Woman of a Certain Age

I woke up this morning…5:55 am to be exact to Rod Stewart wishing I be ‘Forever Young’…as I swung my arm over to bang the snooze alarm; I realized I was in the throes/throws of a blistering hot flash… I was throwing off sheets, blankets, the dog…yet, I had to smile and wish myself a happy birthday.

Last year, I was fifty.  This year I am in my fifties…a fine distinction, true, but as a woman of a certain “age” it is an important distinction.

As a woman of a certain age, I am now on my first daily dose prescription drug…ugh…got that early birthday present a couple of weeks ago.  After a cool winter, my hot flashes have returned, just in time for mood swings out on the golf course and this time around, not only do I have my own personal summer, I have my own personal, nighttime sauna…or flop-sweat as the case may be…beautiful.  Why is it that my flashes are so hot, rivulets of personal dew pour down every valley, channel or crevice and ear wax melts into pools in my ear, but I cannot burn away a few extra pounds?  It is a puzzlement!

Something else has happened since being 50 has become being in my 50’s…I have a confidence I have never known before this time…I am not so concerned with how much “time” I have left, but more,  what am I going to do with all this time…creativity has begun to bloom for this woman of this certain age.  Although my eyesight may be a bit blurry, my insight seems to be clearer than ever.  I have always been observant, but now  am keenly so…intuition has risen to a new high and with that, the spontaneity I used to fear, is not so much a bother…I am getting better at ebbing and flowing…. I still have work to do in that area of personal growth, but I am getting better.

I am going gray and kind of loving it.  Natural highlights, which my history and genes have given me.  When folks see my gray, some say something…nice, good, others not so good, but most look quizzically.  My goal is to make gray look great…to be the trendsetter!  I don’t want to be that woman who looks like she is trying too hard to be who she isn’t or wasn’t.  I want to look like a woman who has lived.

I realize that I will never be a size eight again.  I have healthy, curves…about 20 pounds more ample than I should be, and to lose that weight is an achievable and admirable goal.  My doctor tells me I am healthy…could be a bit more active and I want to be, but all the same, I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman of a certain age…apologies to Helen Reddy!  Okay, I am not invincible, but don’t get up all in my business...I am who I am.

The reality is, I have stopped worrying  so much about what other people think because, I don’t really know what they are thinking…for years I supposed I knew what people thought, I surmised, I speculated, I sweated the small stuff and I have come to realize that it wasn’t at all about what others thought of me, but what I was thinking of myself.  Well, that will continue to be the most likely scenario and I have decided to think better of myself…the gift of a certain age…

I am still on a quest for a purpose driven life, but in this past year of reflection, I have learned that part of the “purpose” is me.  I can be about, do and dream for me…that is what it means to be a woman of a certain age…I have earned it and I deserve it.  I am enhanced by my past but, I am not defined by it.  I am a work in progress, again…for me that is what it means to be a woman of a certain age.

Happy birthday to me.