I generally think people actually have no idea what a 30, 40, 50 or 60 year old woman looks like, who naturally ages. Mass media largely contains images of women who are frozen. It's all a bit same, same but different!
I saw an ad on Instagram the other day that was touting a 34-year-old (!) that had managed to not start using injectable fillers due to some skin-care/makeup that rendered them unnecessary so far. I was gobsmacked. I can't think of any 34 year old that would "need" fillers. I mean, no one needs them, but you know. All I could think was if I had seen that ad in my early/mid 20s, it would have triggered a subconscious bias in my brain that I should start getting injections as soon as I hit my 30s so that no one could tell my age. And everything on the social medias backs that up.
For what it’s worth after I read about the yellow dress incident I jumped in my car and drove to Northampton (where all the young college women shop) and bought a yellow babydoll dress which I plan to wear on Friday with brown leggings (it works okay-ish) just BECAUSE. I am 67 in 7 days. Thank you. Every word you write resonates in some place in me that needs a voice.
I’m a man in his late 40s. I’ve been clean and sober five years & 363 days, Friday marks six years. I have often tried to explain why, seeing my own face in the mirror, sometimes makes me cry. The combination of drugs and alcohol I was addicted to for more than 20 years have wipedso many of my memories —so much of that life that I lived. so when I see myself, it’s a combination of grief, gratitude, and a whole range of other feelings. I am fortunate that my partner finds my gray hairs charming. That I cheated death is great… but no one actually cheats death, and somehow the person staring back at me knows this & is counting wrinkles, scars, friends dead, or the money lost— while the one looking just can’t believe it.
The gratitude, grief and wonder is something so spectacular, subtle and ever more. I feel this whenever I take the time to really look deep into my own eyes in the mirror. Gobsmacked that I made it and so fucking sad for all the shit I put myself and others through.
When your name shows up in my inbox I feel the deepest of reliefs, knowing I will be seen in a way I didn’t know I needed. And today was no different. We are about the same age. So, YES, thank you, deepest of thank you’s to all of it. But most especially This: “It’s what they represent, which is the time of my life before them when I chose different things; the parts when I was too busy being somewhere else surviving.”
What is the name for grieving the years when we had so much time left that *everything* could theoretically still be possible, even in the moments of darkest despair when nothing seemed or even was possible except trying to make it to the next morning? What do you call the grieving of the slow drip of “maybe someday’s” drying up into a desert of “never’s”?
Something about 2019-now has made these (for now) novel flavors of grief particularly potent. All I can think of in this moment is my beloved, now deceased, grandmother telling 20-something me: “inside everyone my age is someone your age wondering how the fuck they got here.”
Oh my god. You described my 46 year old grief so perfectly. It seemed to appear out of nowhere after the pandemic. This weird sadness. I went hard in Addiction and then hard in recovery and now I’m like in a daze sometimes wondering what happened and feeling this deep grief and sometimes I have no idea what happened this past decade. I find myself longing for paths not taken at times. Thank you for writing this 💗
Hey, I’m 75! Aging hits hard, especially for women, but I sure don’t want to be an old drunk. Yes sad that I wasted valuable time ditzing around, not even realizing I was supposed to be getting a life, but I did the best I could at the time.
Yes to all of this. I am 46 years old and just off the heels of spending three days At Bravocon, getting Covid from the Seattle to NYC, back to Seattle travel, and then watching 16 episodes of Love Island USA during my covid recovery. Note: There are 30 episodes but the legal limit should really be 16 plus the reunion special if you are of strong constitution. With all this said, I feel like i am now a voyeur into a life stage I’ve passed. I couldn’t believe the cute gal posses all dressed up with the intent to be out late and in THOSE shoes, no less! Then Id find myself chatting it up with some women who I thought were my peers, only to realize I have 20 years on them and learned to type on a typewriter, as they were born with the advent of the Blackberry. It’s daunting at times when I see myself in the mirror (especially after 15 episodes of LI USA) and go, Wow! Who’s that?! I was a girl and now I’m a lady. But sometimes when I have that “who is that?” moment in the mirror, I harken back to before the pandemic when that Aging app was going around. I remember taking a photo, uploading it to the app, (Which would later be revealed as a hacker database,) and and watching myself transformed into someone in their 70s. When I saw the picture, I actually smiled!! It was a grandma Nicole! She looked so peaceful and nice. Grandma Nicole definitely put on too much perfume, was not a cook, wore sequins to non sequins events, She talked too loud, too much, and too often. But she had sparkling eyes, looked content, and like she was done worrying about being judged by other people. I think I smiled because i know deep down, i was the least secure when i looked the most “capitalistically beautiful” and by the time this lady catches up to that one, I’ll be in an even better place with respect to NGAF. But also, this past year I think i spent $500 on anti aging products, which is only $300 more than my sequin spend Sooooo....baby steps?
