On Aging

Lately I am noticing my age.  Observing the changes as new parts ache a little more, as the lines on my face seem to deepen.  It can be hard to stay out of judgement and in self love as your ideas of beauty melt as possibilities before your eyes.  The talk about aging gracefully and loving yourself despite your appearance or limitations is rhetoric in a world that teaches us that smooth and full skin, agile and limber bodies, healthy hair and long legs, youth and energy are the standards of “natural” beauty.

I am a healthy 44-year-old who can hold her own in a yoga class, who eats healthy and intuitively knows how pointless it is to waste time worrying about how you look to others. I am working through my own transition of giving up self and in many ways feel more beautiful just from being able to live in my own truth of being enough and not needing to be validated by others.  That being said, each line on my brow is like a question mark, each ache in my hips as I get out of bed a lesson, and each crick in my neck a reminder of all I have endured and possibly can’t let go of.

I am blessed to be loved by those who have watched me change my skin every 35 days, who have seen me go through different homes, marriages, pregnancies, jobs, haircuts, hair colors, different sizes, shapes, dreams and opinions. They love me for my soul.  And they are so beautiful in turn.  I never understood it until recently that there is an ageless part of us that stays beautiful while everything external changes and becomes even brighter with age, understanding and wisdom.  My wish is for all to have this awareness and instead of fighting it, stay curious about this miraculous process of the bodies we have been gifted in this life.

Oh crevice in my skin
Tell me a story
How you started out unscathed
And then the earthquake came
the foundation cracked
Over time the storms
The droughts
The tornados deepened you
And the landscape changed

Oh tension in my back
Teach me about the years
Where high heels meant more
Than good meals
And indulging and pushing
Holding your poses
For all to see
Threw off your alignment
And the fibers of your being
Were stretched to their limit

Oh gravity, you bitter foe
As you pulled my bones to the earth
My skin to the ground
Sucking water and fire
From my blood

This vessel of impermanence
Who I dared to hate
For too long
Wishing it in to something else
has seen many forms
and through it all
I am still here, and my beauty

Is inside out.