As I arrived at the dog beach today, an older woman was leaving. She seemed mysterious and self-possessed. Like she had a secret, something she knew, in her smile.
I guessed her to be about 65 – an age that no longer feels old to me now that I’m closer to 65.
Not that close – I’ll be 50 in December. Suddenly it doesn’t seem to be a great leap to 65. That’s fifteen years from now. And with my daughters turning 15 on their next birthday, I can see how 15 years will disappear faster than a plate of warm cookies.
I’m like the Tween of Middle Age. Almost 50, and that feels like I’m in pretty solid territory. I jumped through perimenopause as I got pushed into chemo-induced menopause. That slow evolution became a revolution.
I’m still on the young side of older. When I spend time with my classmates at my Community College, I’m not on the old side of young anymore. I’m pretty sure they see me as old and unrelatable.
I’m not trying to keep up with younger women anymore, the way I was in my early to mid-forties. I still felt young and vital; I had young children and that helped me feel young and vital.
Something happened in the last year-I don’t know if it was the Cancer, the Chemo, or the COVID, but I changed.
Perhaps it would have happened anyway, but the push into menopause, or perhaps the health clashes, changed me.
I have a lot to learn from older women – the Wise Ones. No longer bleeding they, we, aren’t spending our life energy in the constant contribution to the lives of others.
There are the gifts of insight and experience, but I think I know now I can’t change anyone – I never could. It’s a luxury to finally turn that light inward and explore how I can shift and transform.
I can reduce my efforts. It matters less to me if I’m accepted by others. I’m finally cultivating acceptance of self.
I prove myself for myself, knowing my capacity good work.
I think I finally understand my value.
I come in, closer here, for a look within to divine, in these last (God-willing) decades of my life, me.
Maybe that’s the secret.