For the first time in my life, yesterday I went to the store and did not buy the ingredients of a version of myself I imagine I am, the one that cooks, who I am not. I am somoene who wants to be a person who cooks, who buys things she doesn't use because she doesn't cook. I bought twenty frozen meals. I know that's not what you're saying, but in some way that's what I took from it. Maybe acceptance.
Yes and 100% yes. If its my turn to host something (and don’t get me started on how I loathe entertaining at my home) I now opt for brunch and just buy good pastries, pre cut fruit, pre sliced cheeses, and voila! Brunch! The only thing I “cook” comes out of my nespresso. Zero apologies. Some people make art(me) and some people buy art, some people write amazing books (you) and some people buy books, it needs to be the same for cooking... :)
1. I love the poem “Weathering,” by Fleur Adcock; approaching age 48, I aspire to embody its essence. 2. I just gave myself a bruise trying to win gua sha.
Oh boy! I’m 53, fit and strong, sober for 10 years. Somewhere, kinda recently, figured out the aged physical appearance things- wizzly neck, saggy boobs, menopause completed, are all things not just attributed to getting old but looking like my old mother. Who I’ve had a strained relationship with. The light bulb came on when I realized just bc I look like my aging mother doesn’t mean I’m “ like” my mother. I am sober, I did and continue to do the things that make me a better, happier person. At 83 she continues to drink in excess and feel sorry for herself. So thank you for a great read. It resonated!
I get this. It's not easy in this culture to get older. Umm...old. I am turning 70 in 2 weeks. Aren't I supposed to be thinking about dying soon? The impact, for me, has always greater at the "9's" : 29, 39, 49,....hell, you can count by 10's up to 69 without my help, I'm sure. And it isn't that I am digging in my heels, and I don't think for a moment that YOU are digging in your heels, either. But there is a sustained moment of reflection and realization that some things are lost. Please buy the next dress. I love you, sweetie, Pam
I knew you'd have something wonderful to say. I am going to buy all those fucking dresses. Happy almost 70. I love right back. Play us a song on your accordion.
You do know that I don't play the accordion? I play fiddle. But a friend sold it to me at a yard sale, and it was cheap, red, with buttons in the right key. After a couple of weekends I decided the bellows were not for me, and I would stick with fiddle. But I totally resonate with the accordion vibe.
This this this all of this. The liminal second puberty into menopause, the gray eyelashes (!), the body that looks like a mom even though I never birthed a child. Older people insist I’m young, and I don’t care to know what the younger people think. Who am I now? Who was I then?
I sometimes wonder what difference I would feel about it all if I had had a baby; like I wonder for those of us who didn't if there's a missing trigger to move to a different level, at least emotionally. No idea. Just a thought.
I swear you somehow read my thoughts from afar & somehow put them into words that make sense. I’m a lot older than you but I’ve been having the same feelings about how did this happen. I’m old but I don’t know how I got here. Then I think why the hell did I waste so much time trying to be what I thought other people wanted when 1) I don’t really know what anyone wants & 2) I could have worried about what I want in this one fucking life I have. Hopefully I’ll live as long as my mother…she’s still alive, lol
There's a comment above about wasted but then last week, I wrote about how not a cent of it was a waste. All necessary, usable. When we're talking about earned wisdom, I wonder why it is we leave out the body.
A year ago I was hiking in the San Jacintos with four of my childhood friends. My very dark brown hair started going gray in my mid-20s and I stopped coloring my hair in 2015. My hair is mostly white now; I'm 45. As we hiked up the path, a woman who was older than we were, but maybe not too much older, made her way down the trail past us. I was the last in the column of our group, and as she passed me she said, "Oh, are those your girls?" she even wrinkled her nose a bit, raised her shoulders and gave a little "fun" shimmy as she said it, eager to join me in the supremely joyful conspiracy of having such great relationships with our adult daughters - and, by her assessment of my situation, FOUR of them. I was too shocked in the moment to reply with anything smart, or to kindly highlight the depth and breadth of the assumptions she was making about me (and my friends). All I could say was, "No, we went to high school together."
