Simple Legacy
I think a lot about how it was possible my Nana lived to be 97 (she passed away in 2016).
She never detoxed (well unless you consider taking laxatives periodically detoxing 🤣), she didn’t eat “clean”, she was overweight (not obese), she rarely went to the doctor, she never sat in a sauna to “sweat out all the toxins”, she didn’t take daily vitamins or immune boosting tablets, she wasn’t really an outdoorsy kind of person and she never had her own garden.
So how is it that she lived such a long and fairly healthy life?
Well here’s why I think my Nana lived so long…
She lived a fairly stress free life (besides the stress of being a mother and wife) after she left her childhood home. The only time she worked outside of the home was as a young girl in a sewing factory and once she was married she was a housewife and Mother. She never had a drivers license and depended on my Papa and others to get her back and forth to Church, ladies group and other functions.
Her life was basically Home, Church or family functions.
She spent hours a day reading her Bible, watching her favorite pastors on TV preach and doing her word search books. She also would make mostly homemade meals for my Poppy and rarely ate fast food.
So although I know that genetics play a huge role in our life expectancy… I firmly believe the fact that my Nana had so little “Stress” is what allowed her to live so long.
Even though she had some traumatic experiences in her life, she didn’t have all of the added “outside” stress from a full time job. She also didn’t sit in front of the negative news on a daily basis and she didn’t have social media to “influence” her life in a negative way. I remember a time Todd and I used to discuss how oblivious Nana was to what was going on in the world and now we talk about how she had it right all along.
I think we all could learn a lot from Bernice Montgomery (aka my Nana)…
A. Focus on the good stuff and avoid the bad.
B. Create a lifestyle that allows us more time to focus on taking care of our families and significant others.
C. Learn to cook from scratch so our families are eating more healthy and wholesome ingredients.
D. Reduce or alleviate the time we spend watching news.
E. Spend less time watching other people’s lives on social media and start making memories with our own.
F. Invest in our relationships with God through his word or a Bible study.