What do you see in the mirror at midlife compared to decades gone by?
Can you take pride in your enhanced sense of style, or is your sense of style far from enhanced?
Have you created a more toned body or less?
Are you a woman living with more wealth or struggling more to pay the bills?
Do you hold more happiness or sadness?
Do you live closer to the cutting edge of culture or further away?
Are you bolder or more worried about what you should do?
At midlife you could be here or there.
But what you can’t be is less wise.
You can’t have had fewer experiences. Your body can’t hold fewer memories.
And for this reason you cannot be the woman you were in your 20s or 30s.
She’s gone.
You can’t catch her or reinvent her or try to be like her.
Because you’re wiser, innately wiser than she ever was.
And sometimes we need reminding.
When I look in the mirror, I remind myself.
I look at my hair, the wisps of change, the silver among the dark brown.
And I’m reminded that I’m not who I was.
There must be a reason for the grey. It must be a sign – for me, for others.
I will not hide it.
I will not pretend that I can step back.
I will not paint over my memories.
I will not try to become what I've already been.
I’m at midlife.
I’m on a journey.
I’m a woman walking forward.
Wiser. Like you.
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