Why Getting Older Is Better Than You Think

It’s impossible not to be aware of women trying to look younger than their years. We go to the movies and our favorite stars look strangely unfamiliar. Actresses we’ve enjoyed watching over time suddenly lose their unique look that made us fall in love with them. We see a face that hasn’t changed in 30 years and can’t help but be distracted looking for any telltale sign of aging that we know should be there.

Today as I write this I’m 66 yrs old. Am I thrilled to be this old? Yes and No. When I think about some of my friends and family members who are no longer here living their lives, I’m filled with gratitude for my many years. When I reflect on all I’ve learned from the wide variety of people and experiences that have filled my life up till now, yes, I appreciate my 66 years.

But like you, I am susceptible to the steady stream of images, jokes and stories about the horrors of being a woman whose getting older.

Plastic surgery and other age-defying methods have become the norm in the images of women we see around us everywhere. On magazine covers, even 20-something models are airbrushed to greater perfection. Volume is added to hair, breasts and lips, and erased from waists, hips and thighs.
Nothing we see in the media is an accurate depiction of the changes a real woman goes through as she ages. So how can we not be upset about our crow’s feet or worry lines when we see older woman on TV without a wrinkle on their face?

Having “work done” is a personal choice, one I respect. But all this effort and money put into trying to avoid the march of time gives us the message that as older women we aren’t attractive, and therefore we won’t be loved.

The idea of older men breaking up their families for a younger woman is prevalent and it has poisoned our sense of ourselves. Yes, of course this happens, but not all the time.

So many of us over 40 have an overwhelming fear that men only want younger women. This makes us think less of ourselves believing that we won’t be able to spark a man’s interest. We believe the lie that we are no longer attractive to men.

This of course, isn’t true. If you look around you’ll see older women and men falling in love and marrying all the time. I was 53 when I married my husband who was a youngster at 49.

We have to fight the lies being fed to us about getting older. We have to allay our fears. If we look around at the real people who populate our lives it looks very different than what we’re being shown in the media. People of all ages, shapes and sizes manage to marry, have families and live a good life.

We shouldn’t bemoan the number of years we’ve spent on the planet, each one was a gift. We can’t let our age make us feel any less worthy of love.

We need to appreciate every line and every wrinkle. We earned them through the richness of our life experience. We need to fall in love with ourselves just as we are so we can feel comfortable in our own skin. That feeling won’t come to us from the outside; we have to do it for ourselves.

There’s one thing I’m sure of, we are never too old for the goodness of life and we’re never too old to find love.