To echo some other posters, I think that people just don't know *how* to age women - thus, a woman with gray hair must be Very Old (also, I think this is particularly pronounced in Southern California, where this happened). As Holly suggests, it's always wisest to skip saying anything about someone else's appearance, ever!
I too am addicted to Honey Mama's. When my friend and I crossed the border back into the United States after almost a year of living in Mexico, I suggested we pick some up at Whole Foods. "I overdosed on it last year," she said, and we kept driving.
It's ridiculous and it's so stupidly expensive and so so good. I have a little square with my coffee and it somehow makes getting out of bed survivable
I’m 58 and have always said things like “when I’m old I’ll…" or “when I’m in a relationship I’ll…”. Truly, all my life I’ve put off doing so many of the things I wanted to do, like buying Charmin instead of Kirkland brand toilet paper (🤣) until I woke up about a year ago and thought “what the fuck am I waiting for?” So last week me and the dog packed our things (I helped her) and we drove from Seattle to LA, stopping to see friends and say goodbye, and we boarded a plane for Costa Rica. We moved here a little over a week ago and I’m feeling like it was the best decision I could have made: to stop waiting until I was old enough to deserve a different life, to live a different life right now!
Thanks Holly, as always, for providing the space to reflect, engage, relate, and grow.
Ohhhhhh! Look. At. You. It's not exactly like moving to CR but I did start surfing a few weeks ago and it's something I'd been putting off for a decade. I get it. So into this.
I generally think people actually have no idea what a 30, 40, 50 or 60 year old woman looks like, who naturally ages. Mass media largely contains images of women who are frozen. It's all a bit same, same but different!
I think we have a completely distorted view. I know I do; like completely because of social media and media and filters, etc.
I saw an ad on Instagram the other day that was touting a 34-year-old (!) that had managed to not start using injectable fillers due to some skin-care/makeup that rendered them unnecessary so far. I was gobsmacked. I can't think of any 34 year old that would "need" fillers. I mean, no one needs them, but you know. All I could think was if I had seen that ad in my early/mid 20s, it would have triggered a subconscious bias in my brain that I should start getting injections as soon as I hit my 30s so that no one could tell my age. And everything on the social medias backs that up.
It's so alarming!
For what it’s worth after I read about the yellow dress incident I jumped in my car and drove to Northampton (where all the young college women shop) and bought a yellow babydoll dress which I plan to wear on Friday with brown leggings (it works okay-ish) just BECAUSE. I am 67 in 7 days. Thank you. Every word you write resonates in some place in me that needs a voice.
you know I love this.
I’m a man in his late 40s. I’ve been clean and sober five years & 363 days, Friday marks six years. I have often tried to explain why, seeing my own face in the mirror, sometimes makes me cry. The combination of drugs and alcohol I was addicted to for more than 20 years have wipedso many of my memories —so much of that life that I lived. so when I see myself, it’s a combination of grief, gratitude, and a whole range of other feelings. I am fortunate that my partner finds my gray hairs charming. That I cheated death is great… but no one actually cheats death, and somehow the person staring back at me knows this & is counting wrinkles, scars, friends dead, or the money lost— while the one looking just can’t believe it.
I understand this so much. Holding all that complexity right along with you.
The gratitude, grief and wonder is something so spectacular, subtle and ever more. I feel this whenever I take the time to really look deep into my own eyes in the mirror. Gobsmacked that I made it and so fucking sad for all the shit I put myself and others through.
I love you so much, and admire so much your ability to put into words what is real for many of us. You radiant being, you. xxoo
I love you too in a wild unfathomable unnamable way.
When your name shows up in my inbox I feel the deepest of reliefs, knowing I will be seen in a way I didn’t know I needed. And today was no different. We are about the same age. So, YES, thank you, deepest of thank you’s to all of it. But most especially This: “It’s what they represent, which is the time of my life before them when I chose different things; the parts when I was too busy being somewhere else surviving.”
What is the name for grieving the years when we had so much time left that *everything* could theoretically still be possible, even in the moments of darkest despair when nothing seemed or even was possible except trying to make it to the next morning? What do you call the grieving of the slow drip of “maybe someday’s” drying up into a desert of “never’s”?
