You look across the table at your long-time friend over the ‘every Wednesday’ morning cup. Do you see her as aging? Do you see her as she was when you first met?

This April I realized I was older. It may seem strange since we all age every day. Better to say, I received a clear message from my gut while looking in the mirror. I am older. I am different now, and not just by the benefit of gravity.

Two important points before we go forward. I am a woman who would, if she could, take advantage of the medical miracles to erase time’s presence, but I am also embarrassed that I want to. Also, I write here for those fortunate enough to get old healthfully, without the boulder of illness strapped to the body to be carried along with the aging ague.

The Little Lines Are Everywhere

The blog post headlines, long-standing fashion magazines, and Pinterest Pins attack the presence of those precious little lines on my face. Those articles and pins are an irresistible hook.

It is understandable why lines on a face are a multi-billion-dollar industry. When women we admire for their talent and survival skills, such as Ms. Bonnie Raitt, sing, “These lines staring back at you are pretty hard to take,” it confirms our struggle.

We know what they mean universally and have intense feelings about the personal changes we see.

Thankfully, it isn’t all about masquerading as someone younger. A shift is occurring, encouraging us to see our thinking about aging through a different lens so that we may do so with an abundance of self-assurance. We are encouraged to practice the art of unwinding our concepts around aging; we are emboldened to lift ourselves out of the motheaten beliefs about age within which we have been steeped.

Discovering guides on how to unmask our prejudice about our internal aging self is comforting. So many of us have been battling our bodies since we were young. It follows, without acceptance, somewhere along the way, we would come to aging with criticism and a determination to turn back the clock. It is depressing to know that 30-year-old women (and men) are already using Botox and laser resurfacing.

Can We Remember to Avoid Side Lighting?

Fear is a great motivator and youth is an easy sell, offering a way to erase what we resist. With so much to learn, we need to use some of our precious time to decipher and choose, then practice creating, putting on, and wearing the shield of choice against an insidious foe.

Indeed, there is too much written on aging and doing it gracefully by fighting it. We are provided guides on what to wear and how to use makeup to camouflage while enhancing. Directions instruct us on how to mask our skins contrarian manifestation of what is going on. Equipped with tactics and recipes, we arm ourselves against the aging onslaught.

What About When You Look in the Mirror? Who Is It You See?

But because the idea of aging is so split even within oneself, there is much information about taking a stand on both sides of the debate. How to handle aging while guiding you on how to be a better you, with exercise, meditations, foods for this and supplements for that, and a cheeky beach book cheering you on; allow yourself to be seen. ‘

But you MUST remember, before you go to sleep, to be sure you not only wash your face with a moisturizing plumping peptide-infused cleanser but also use the toner that captures the dewy essence of youth through further cleaning.

Then comes the moisturizing ritual, first with an eye-specific gel and then one for the face and another for the neck and decolletage. Still, we are assured that even with all this hard work, the real you remains as intriguing, natural, and wonderfully uncommon as always. You just need a little help.

Confusing? You Think?

So much to learn, and there is only one thing I am convinced of when I come to the end of any of these informational dumps: I am confident that I am already aging incorrectly. I realize I was mathematically old only a few months ago. I came to this class unprepared.

In all iterations of how to age, we do not discuss necks needing scarves, boobs that swing a little too free, or forgetting to check for chin hairs before leaving the house. There is little encouragement to be authentic and messy, to let us be angry and feel bewildered as we arise more crinkled than yesterday.

The clock is moving too fast. Some days I live in a lazy acceptance, and some days I prod myself with thoughts; you never know whom you will bump into.

I secretly want to know how to upgrade myself as an aging woman while appreciating, railing against, accepting, grieving, and being astonished by this phase of life. During this once-in-a-lifetime transition, let us cry when needed, be proud, and laugh at our foibles, worries, and discoveries.

To know deep within I am, each of us is a welcomed member of the dazzling gathering. It is a prayer. It is a meditation. It is important so as we get closer to the time, we learn that we are made from the stuff of stars, as Carl Sagan says, so we may go being good with that.

Keep well.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

When was the first time you realized you were older? How has the mirror served you in that endeavor? Which side of the debate are you on – fighting aging or aging gracefully – and what does each mean to you?

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Sometimes I find that after I write a column for Sixty and Me, I can’t stop thinking about it. Last month I wrote an article entitled “Can You Be Positive if You’re Not Feeling It?”

One of the things I wrote was:

“If we are going to be full human beings, we cannot avoid sadness. Sorrow and loss are part of living. Periods of lack of confidence, lack of hope and lack of energy are inevitable. There is nothing wrong with us if we experience these feelings. To me, the point is just not to be stuck there.”

Honor Feelings We Don’t Necessarily Like

This is what I have been thinking about, and I would like to take it one step further. Beyond not getting stuck there, beyond giving ourselves permission to have down times, perhaps we could actually honour these feelings and the special state we are in when we are somewhat down.

I am not talking about what could be called clinical depression, where we lose interest in everything for long periods at a time. What I am referring to could be called melancholia or the blues – a time when hurtin’ music feels healing.

How can it be that hurtin’ music feels good when we feel bad? Someone who asked herself that question, and wrote a book about how she answered it, is Susan Cain. I am reading her book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. For those of us who have those feelings, it is such a validation!

Our Sorrows Need Validation

Our sorrows and our longings, she suggests, come from our sensitivity to being separated from our best selves, even from humanity’s best possibilities. This can show up in our more mundane issues when we feel we could be loved more or could love ourselves more.

Susan Cain talks about loving music in a minor key. There is a piano piece by Brahms (an Intermezzo, which so aptly in Italian means something in between) I often listen to when I need deep companionship in my sorrow. Either that, or some Hawaiian music I bought when I was in Hawaii nursing a deep hurt.

Both these pieces of music remind me of a line of poetry I love by Gerrard Manley Hopkins: “Sorrow’s springs are the same.”

The music and the sorrow that accompanies it seem to expand the soul. In that space, we are often creative, seeking expression for what we feel. It is a time we can contemplate our lives and make changes. The feeling it evokes fosters compassion, and connection with all that is.

It is as if, for a time, we can put our weight on our back foot, rather than our front foot. The world is slightly different there. As poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “Things as they are, are changed upon the blue guitar.”

The Possibilities in the In-Between Zone

We can look upon this state as an opening, an opening that contains possibilities we can’t reach in our more ordinary way of being, or, to go back to Intermezzo, when we aren’t in the in-between zone. Not just a source of pain, sorrows can also be a source of growth that allows us to feel more.

Janice Skinner, my long-time yoga teacher, often exhorts us, as we practise, to “feel everything.” To me, this suggests a conscious act of permission I give myself. I have had a good and fortunate life, and yet sorrow and longing are part of who I am. Perhaps I can welcome them more fully when they come to call and see them as reminders. Reminders of what, exactly? I’m still not sure. But I treasure them.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you thought about honoring those times in life when you feel sad and sorrowful? Do you think sorrow is a way to grow and become more of yourself? In what ways have you used your sorrows and blues to create a different life?

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