This week I turn 55. It’s a privilege to be getting older.
I have a loving husband. I have a family I adore who, for the most part, adore me back. I live in a modestly beautiful house full of the things I’ve collected, or made, or been given, or ended up with. I live in a community that I value and who values me. That said, my life is not perfect. I have complex challenges that I try to use to enrich, rather than diminish, my life. I try not to compare others or myself. I try to embrace impermanence. I feel others’ pain at an intensity I’ve never felt before. I believe this is the beginning of the long labour of my eldership.
I realise that at 55, to see myself, I no longer need a mirror. My true reflection lives here. In my experience. In my relationships. In the faces and lives of people I touch. That is my mirror. And I am fortunate. If I continue to put in, what reflects back is good. This kind of reflection is a dialogue, not a one-way street.
I hate the narrative around ageing. I hate that people say they hate getting older. That some people won’t even say how old they are because the numbers are somehow shameful. I hate that Instagram feeds are full of creams and lotions and ads for anti-ageing helmets that zap your head with ultraviolet rays so nobody believes you are 75. It’s not important or relevant because if you are 75 then you are 75. Does it matter what people think? And if you are 75, then why the F do you still care what people think?
I am not scared of ageing. In fact I like it. It’s mysterious. I like that I don’t look the same. I have been young and beautiful. I have been the blazing day. Now I’m the dusk. The part where the day softens into the unknown. Where your once bushy eyebrows get thinner, and your once small arse gets bigger. This is the age when you better hope you put down a decent deposit on a personality. When you’re more interesting to talk to than look at. As your beauty fades your stories come into sharp focus. So you better have some.
At 55 you have lived. You know stuff. You have suffered. You have overcome adversity. You have won. And you have lost. You are experienced. And hopefully you have some wisdom. Even just a little bit. And wisdom is sexy. Knowing who you are is sexy. Not caring what the world thinks is sexy. Being comfortable in your skin, is sexy. Not being sexy, is sexy.
My back hurts. I have vertigo. Grey hairs around my temple. I have wrinkles around my eyes. I have a double chin. A rounded belly. I’m hitting my Goddess years. Not the boring beautiful one that has babies. The fabulous cranky one that gets angry and destroys stuff. The all powerful arse kicking Goddess of ‘I’m over this shit’.
I love being that Goddess. The one that doesn’t need the approval of others. Who doesn’t tell her body ‘I hate you’. Who cares deeply about the people she loves. And is furious if they get hurt. I love being the fierce defender. I love trusting my instincts. I love knowing something because I’ve been through it before. I love being right. I also love knowing its okay to be wrong.
That’s the cool stuff of ageing. It’s lovely.
I’m not getting botox. My face is full of stories. I know every wrinkle and why it’s there. Every one of them links the girl I once was to the woman I am now. I don’t intend to lose that lineage. I have earned it. It is the most precious gift to give my daughters; not money, not fame, not beauty, but the purest and most potent legacy of all: self-acceptance.
Happy 55 to me. Get over it, and enjoy getting old. It’s awesome. Some of the people I have loved the most never even got the chance.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
