Virginia Madsen wrote a blog entry for The Daily Love: “Sometimes we find ourselves depressed, stressed or discouraged – stuck in a dark place that seems impossible to escape, almost reflecting the last grey of winter before the seasonal changes that signal the dawn of springtime. It may be the simple everyday problems that build up over time or it can be something much larger and more serious that buries us in spirit. I believe negative energy is like stagnant air that needs but a window opened to shake it all out. Changing the energy within ourselves can affect the outward energy around us.

Try something new to excite, or wake up your inner self. Try yoga, cycling or raising your heart rate with a simple walk around the block. With simple “baby steps” we can transform our own energy. By doing so we create momentum that can affect ourselves, and those around us. I think of this as a kind of “spring cleaning” of the body mind and spirit. Think of a summer vacation house, locked up and closed for the winter, being opened and cleaned out. How transformed the summer house becomes with the windows open and the cobwebs swept out. We too can spring clean ourselves and prepare for the seasonal changes that will renew our lives.

Open your doors and windows, dust things off and shed your winter blues. The time is now. Spring has sprung. Prepare to embrace the sun and start anew.

You may be surprised at what blooms within you.”
Love,
Virginia

On April 3rd Virginia taped an interview for Growing Bolder Radio Show to promote the documentary I Know a Woman Like That. Click here to stream!

Virginia Madsen is one of our most beloved, and stunning, actresses, but she’s much more beautiful on the inside. With her dynamic and Emmy Award-winning mother at her side, she’s produced a documentary that celebrates extraordinary women over the age of 65. Virginia says the film has not only erased any fears she may have once had about aging, it’s made her excited for the next, liberating chapters in her life.

Virginia Madsen is a Golden Globe- and Academy Award-nominated actress known for her work in Sideways, The Astronaut Farmer, and The Number 23. Her mother, writer-director Elaine Madsen, has a wide range of creative projects on her list of achievements, including a new book of poetry and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary. In their new collaboration, I Know a Woman Like That, the mother-daughter duo join forces to take a close look at grace, age, vitality, and what it means to be a woman. ABILITY Magazine’s Chet Cooper and Nancy Villere caught up with the Madsens to discuss this ambitious and personal project.

Chet Cooper: Your film does a nice job of making a viewer more aware of a relationship between women as they age and their degree of invisibility in society. And, in many ways, I see that parallel how we tend to address social understanding and awareness about disability.

Elaine Madsen: Oh, yeah, I think there’s an attitude towards age that treats it as a disability. But in reality, aging involves recognition of abilities you didn’t know that you had, abilities that you have to find within yourself in order to deal with society. Bookshelves are filled with titles about how to stay young, and telling us all that there’s something wrong with not being young. But the purpose of this film, I think, is to show that the experience of aging can be wonderful, if you don’t get sucked into that mentality.

Virginia Madsen: My mother’s level of activity, of productivity, was exactly why I thought a project like this would work. Originally, when we put the idea together, she had said, “I’m far too busy. I’m going to Holland, and then I’m going here and there and I’m writing my book.” But that’s really what it’s about. Continue Reading »