes to athletics, I like physical pursuits. Nothing graceful about me at all.

However, I love horse riding, kayaking, climbing, and making an utter fool of myself trying out new sports. For me, nothing disgraceful about aging un-gracefully. My best comedy writing comes of such endeavors.

Your version may well be consuming novels on a slice of perfect beach on Sanibel Island. Depending on who you are, just being able to sit quietly on a beach in the first place may have taken a few acts of God.

You and I cannot know. Which is why Instagram comparison culture is so odious, at least to me. The carefully-curated and presented images of folks living what appear to be far happier and better lives? Nonsense.

The implicit and explicit pressure to live an epic existence is based on the unfounded notion that who and what you and I are right here, right now, can’t possibly be enough.

Again, I beg to differ.

Redefining an Epic Life

It’s not just that by the time we get to 60, we’ve crammed an awful lot of living into our lives. Losses and laughter and experiences which have defined us, lined us, and given us gravitas.

It’s also that by this time, we don’t owe no explanations to nobody, if you will pardon my grammar.

The only thing worth comparing at this point, is today vs. yesterday. Last year vs. this year. Time has taught us that things shift and move, and with patience, most things sort themselves out.

In many ways, the way I see the exquisite joy of being in my late 60s, the perspectives you and I have gained, the ability to be quiet and calm while the world surges and heaves around is, is pretty damned epic in and of itself.

Only time and experience are the true teachers of this kind of life. Knowing how and when to turn off the news feed, find a quiet corner, curl the cat into our lap, and bury ourselves in that fat book.

Knowing that pulling out the makings of sourdough and committing an afternoon to creating the perfect loaf as opposed to listening to a perfect oaf spout political nonsense is what comes of learning what’s important.

What’s epic is perspective. What’s epic is far less about hurling ourselves out of airplanes, which I still like to do, but being able to be that oasis of calm in the lives of others who haven’t lived as long as we have.

The ability to choose where we put our attention comes of living long enough to learn how. What’s epic, for me, is having intense gratitude for life, the life we are given, the ability to enjoy it in our unique way.

That’s aging gracefully.

What does living an epic life look like to you? How do you stay free of comparison culture? What have you learned about aging gracefully on your terms? Please share so we can all benefit from your insight!

Kristin Cavallari’s Beige Faux Fur Jacket on Her Instastories

Kristin Cavallari’s 2021 Instagram Fashion

If you are looking for the perfect winter time outfit look no further. Kristin Cavallari just gave us the answer on her Instastories with this beige faux fur jacket look. I mean how chic? I can just see this being worn around town shopping for Christmas presents with maybe a cute pit stop for lunch once you work up an appetite. Either way if your hungry for a burger and fries a new jacket and boots then feast below.

Sincerely Stylish,

Jess

Click Here to Shop Her Yves Salomon Jacket

Click Here to Shop Her Jimmy Choo Boots

Originally posted at: Kristin Cavallari’s Beige Faux Fur Jacket

Lisa Barlow’s Yellow and Purple Aviator Sunglasses in Vail

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 2 Episode 12 Fashion

Although Lisa Barlow may not have been flying the private plane the ladies (minus Whitney and Heather who opted to fly commercial and take their shoes off at security ) took home from Vail on last night’s episode of RHOSLC, she definitely had the right look going on with her yellow and purple aviator sunglasses. Which we’ve linked to shop down below so that you too can travel to your next destination in style — even if you’re not on a PJ.

Fashionably,

Faryn

Click Here to Shop Her Gucci Sunglasses

Click Here to See Them on Her in Purple

Click Here For Info on Her Jacket

Click Here For Info on Her Top

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Originally posted at: Lisa Barlow’s Yellow and Purple Aviator Sunglasses

Author and diarist Anaïs Nin wrote that “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

That’s literally the case for Kat Kowalski, the main character in my novel Where the Stork Flies. The two women who drop into her life are from another continent in another time. They bring her into a whole new world and help her look at her old life in a different way. But science tells us that women’s friendships do more than that. They are even life-sustaining.

Female Friendships Basics

According to a 2011 study in the journal Oncology Times, women with early-stage breast cancer were four times more likely to die from cancer if they didn’t have many friends. Those with a larger group of friends had a much better survival rate.

It appears that females possess social skills from birth. Studies on day-old babies show that girls stare longer at human faces than mechanical objects, while boys do just the opposite.

Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron­Cohen, who performed many of these studies, writes about them in The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. “On average,” he says, “women engage in more consistent social smiling and maintained eye contact than does the average man.”

Nature Over Nurture

Not that long ago, many feminists believed that behavioral differences between men and women were due to the way boys and girls are raised, especially in early childhood. Recent studies, however, suggest that it may be “nature over nurture,” at least where friendship is concerned.

UCLA psychologist Shelley E. Taylor suggests that women respond to stress differently than men. In her book, The Tending Instinct, Taylor theorizes that while men exhibit the well-known “fight or flight” response to stress, women turn to one another.

She says that, over time, women who formed strong bonds with other women were more likely to survive, as were their offspring. “Female ties have evolved to ensure that certain vital functions important to life get maintained,” says Taylor, whose research started with an “aha!” moment at work.

Tend and Befriend

Taylor and her colleague at UCLA, Laura Klein, noticed that when women workers in their lab were stressed, they cleaned the lab and had coffee together. Their male co-workers, under the same pressures, holed up somewhere alone. When both scientists found that 90% of stress research was done on men, they realized they were on to something.

Taylor calls the female stress response “tend and befriend,” and believes there may be a biological reason for it.

The Bonding Power of Hormones

The hormone oxytocin, which is released into a woman’s bloodstream after childbirth, facilitates mother­infant bonding. Oxytocin is also released during stress and is enhanced by estrogen. When women actually engage in nurturing and socializing, more oxytocin is released, producing a calming effect. Testosterone, which men produce at high levels when under stress, tends to reduce the effects of oxytocin.

Another type of hormone, endogenous opioids, are also associated with feelings of relaxation and nurturing, and are released along with oxytocin when a woman nurses her baby.

Scientist Larry Jamner of the University of California, Irvine, gave opioid blockers to 22 men and 29 women. The men were unaffected, but the women spent more time alone, called their friends less often and said that when they did socialize, it was less pleasant than usual.

Keeping Friendships Alive

Of course, women have always known that friends would help them through the thorny patches of life. Our ancestors shared childcare duties while the men were out hunting. Our stay-at-home mothers in the 1950s had their coffee klatches. Victorian women met for afternoon tea.

Journalists Ellen Goodman and Patricia O’Brien documented their 25-year friendship in the book I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women’s Lives. They have worked hard over the years to maintain their strong connection, in the face of many changes, and lament the fact that in our stress-filled lives, many women feel they have to give up time with friends in order to keep up with job and family pressures.

Maybe we can’t get together in person with our friends during the Covid pandemic, but phone calls, socially distanced picnics, and even Zoom go a long way toward nurturing us through the ups and downs of life.

When Kat and her friends in Where the Stork Flies work together, everybody wins. Kat discovers the meaning of unconditional love. A Polish peasant finds a way to end spousal abuse in her village. And a young medieval queen wins the added time on Earth she has longed for.

What new world have your friends brought into your life? Today might be a good day to let them know.