Reflections Of An Aging Woman

We Are In This Together

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart”

                                                                            Kahlil Gilbran

Thank you all so much for your comments.  Thank you Helen for reminding me of a central concept – that of allowing!  Isn’t that key here?  We are choosing even when we choose denial! 

I am beginning to feel the intimacy of sharing an important part of life with many new friends.  It feels like a soul connection as I don’t know many of you in the personal sense.

Have you every heard the Gaelic term Anam Cara?  Here is the definition:

Understanding each other without mask or pretension, the superficiality of social acquaintance falls away and I can be as I really am.  When I am understood, I am home, and I feel free to release myself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul.

This is why I belong to a women’s group. We are all women in our late 50’s to mid 60’s.  Our challenges resonate as we each tell where we are and what we are “chewing on” - working to make sense of it all.  It is a place I bring my heavy heart, my inquiring mind, my reaching soul, and my laughter.

We open each meeting with this invocation:

"We are sisters gathering in a sacred circle for the purpose of being awake and reaching for deeper meaning.  As spiritual partners, we honor each other by holding a space for each of us to grow.  We do this in an atmosphere of inquiry into the nature of ourselves, and the world around us, in the ever-changing movement and flow of life.  We commit to looking through a spiritual lens.  Setting our intentions, we speak our truth and listen with wisdom and compassion."

The topic this week was “What are my greatest contradictions?”  Do my outer and inner selves match?  In what ways do I contradict myself in my thoughts, attitudes and behaviors? 

Regarding my aging process and feeling congruent, it’s two steps forward and one step back.  The two steps forward tell me where I want to go, who I want to become and how will I complete my life cycle?.  The one step back tells me where I need to empty myself.  Each day I empty out a little bit more of my resistance to what is happening to me without my approval!

Thanks to the aging of my body and face, (can’t believe I said that) it is very hard to deny the preciousness of the time left and to take on the question of how I want to use it.  Do I really want to recapture my youth or do I want to “allow” and experience the gifts of the time of life I find myself in?

We Can't Go Back

“We can’t go back.  Every day something is taken away from us that we were once able to do.  Yet, every day something is given that we weren’t ready to do yesterday.”

                                                                                  Marianne Williamson

Thank you all for your comments and adding to this conversation.  I love that you responded to each others comments as well.  I hear echoes of the grieving and loss that must be met in order to use this metamorphosis as a portal to a new place.  I also hear some of you are in that new place and comfortable in your new/old skin!  Bravo for you and please keep telling me how you got there.

Do you remember apple dolls?  Remember those adorable wrinkle faced old women?  I thought “when I am 80 I will look like that”.  The thought made me happy and held no fear.  I could embrace this destiny.  What’s surprised me is the territory I’d have to traverse to get there and how the letting go of my former self would hurt!  I know this to be a hurt worth feeling.  It is a hurt that each time I allow it to surface creates more breathing space for the old me that wants to be born.  My aging is one with my dying.  The realization of my mortality through the aging process has created a sense of urgency to use life wisely, to appreciate it fully, to love more deeply - as some of you reported from your own wisdom journey. 

What good is there in meeting the psychological challenge of aging that includes, among other feelings, denial, acceptance, grief and loss?  Isn’t this similar to what is happening in the larger culture as people everywhere adjust to the economic downturn?  Facing adversity creates opportunity to find out what we are made of, what character we have to draw on. Aging is the Petri dish of my potential.  My essence is coming forward as I see what must drop away.

So lets get real.  We have all lived in a male dominated youth loving culture and made our adjustments to that reality.  All around us are the messages to try and stay young. 
The questions I’m asking myself are many.  Where is the line between age-denying (along with the rest of the culture) and growing old gracefully?  Where do I draw the line? Right now I am drawing the line with coloring my hair.  It tells me who I am just like my face tells me who I am.  I want this last phase to fulfill the promise of wisdom gleaned through having lived as best I could through life’s challenges.   This is one of those challenges. 

It interests me that some days I look in the mirror and am aware of not really seeing the face I wear now – rather, I see the face of the younger one.  I don’t do this consciously.  I think it is much like the heavy person who has lost weight still seeing the fat self.  So, the mirror isn’t always honest.  Our minds participate in what we see.  Some days I see my former self and some days I am shocked at who actually looks back at me.  Who is this person?  At these times I’m aware that I’m involved in the birthing of this new phase.  I remember some of these cataclysmic feelings when I was leaving childhood and moving into puberty.  I remember scrutinizing the hairs that appeared under my arms.  I remember the shock of breasts forming.  It helps me to think about that time and the very similar feelings I had of something out of control happening to me (like pregnancy too).  We tend to think of that journey into adulthood as hopeful, exciting and one we welcomed but I remember elements of it that were terrifying, depressing and fearful. This is how change feels.  And it is good.

Thanks for your participation!

Observing my demise!

I sailed through the birthdays of my 40’s and 50’s proclaiming myself the ripening woman.  And then, at about 55, I felt the first tremors of true aging that shattered my known world.

I became a witness to my own demise!   I decided if I’m going to survive this 3rd phase of a woman’s life, I must pay attention to my feelings.   I must become more conscious of all I experience and transform this downward arc of aging into an upward arc of expanded consciousness.   And so, this blog is born.

I want my body and face to be a place where I want to live.  I want the vehicle I have to travel in for this last phase of life to be a place where my spirit feels at home.  I need to break out of my youthful definition of myself in order to free myself.  This is nothing less than a fight for the life I have left.  I want to live it, love it, use it and at the end, be grateful for all of it. 

In Europe, I’m told, instead of asking, “how old are you?” the question is “how many years have you owned?”  Yes!  I am added to - and by focusing on trying to retain my youth, I miss the gifts of the present.

So how do I do get there?  The path I have been walking and continue to walk is first, to acknowledge all that I have lost.

Try this:  find a picture of yourself when you felt at the height of your “charms” – your beauty, your strength.  Perhaps you will find a friend to do this with, perhaps alone.  The important thing is to bring to the surface all that is lost and honor and grieve the passing of a special, fleeting time of your life (it seems fleeting in retrospect)! 

This has been my first challenge.  More about my process next time.  I would love to hear if and how you are struggling with this transition.  Let’s start a conversation that explores this metamorphosis and the feelings it evokes.  Let’s talk about the culture we are embedded in and the hostility we face as we age.  Let’s change that culture!

Embracing this old face

When my mother was in her mid 60's, I remember her telling me that every time she looked in the mirror she was shocked by what she saw.  At the time I thought "what a terrible thing" and couldn't understand how a woman became so disconnected from herself.  I know on that day I vowed I would "grow old gracefully" meaning I would be happy with my aging self and wanted more than anything to feel like I could own my face and body as the inevitable changes happened.

Now, after years of experiencing my own alarm and distress as I gaze into the mirror - the face of the old one, my grandmothers chin, the crone - I have glimmers of true acceptance.  I deliberately gaze at my face and wait for the discomfort to pass and continue looking until a sense of ease and self love comes over me.  This is not easy in a culture where people are offended by the natural process of growing old - especially us women!  I have moments of seeing the pursuit of loving this old face as my last great adventure!

I have spent my life in pursuit of becoming a more conscious being and I can see the merging of the two roads of consciousness and aging.  I see the value of the aging process in directing me to the interior life, the reflective life.