MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
MIRROR MIRROR<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I went to lunch one day with a woman I had met recently and I noticed she wasn\u2019t looking me in the eye. She was staring at the space between my eyebrows. I tried to carry on a conversation and ignore her gaze when she pointed a manicured finger at my face and said rudely and deliberately, \u201cBotox.\u201d She clearly thought I needed Botox, I had a wrinkle or two that must have been bothering her smooth and shiny face and it was unsettling for her. It was even more unsettling for me. I didn’t take offense but I didn’t like it. I left the restaurant, got in my car and looked in the mirror. I was okay with what I saw. Of course I noticed imperfections, but I said out loud, \u201cWhy can\u2019t I be the age that I am? What’s wrong with that? Why am I supposed to feel ashamed to look my age?\u201d<\/p>\n
Children aren’t ashamed of looking young, so why can\u2019t we look
old? Being old is every bit as natural and inevitable as infancy, childhood,\u00a0adulthood and middle age. Aging happens when it happens, it\u2019s just another\u00a0stage of life to be experienced, and we\u2019re lucky if we get to stick\u00a0around for\u00a0it. I don’t like the expression, \u201cForty is the new thirty. Fifty is the new\u00a0forty.\u201d What does that even mean? Why can’t forty be forty? Why can\u2019t fifty be\u00a0fifty? Who says we can’t show our hard earned wisdom and our battle wounds we\u00a0gained from living our lives?<\/p>\n
I want to be clear here that I don\u2019t have judgments on women\u00a0who choose to have fillers or face lifts. I believe those things are a choice
we are all free to make. I just don\u2019t want to be judged for my choice to leave my\u00a0face the way it is or be shamed for having wrinkles. I don’t want someone\u00a0pointing at my face and insisting I need Botox. I want to be free to go out\u00a0without makeup and feel comfortable. Most of all, I don’t want to erase my\u00a0face. I want my emotions to register in my expression and I want to feel proud\u00a0of the years that I\u2019ve journeyed in my lifetime.<\/p>\n
We live in a society where aging is looked down upon. I have\u00a0a favorite photograph, a head shot of a Chippewa Native American woman who\u00a0reportedly lived to 123 years old. Her wrinkled face looks like a roadmap of\u00a0her life, the many experiences she had, her trials and successes. Her failures\u00a0and her celebrations. Her disappointments and her surprises. They are there for\u00a0all the world to see and I think she is truly beautiful. She was not ashamed of
growing old and she was treated with respect by her tribe which must have made\u00a0it a lot easier. Young tribal members sought her counsel and they took care of\u00a0her as she aged. Doesn\u2019t that sound delicious? She didn\u2019t have to cough up\u00a0thousands of dollars for fillers, invasive surgeries and liposuction. She\u00a0didn’t have to lie about her age. She didn\u2019t have to endure elder abuse or criticism\u00a0for being an old woman. She could take pride in her long life and all that she\u00a0had seen and learned.<\/p>\n
When I teach my writing classes, I constantly remind my\u00a0students that when they write, there is no good or bad. There is authentic and
inauthentic. Honesty or dishonesty. When you tell the truth on the page, you\u00a0are automatically writing something powerful and interesting. When you don\u2019t\u00a0tell the truth, nobody is interested. Everyone has a real story and we are so\u00a0much more than the image in the mirror. My cat stares into a mirror endlessly\u00a0and you can be sure she isn’t deciding if she looks good or bad. She\u2019s simply
fascinated with what she sees.<\/p>\n
I have to admit that sometimes I look in the mirror and\u00a0wonder if I still look okay. I\u2019m only human. I wonder if I need to change\u00a0something or do something. I wonder if people still find me attractive but I\u00a0like to leave it there. I know that I look better and feel better when I do\u00a0things that keep me strong and healthy. I make sure to exercise, eat well and\u00a0be kind to the people in my life. I monitor my anxiety levels and do my best to\u00a0be present and aware of my needs. I rest when I\u2019m tired, I cry when I\u2019m sad, I laugh\u00a0when I think something is funny and grieve when I feel loss. I just want to be
authentic and appreciate how I look and how I live my life. Fifty can look like\u00a0fifty. So can sixty and seventy. I can feel like I\u2019m stuck with myself and try\u00a0to change how I look, or I can appreciate the fact that I can still get up in\u00a0the morning and be graced to live another day. That\u2019s good enough for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG MIRROR MIRROR \u00a0 I went to lunch one day with a woman I had met recently and I noticed she wasn\u2019t looking me in the eye. She was staring at the space between my eyebrows. I tried to carry on a conversation and ignore her gaze when she pointed a manicured finger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}