Monday, September 25, 2017

COUNTDOWN TO 50 - The Start of the Countdown and Remembering 30

One week from today I will be turning 50 and will no longer be a 40-something anything. Many things have changed for me this year, not the least of which being the length of my hair - but I will always be a Breck Girl (have no fear, there will be more on that subject this week).
I will start the final countdown with what I wrote for my 30th birthday. I wrote it the night Princess Diana died, caught in a particularly reflective mood thinking about her age and her young children. My oldest daughter was only 3 at the time, and any new mother can tell you all the awful things you find yourself thinking about with the first child. My relationship with her father ended within a year, so that time in general was particularly stressful. I was beginning to learn what I wanted, by learning first what I didn’t want.


So here it is, what I was only just beginning to see and still not able to put into full practice (Baby steps; I’ve come a long way since then, and better at living the ideals I started writing about):


"We Are...Women"

We are children. We are mothers. We are the same, just like you;
But we are unique in so many different ways.
We are not as young as some outside influences say we should want to be ideally, yet we are not so old as to be cast aside and forgotten --as no one at any age should be.
We are old enough to know that which we did not know before, and young enough to realize all that we still have to learn.
We are old enough to know our own shortcomings, and mature enough to take responsibility for them--as well as actions against them,
We are young enough to still make foolish mistakes, and mature enough to be able to laugh at them and our own selves.
We have learned where true beauty lies--And where lasting beauty lives.
We have learned, and are still learning, a truer appreciation and respect for ourselves and our needs, as well as for those around us.
We have reached a point in our lives where we can see the differences between our girlish dreams and aspirations and our adult choices and goals. Although we may mourn the loss of that childish innocence in our hopes for our own futures, we are learning to reconcile the reality of our actual daily lives with what we once wished our lives to be, and at the same time, we are re-learning and re-cultivating a new, child-like enthusiasm in the happy knowledge that our lives are becoming much richer and truer than what they were before, and, as we grow, that pattern will continue.
We know now that we can leave our marks on our corners of the world, and we know how to go about it.
We know now that the older we are, the better we are through our own life experiences,
however painful some may have been.   We are even grateful for those painful events, for through them we've learned our own private strengths, which have given us an added confidence and sense of security in the fact that we are now better armed against future life trials.
With the truths we've learned from our lives up to this point, we are able to stand proudly and face the world, secure in our new strengths, our newer self-confidences, and know that our lives are just beginning---
And we are ready.
We are women.  We are over thirty --
And you can't touch us.

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