Aging Gracefully      

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People don’t seem to want to age gracefully anymore. In fact, women especially, seem to do anything within their power to defy the aging process. Apparently having needles stuck in your face and deadly toxins injected into your muscles is preferable to a few wrinkles.

BotoxWhen did aging become a plague that we were all trying to take vaccinations for? Aging is not a plague or a disease. Aging is spending your life on laughter and love and adventure and your body is proof of that. My perspective on this changed when I was diagnosed with cancer. I used to be one of the young women boasting about how I’d do anything to stay young, even if it meant taking out a mortgage on my face so I could afford the best plastic surgeon to make me look like a wind-blown, surprised alien. Not anymore.

My view changed forever after I spent a portion of time thinking my life was going to be cut extremely short. Whenever I talk about age and life in “x” amount of years I just think “I hope I am here.” I don’t really care at all if I have crow’s feet and gray hairs as long as I’m here to witness the lives of my children.

The age that shows up on us is almost like a map of our lives. People have smile lines because they’ve smiled and laughed and guffawed until they peed themselves.  At least if they’ve had a couple children they probably peed themselves, otherwise you can strike that last part. We get gray hairs because we’ve worried over things, and been scared and stressed out. I know I personally have gained a whole mess of gray hair since having my very rambunctious third child. I will probably be platinum gray by the time I’m 40, but that’s kind of trendy right now anyway, so consider me a total hipster (has anyone seen my slouchy beanie and ironic geek chic glasses?).

old lady 1The children we had when we were so young have put their stamp on us for sure. Yes, maybe my chin might have a bit of a twin, but I’d like to think that it mostly came from staring down at sleeping babies in my arms and memorizing their faces as I nursed them. It’s not so bad when you think about it as a stamp of love and how you’ve spent your years.

Hopefully those crow’s feet that start showing up around our eyes are from squinting into the sun on perfect summer days or playing in perfectly white snow in the winter. It means your eyes have been used at plenty to look at your family and friends, read books that change your mind, read different books that change your mind again, look into your soul mates eyes and fall in love and stare for hours at your newborn baby. The list goes on and on but those little wrinkles tell a beautiful story.

Lets start cherishing what our body’s say about our lives. Let’s let others read the story instead of pretending the story was never written. I’m okay to age gracefully because to age means to live. I’m going to live fully and I don’t need a doctor to erase it to make me look younger than I am because whatever age I live to I’ll be happy I’m there…or here.

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