Something about 2019-now has made these (for now) novel flavors of grief particularly potent. All I can think of in this moment is my beloved, now deceased, grandmother telling 20-something me: “inside everyone my age is someone your age wondering how the fuck they got here.”
Your grandma! So spot on. Addie <3
This depresses me mightily. 😢
How so?
Oh my god. You described my 46 year old grief so perfectly. It seemed to appear out of nowhere after the pandemic. This weird sadness. I went hard in Addiction and then hard in recovery and now I’m like in a daze sometimes wondering what happened and feeling this deep grief and sometimes I have no idea what happened this past decade. I find myself longing for paths not taken at times. Thank you for writing this 💗
Hey, I’m 75! Aging hits hard, especially for women, but I sure don’t want to be an old drunk. Yes sad that I wasted valuable time ditzing around, not even realizing I was supposed to be getting a life, but I did the best I could at the time.
It does hit hard indeed. And I like the alternative we found, due only to the actual aging that happened. Ily
Yes to all of this. I am 46 years old and just off the heels of spending three days At Bravocon, getting Covid from the Seattle to NYC, back to Seattle travel, and then watching 16 episodes of Love Island USA during my covid recovery. Note: There are 30 episodes but the legal limit should really be 16 plus the reunion special if you are of strong constitution. With all this said, I feel like i am now a voyeur into a life stage I’ve passed. I couldn’t believe the cute gal posses all dressed up with the intent to be out late and in THOSE shoes, no less! Then Id find myself chatting it up with some women who I thought were my peers, only to realize I have 20 years on them and learned to type on a typewriter, as they were born with the advent of the Blackberry. It’s daunting at times when I see myself in the mirror (especially after 15 episodes of LI USA) and go, Wow! Who’s that?! I was a girl and now I’m a lady. But sometimes when I have that “who is that?” moment in the mirror, I harken back to before the pandemic when that Aging app was going around. I remember taking a photo, uploading it to the app, (Which would later be revealed as a hacker database,) and and watching myself transformed into someone in their 70s. When I saw the picture, I actually smiled!! It was a grandma Nicole! She looked so peaceful and nice. Grandma Nicole definitely put on too much perfume, was not a cook, wore sequins to non sequins events, She talked too loud, too much, and too often. But she had sparkling eyes, looked content, and like she was done worrying about being judged by other people. I think I smiled because i know deep down, i was the least secure when i looked the most “capitalistically beautiful” and by the time this lady catches up to that one, I’ll be in an even better place with respect to NGAF. But also, this past year I think i spent $500 on anti aging products, which is only $300 more than my sequin spend Sooooo....baby steps?
For the first time in my life, yesterday I went to the store and did not buy the ingredients of a version of myself I imagine I am, the one that cooks, who I am not. I am somoene who wants to be a person who cooks, who buys things she doesn't use because she doesn't cook. I bought twenty frozen meals. I know that's not what you're saying, but in some way that's what I took from it. Maybe acceptance.
Yes and 100% yes. If its my turn to host something (and don’t get me started on how I loathe entertaining at my home) I now opt for brunch and just buy good pastries, pre cut fruit, pre sliced cheeses, and voila! Brunch! The only thing I “cook” comes out of my nespresso. Zero apologies. Some people make art(me) and some people buy art, some people write amazing books (you) and some people buy books, it needs to be the same for cooking... :)
Also- i like threads!
Yes!
1. I love the poem “Weathering,” by Fleur Adcock; approaching age 48, I aspire to embody its essence. 2. I just gave myself a bruise trying to win gua sha.
lol. thank you for the poem, and you cannot win gua sha.
Pretty sure if I just do it hard enough...
That’s such a great poem!!!
Yes! I remember it every few years or so...feels different and closer each time.
Oh boy! I’m 53, fit and strong, sober for 10 years. Somewhere, kinda recently, figured out the aged physical appearance things- wizzly neck, saggy boobs, menopause completed, are all things not just attributed to getting old but looking like my old mother. Who I’ve had a strained relationship with. The light bulb came on when I realized just bc I look like my aging mother doesn’t mean I’m “ like” my mother. I am sober, I did and continue to do the things that make me a better, happier person. At 83 she continues to drink in excess and feel sorry for herself. So thank you for a great read. It resonated!
That's a whole other level Nancy. Thanks for that insight.
