Reframing Aging

 

If you’ve been reading this blog then you likely know that I started a few new things during the pandemic (blogging being one of them). I’ve been nurturing and expanding my creative side while edging towards retirement.

Aging and older women’s role in society has often been on my mind. Recently I watched a series of online talks on a summit about “Reframing Aging”, hosted by Maria Shriver.  The guests she interviewed ranged from Jaime Lee Curtis (With her short, sassy grey hair, she tells it like it is. She doesn’t look at her naked body when she steps out of the shower, finding it easier to accept her body if she doesn’t look at it critically) to Vanessa Williams (ex-beauty queen who won’t rule out cosmetic surgery) to the writer Anne Lamott who is so witty and forthright you can’t help but lean in, listen and nod your head in agreement. “It’s an inside job,” she says, among other things.

And of course, women in my age group, have known for a while that it’s an inside job. We know, from the experience of just having lived so many years, that it’s about accepting, about sending your roots down deeper, to where the ‘realness’ resides. Our eyesight may be changing, but we start to see wider and further, from a different perspective. Our inner lives are richer than they were before. And we know there’s still more to know.

In blogging and following other bloggers I’ve encountered like-minded women who reflect on similar things that I do and eloquently share these reflections. In this blog post (here, and also to the left as I follow this blogger regularly), Helen recommends a book – Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher – which I’ve read. Helen writes what many of us have come to realize (contrary to what society may think) – that we are happier, better, truer, more resilient versions of ourselves now than we ever were.

If you’ve followed my blog you will know that I recently turned to writing poetry. The reflections on aging women motivated this poem. I apologize for subjecting you to my beginner, mediocre sonnets, but the faucet has been turned on. You have been warned.

Rowing North

                There’s beauty in those lines, that storied scar

                Yet they look and see – oh diminished one

                But we know. We know now just who we are—

                Rowing North, a new journey has begun.

                Black hours of grief and valleys of tears

                Loss and joy, pain and mirth knocked at our door

                All come when you’ve lived lo so many years

                We’ve corralled the herd, but we know there’s more.

                Don’t seek shiny baubles on the surface

                Layers ripple beneath in multi hues

                Lustrous pearls, fragments of bliss

                Much deeper connections, if you so choose.

                                We’re not lesser versions of who we were

                                We’re polished stone. We have shed the veneer.

                                                                                Pearl Richard

P.S. If  you want to read good poetry go here to Transactions With Beauty Tagged Poetry Posts