Embrace Your Age!

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Mamas, we’ve talked about aging gracefully on this blog before. (If you don’t believe me, look at these articles here, here, here, and here.) And we can tell each other as friends to embrace our age, and we can model that for one another, too. 

But, sometimes it feels more powerful coming from someone famous. 

After what she recently said out loud for the world to hear, I think Jamie Lee Curtis is my spirit animal. 

She recently did an interview in England and said this, “And the term, anti-aging… what? What are you talking about? We’re all going to…age! We’re all going to die? Why do you want to look 17 when you’re 70? I want to look 70 when I’m 70.” She also said that she had plastic surgery procedures in the past and they made her feel worse about her looks!

I’ve always liked Jamie Lee Curtis since I first saw her in the movie Halloween as a kid. I appreciated her as the kind friend in My Girl and laughed as she went from prim housewife to international spy in True Lies. I admire her for wearing her hair short, letting it be her natural gray, and being honest about her addiction and sobriety. 

But this stuff she said about looking your age really sealed my admiration for her as a woman. 

Ready or Not, Here It Comes

Dear friends, we are each going to get older whether we like it or not. In my mind’s eye, I’m still 26, but when I look in the mirror, I see my 40-something face looking back at me. I’m starting to get visible wrinkles on my face, and my patch of gray hair is growing in more. I am looking my age, and I struggle under the weight of what the media tells us about how to best combat the signs of aging. I really just want to let my body do its thing naturally.

Why is this so hard for us? I don’t think the “hard” of aging is really about how we look; I think it’s about how we see ourselves and our idea of “oldness.” It’s deeply about our mortality and coming to grips with the fact that this adventure will eventually end one day. And we don’t like to think about that because it hurts our hearts. 

Take heart in this fact: you are exactly in the age and stage where you’re supposed to be right now. So be in this moment now. Be present and find ways to embrace what you’re currently experiencing, even the hard times.

Whether it’s wrinkles or grays or a body that’s breaking, we all stumble through the aging process. It’s a normal and natural part of our lives, and something to be honored. Embrace who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. Embracing it is so much better than fighting against it! 

You’re beautiful just as you are. Revel in it!