I get this. It's not easy in this culture to get older. Umm...old. I am turning 70 in 2 weeks. Aren't I supposed to be thinking about dying soon? The impact, for me, has always greater at the "9's" : 29, 39, 49,....hell, you can count by 10's up to 69 without my help, I'm sure. And it isn't that I am digging in my heels, and I don't think for a moment that YOU are digging in your heels, either. But there is a sustained moment of reflection and realization that some things are lost. Please buy the next dress. I love you, sweetie, Pam
I knew you'd have something wonderful to say. I am going to buy all those fucking dresses. Happy almost 70. I love right back. Play us a song on your accordion.
You do know that I don't play the accordion? I play fiddle. But a friend sold it to me at a yard sale, and it was cheap, red, with buttons in the right key. After a couple of weekends I decided the bellows were not for me, and I would stick with fiddle. But I totally resonate with the accordion vibe.
In my mind that image of you with the accordion is forever seared and while you have a fiddle vibe you def have an accordion vibe
This this this all of this. The liminal second puberty into menopause, the gray eyelashes (!), the body that looks like a mom even though I never birthed a child. Older people insist I’m young, and I don’t care to know what the younger people think. Who am I now? Who was I then?
I sometimes wonder what difference I would feel about it all if I had had a baby; like I wonder for those of us who didn't if there's a missing trigger to move to a different level, at least emotionally. No idea. Just a thought.
I swear you somehow read my thoughts from afar & somehow put them into words that make sense. I’m a lot older than you but I’ve been having the same feelings about how did this happen. I’m old but I don’t know how I got here. Then I think why the hell did I waste so much time trying to be what I thought other people wanted when 1) I don’t really know what anyone wants & 2) I could have worried about what I want in this one fucking life I have. Hopefully I’ll live as long as my mother…she’s still alive, lol
There's a comment above about wasted but then last week, I wrote about how not a cent of it was a waste. All necessary, usable. When we're talking about earned wisdom, I wonder why it is we leave out the body.
Oh wow, that really gives me something to ponder...my body's earned wisdom.
A year ago I was hiking in the San Jacintos with four of my childhood friends. My very dark brown hair started going gray in my mid-20s and I stopped coloring my hair in 2015. My hair is mostly white now; I'm 45. As we hiked up the path, a woman who was older than we were, but maybe not too much older, made her way down the trail past us. I was the last in the column of our group, and as she passed me she said, "Oh, are those your girls?" she even wrinkled her nose a bit, raised her shoulders and gave a little "fun" shimmy as she said it, eager to join me in the supremely joyful conspiracy of having such great relationships with our adult daughters - and, by her assessment of my situation, FOUR of them. I was too shocked in the moment to reply with anything smart, or to kindly highlight the depth and breadth of the assumptions she was making about me (and my friends). All I could say was, "No, we went to high school together."
To echo some other posters, I think that people just don't know *how* to age women - thus, a woman with gray hair must be Very Old (also, I think this is particularly pronounced in Southern California, where this happened). As Holly suggests, it's always wisest to skip saying anything about someone else's appearance, ever!
"I think that people just don't know *how* to age women." Entirely. <3
I too am addicted to Honey Mama's. When my friend and I crossed the border back into the United States after almost a year of living in Mexico, I suggested we pick some up at Whole Foods. "I overdosed on it last year," she said, and we kept driving.
It's ridiculous and it's so stupidly expensive and so so good. I have a little square with my coffee and it somehow makes getting out of bed survivable
This really spoke to me, so thank you.
I’m 58 and have always said things like “when I’m old I’ll…" or “when I’m in a relationship I’ll…”. Truly, all my life I’ve put off doing so many of the things I wanted to do, like buying Charmin instead of Kirkland brand toilet paper (🤣) until I woke up about a year ago and thought “what the fuck am I waiting for?” So last week me and the dog packed our things (I helped her) and we drove from Seattle to LA, stopping to see friends and say goodbye, and we boarded a plane for Costa Rica. We moved here a little over a week ago and I’m feeling like it was the best decision I could have made: to stop waiting until I was old enough to deserve a different life, to live a different life right now!
Thanks Holly, as always, for providing the space to reflect, engage, relate, and grow.
Pura vida.
H
Ohhhhhh! Look. At. You. It's not exactly like moving to CR but I did start surfing a few weeks ago and it's something I'd been putting off for a decade. I get it. So into this.