You're Too Old to Believe You Can Fight Aging: A Loving Letter to a Reader
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
I share a loving letter to a reader when she bemoans her aging self
Last December, on another platform, a beloved reader expressed great pain about her face, her body and the ways she was changing.
She had turned fifty, a time where we women, especially mothers, are going through some of the most difficult and profound changes in life.
Men do not share all of this, because a good bit of this is strictly the equipment we’re gifted.
Here’s what the midlife woman in our society faces:
-Peri-menopause or menopause
-Being suddenly thrust into invisibility right around 40/45
-Empty nest syndrome
-A fast-changing body that doesn’t respond the same way to diet and exercise
-An expanding waistline as the body’s fat takes a hike and changes location like irritating relatives who move next door
-Possible divorce
-A slowing brain as the liquid intelligence of youth finally succumbs to the crystallized intelligence of ageing. It’s a terrific advantage but it sure doesn’t feel that way at the time, especially if we don’t understand what’s happening to us
That’s hardly all, especially if poor habits like drinking and smoking and being too sedentary begin to catch up with us.
Man, that’s a lot to carry.
I’ll bet any of you reaching midlife can relate to this.
With great respect for our individual process, I’m sharing some of her comments here, my response and a little perspective.
First, here is part of what she wrote:
For example, it hurts when I work hard to weigh the same as I did in high school and yet still have to go up a size because of my expanding middle.
It hurts to be called ma’am.
It hurts not to be carded for cigarettes or alcohol.
It hurts to wear your sexiest outfit and get zero stares.
Call me vain, superficial, or shallow.
Regardless, these hurts are what I struggle with when it comes to aging.
Cuts to the quick, doesn’t it?
My response:
Dear D:
You and I have conversed and commented on each other's work over time. I am in the process of finally, finally pulling away from (writing platform), but before I finalize it (not yet but soon) I wanted to respond to this.
First, there is not much anyone can say to you or anyone else about aging well. I recommend you go find your spirit animal, as someone kindly called me the other day. You need an example of someone who is living a life you admire, then research how they do it. I guaran-damn-tee you that they are not wasting their time with Botox or bullying themselves about the one thing that none of us can stop.
They are likely doing what they do without much attention to wrinkles (WE HAVE EARNED THEM) or weight, for the abject fear we have of not looking twenty will eat us alive forever. We aren't twenty, and the truth is that for many of us our bodies do indeed change later in life.
Shy of liposuction, hey, part of the joy of getting older is to know that there are certain angst-driven issues that deserve to be kicked to the kerb. The perfect body is among them.
What IS perfect as we age is treating ourselves with respect and love, finding ways to be functionally fit without trying to whip ourselves into a size two. I've been a size two for years, not now.
Not once in my life did beauty or a tiny ass make a single bit of difference in my happiness, for I was forever TERRIFIED of a single ounce. So compulsive about my weight I was no fun to be around.
Do I really want to carry such awful fear into my last years?
Nope. But that's me. I will never Botox myself. I use creams to stay soft, not fight wrinkles. I am done with weight loss programs. DONE.
We are not our bodies. Lemme say that again. WE ARE NOT OUR BODIES. No matter what you do, you will deteriorate.
You can slow it down, but you will die a billion times over for the rest of your life, D, if you worship youth and beauty. They are going to leave us.
What you CAN have are fitness and freedom, adventure and laughter, and a slew of options that giving up all the empty promises of anti-aging offer us. They are all lies. Always were lies. That we believe there is such a thing speaks to the unspeakable terror of ageism.
Why would you berate your gorgeous, wonderful self with ageist thoughts when you are a learner, D?
Learning how to walk into the aging you like the Goddess you are is the whole point. Part of that is letting go of what was and embracing with great respect and curiosity what is, and what you are becoming.
I turn 70 next month. I cannot wait. I just can't wait. I spent my 60s doing extreme adventure travel. The price I paid, well, I am getting surgery on both hands and feet, so far two down and two to go, so that I can go back to Mongolia by late summer. I want to climb Kilimanjaro again.
I don't expect anyone else to do what I do. But I do know one thing: I'm too old for this "I need to look young shit."
But I am not too old for anything else.
I plan to try martial arts. I am going to look into a paragliding license. Why not?
"It is never too late to become what you might have been"- George Eliot
Don't believe the lies. Write your own story. Find examples of badass women whose lives you respect and ask yourself: if I gave up worrying obsessively about my face and my body, how much freedom would I have?
Trust me. You have no idea until you feel the wind in your beautiful, softly aging face and you stretch out your wings, D.
As long as we are earthbound by worries about changes that ultimately we cannot stop, we will die far sooner than we need to from worry alone.
Go find your way to fly.
***
I didn’t remark on the alcohol and cigarette use, both of which have dire and lasting health consequences. Those are individual choices, and you have to make the determination that your body and long-term health are worth quitting both. Not for me to say.
For my part and my path:
A year later, I have completed all my surgeries and am well on my way to returning to adventure travel. I broke my hip in July so I couldn’t go to Mongolia, but I am back in all ways, and eager to make 71 a seriously wonderful year.
I am no longer on that platform and don’t know if D is doing better. But I sure see an awful lot of the same kinds of comments and complaints here on Substack, for the experience is universal.
We can do this. Society doesn’t determine our value. We do.
As I stride into my seventies with health, humor and a great deal of happiness,
I have laid the burden placed on us women to be forever young, perfect, slim and beautiful at the fucking door and in my past.
That way lies freedom.
For all of us who are struggling with middle age, it is a sacred time of passage, the beginning of true wisdom, accepting what must come (age) and what can come with it (acceptance and wisdom).
The more we struggle to stay what we cannot be, the more time we waste not being what we can be: joyful, exuberant, vibrant women.
This is an invitation. Ladies, let’s live. That begins with a gracious release of what needs to flow into the rivers of our pasts, so that we can sail into our amazing futures.
Let’s play.
I hope this article gave you hope today. If so please consider
If you know someone struggling with middle age, and many if not most of us do, kindly also consider
Either way I hope you greet the day with great joy. Thank you for reading.
Additionally, I get to choose how I’m going to go through something … even the really hard things. And sometimes, it’s a moment by moment decision. Nevertheless, I choose life.
You gave some excellent advice - which is a superpower of older people. My mother was a model. Her life was ruined by others when she was young & beautiful, and by herself when she was older and mourned her lost beauty. Consequently I have never aspired to be admired. But I did find it hard that I was no longer noticed, until I realised there is a freedom in being able to move along the sides of the crowd. I also love the liberty to do and say what I want. Though I have to say, we don't all have that freedom, I have the immense privilege of not being trapped in old age poverty.