Aging....Well
For better or worse, my head rarely allows an unexamined thought. Lately (as in the past 10 years), the topic of aging has been on my mind. Not constantly. Not a full-on panic. Just enough to really, really listen when someone is whispering about a new cream their dermatologist recommends or a smoothie ingredient someone feels is “doing the trick”.
What I know for sure is I would like to age “well”. As a result, my brain has been engaged in a full-on exploration of what exactly “aging well” means for me. For example, do I want to take an artsy, heavily-beaded, flow-y-clothes, yoga-pose, love-my-wrinkles approach? Or, do I want to throw money at it and turn my Nordstrom bill into a plastic surgery bill? (Do they give you general anesthesia for lip injections?) Am I relegated to turning my daily activity into one giant workout, supported by a few well-timed carrots if I’m interested in maintaining my physique? Is caring about my physique a sign that I have missed the boat on internal beauty and what’s really important in life? It’s hard to overcome the societal message that if we have wrinkles more extensive than “cute laugh lines”, we have somehow failed as a woman. Culturally speaking, it would appear women are much more relevant if we’re also super hot, right? Barf. But let’s say I give into that idea a little bit and get injections and procedures, does that automatically disqualify me as someone who’s allowed to meditate? Round and round my head goes.
At some point, no matter how much you have your internal world in order, these conflicting feelings about what it means to age are something that all women are called to reconcile. For me, I have loved the process of getting older. So far. The years I spent watching Oprah with the intensity of a PhD student did not go to waste. Oprah taught me to approach my life as one big learning opportunity. As a result, for pretty much any experience in which I find myself, there is a post game analysis, a thoughtful revision or two and then I'm on to the next. I surprise myself (in a bad way) when I occasionally wander to the part of me that’s shallowly interested in cultivating hotness when I’m 60, 75 and 93. My love of all creams and potions is well documented. I mean, at what age will I encounter what Mrs. Schumer so perfectly discusses in her (adult language) sketch?!:
Because the universe sends us help when we ask, I came across Christiane Northrup’s book, Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being. The mind-body connection has been a topic of interest to me since the time talking about a mind-body connection was considered on par with dancing in a field with unicorns. Thankfully, I feel a lot more normal now that these ideas are making their way into the mainstream. I have been a longtime fan of her books on all things female, and this particular one felt like a gift since it illuminates the very topic that has been on my mind: aging (or, as she would say, getting older) as a female.
Christiane Northrup is a conventionally trained OB-GYN who began noticing that there was a connection between her patient’s emotional lives and their physical concerns. She realized that there was a connection between what we believe about ourselves and what shows up in our lives, whether that be a physical ailment or difficult circumstance. With an easily digestible writing style, Christiane has some valuable and convincing insights into how much of what we believe about getting older creates our experience of getting older. It’s really interesting to chew on the idea of how our beliefs about aging show up in our lives. Are you someone who just thinks your body just falls apart at 40? Has it?
This book has brought me some new thought patterns to consider in my approach to getting older. It’s like giving yourself the gift of good news on a topic that is usually filled with fear and aches and general dred. Like anything else, you won’t read it and immediately have aging solved, but it will give you some tools to help you when you catch yourself buying into someone else’s Halloween-esque version of aging. Check it out!
Keely