Getting old is a fascinating thing: The older you get, the older you want to get
–Keith Richards
What if… life is about living and it isn’t worth counting the days or worrying about age?
What if… there were no prejudicial attitudes towards older people, old age and aging itself?
What if… we are so busy feeling young that we stay blind to the ageism around us?
My life felt like a patchwork quilt. Some of the seams hand-stitched with love and tenderness reminiscent of my awkward 9 year-old self sewing the ear back on my babyhood Teddy Bear. Other parts of the quilt squares threadbare, reflecting my bouts of depression and worn thin by trying to belong.
At 59 I wanted to give up trying – I realized I had adopted the standard expectation of ageism and I heard myself saying I was too old. With that realization I began to become curious. I looked around and I listened to others older, wiser than me. And so, I challenged myself to find a different narrative.
I was inspired by others to age well and kick the societal norms to the curb. And in a way that’s given me permission to try anything and everything. In my journey to embrace new assumptions, people who stand out for me include Meri Frischmen of @the.pro.age.woman, who recently shared her “silent age rage” that birthed her “compulsion to jump in to prove that old notion wrong” She goes on to share, in a recent Instagram post, “I thought, wow, I’ll use cool, edgy style to blow your minds, our minds, my mind.”
Being bold about most things in my life, I took up motorcycling in my fourth decade of life. I had turned down a similar opportunity in my 20’s. I am so glad I expanded my horizons to learn life lessons on the open road later in life. I took the strong bond of the riding community and put a little style spin on my journey. My personal stamp was my riding gear, that matched my bike. It became a visual statement to distinguish, easily, that I was a woman rider. How we show up in life depends on our attitude. Style expression is attitude.
The only thing that ever needs to be changed is your attitude and how you view yourself.
I am hopeful that 2021 can become known as the year older women lead the way.
Wise women who have lived 5 decades and beyond tend to shine with quiet grace and enviable resilience. We draw from what we know, from who we have become. That’s why I think that the coming year and the years coming after can belong to older women. I have experienced, in getting a little older, a yearning to connect and to share.My desire is to build a collective, like the comfort of a quilting circle, that can sustain a place to draw from a menu of lessons learned and pull from a toolbox stocked with ways to thrive.
A word that I recently came across in ThisChair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism has released a new freedom for me and I hope it will inspire others. The word is agefulness. It inspires a sense of pride that I have accomplished things in my life and look forward to accomplishing more and possibly inspiring others (younger) .
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