‘Exorcism’ On Oprah: Ali MacGraw Reveals Life-Changing Experience
Ali MacGraw is living, breathing, proof that beauty and 75 years-old can go together quite well. The always stunning MacGraw, born on April Fool’s day, 1939, has graced the silver screen since the Sixties. Most recently, Ali took to the set of the legendary Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday, where Ms. MacGraw shared her thoughts on gray hair, the shallow side of fame and undergoing an exorcism.
Yes, Ali MacGraw went through what she called the equivalent of an exorcism, according to the Huffington Post.
Despite her lifetime’s continued success as both an actor and writer, Ali MacGraw revealed to Oprah that she was also quite susceptible to the common fear of getting old. That is until her 65th birthday, at which time MacGraw took a leap into the deep end of her fear, creating a trans-formative experience that carried her into the rest of her life and will always be with her.
On her 65th birthday, Ali MacGraw was visiting a friend in Mexico, hanging out at the person’s house and apparently contemplating “life, the universe, and everything,” not all of it being sunshine, joy, and roses, but also dark fears, judging by what happened next.
It was during this time of deep self-exploration that MacGraw came to the conclusion that it was time to take on her fears of aging and all that came along with it, be it gray hair or death.
“I was scared about all the things that we’re taught we should start getting scared about,” she told Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday.
But instead of continuing to slide down this path of fear, Ali MacGraw got creative, pulling together some colored pens and a journal. MacGraw then locked herself in a room and began writing down everything she could think of that was contributing to her worries and anxiety about what was happening – and going to happen – as she aged.
“I (wrote) stuff like, ‘Am I ever going to have sex again?’ in red. Or, ‘Do I have to do something about the third chin?’ in a hideous electric green,” MacGraw tells Oprah. “So, I couldn’t hide behind the kind of truths you talk about with your best girlfriend.”
Ali MacGraw stayed locked up in the room alone for hours, her fears and feelings spilling out of the colored pens into the journal.
“I wrote and I cried and I wrote,” said MacGraw. “And then, I got so bored with it. It was like two days of drinking tea and writing my true scary stuff.”
And then something clicked, MacGraw’s fears, if not overcome, at least acknowledged and faced.
“Then I went, ‘OK, that’s it! I felt like, ‘I’ve got that one down. Now let’s go on and live.’ It was a very jubilant day.”
“So it was an exorcism of sorts,” said Oprah.
“It was a total exorcism,” agreed MacGraw.
[Images via Oprah Winfrey Network and Style News]
