If you have ever had a baby, I’m sure you had the thought, “Why didn’t anyone tell me what it would be like?” It felt like there were all these secrets that no one ever passed down, maybe because they were too gross and telling the truth about childbirth wasn’t going to make it hurt less, right?
Fast forward to today, a time when I can’t even remember what childbirth was like and don’t feel the need to refresh my memory. Now, I have all kinds of new secrets for those young women who still have so much of their lives ahead. I’m sure they don’t want to know these!
- Age Spots Everywhere: I was sitting at the pool, in the shade mind you, with my daughter-in-law one day and looked at her legs, then looked at my legs, then back at hers, etc. They were gorgeous! I thought to myself, “I wonder if she thinks all of those spots on my legs have always been there? Actually, I would like to know what any of my kids think I looked like thirty years ago. And, it’s not just the spots, it’s the whole looseness of the skin and tissue beneath. Her legs were just, well, the only word I can think to use is admirable! I guess my legs looked like that at one time but I certainly don’t have any memory of it.
- Breast Elevation: This is not about just the sagging, loosely constructed breasts of a sixty-something-year-old, but about the actual line of demarcation. I bought a sports bra at Lululemon about a year ago, without trying it on: I was traveling and forgot my sports bra, and had a lot of sports to do (not really). When I got back to my room and put it on, it was, as best I can explain it, high. It just started to high. So I lifted my right breast with all my might and got it in place, then did the same to my left. That was an education for me. My sagging skin isn’t just the breasts themselves, but starts at the shoulders, thus making the actual bottom of the breast begin closer to the waist. So, this young person bra actually isn’t “deep” enough for these bad boys. Since I figured this out I force myself to wear the bra as often as possible as proof that mine aren’t lower, but by the time I get home I can wait to rip it off.
- Gray or Drooping, It’s Your Call: I am going to describe this as delicately as I can, but heed my warning, don’t try this at home. A few years back I decided to try a Brazilian Wax. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I did it. To say it is painful is an understatement, so I don’t know why, but I continued to do it. The only problem was this: the waxing gave me a bird’s eye view of my vagina and it too had begun to sag. A saggy vagina! No one ever mentioned that. So, I guess it is still the same distance from the breast elevation as discussed previously, but you have got to be kidding me. We can’t catch a break! I thought maybe it would be better not to see it, but guess what, now the hair is gray. So I either have a saggy, naked vag or a gray hairy one, right? Oh no, it gets worse. I had a tummy tuck a few years back and now my naked vagina is, again, no other way to describe this, tall. I have a tall, naked vagina to go with my “below the equator” breasts and spotted legs. Lovely!
- Bye-Bye Chin: Young ladies, have fun allowing anyone to photograph your profile because that will end in just a few short years. Whether it’s your face or your body, it won’t be long before you will learn that from the tip of your chin to your collarbone is now a straight line. And, for me, from my breasts to my bottom is all kind of lined up as well. It’s kind of like the Mucinex Monster on commercials: it just all runs together. When I see a camera now, I stand tall facing it directly.
- Growths: Finally, let’s talk about growths: any kinds of growths that just pop up on your skin. There are skin tags (super pretty and super pretty sounding, as well). There are sunspots, and some of those have some real texture to them. There are those red blood-looking spots like my Grannie used to have. I have some that are combination sunspots and skin tags (I think I should get extra points for those). And, I have some spots that the Dermatologist freezes off once a year but then I just have “freezer burn.”
I hope you are reading this with the humor that is intended. If we didn’t laugh at ourselves we might cry! And, let’s allow the younger women to go on thinking it won’t happen to them. Why ruin their day?
Read MoreI was having a cocktail with my friend Bart after returning from the holidays, and we were just rehashing our past couple of weeks and talking about what we each have to come in the months ahead. As we were clinking our glasses to the new year, I said, “You saved my life last year.” I meant it. I know it sounds dramatic, but he really had saved my life: he was the person who swept me up when I was a puddle on the floor. If you have been through a divorce you know what I am talking about. Or if you have been through any life-altering tragedy, you know.
He was the friend who dropped everything when I called sobbing and listened while I droned on and on about the daily issues I was facing as my 30-year marriage was collapsing around me. He was also the friend who told me I was wrong when I was wrong (which did not even happen one time, I must say).
Then I started thinking about other friends who, whether they knew it or not, had been a bridge for me to cross from one day to the next day when I wasn’t sure I would make it. It may sound dramatic, but if you have been there, you know. Each and every one was my lifesaver on one or more days. Whether it was a friend who told me he was proud of me or a couple who invited me over for Tuesday dinner, those have been as important to my forward motion as attorneys and accountants.
So my charge to anyone reading this is to remember to be a friend. That’s it, just be a good friend. Easy right? You never know what’s going on behind the scenes in someone’s life.
Read MoreI have been writing to you for a few years now, about how it felt to
I told you a few weeks ago that my friend Brent called me out about the fact that I was still living my life as a woman who had been married for more than thirty years and had to start over. I believe his exact words were, “Boo Hoo. Then what.”
He was so right. I have been “preaching” to you about how great being single is, while not believing it myself. Well, that’s not quite true. I believed it, but only in the context of how I am since the divorce. Everything I have been writing to you is about my life as a single woman over sixty who finished in second place. Who didn’t get it right. Who is not living her dream. All of that is the cloud from which I have been writing to you.
Living with that unconscious framework around my life I now know, is weighing me down. So, it is weighing my writing down.
No More!
I think I have had in the back of my mind that things were somehow better in my old life, that I wish I still had it. And, nothing could be further from the truth, intellectually speaking. Emotionally, I have to challenge myself to know it, live it and shed the self-imposed weight of my past and really, really believe it. I need to believe that my life is better now than it was then because it is! I am a truly happy single woman.
Now, it may take me a while to catch up with my new liberated self, but catch up I will. What I want to say to you is that I am sorry: I was writing about all the power you should have while I wasn’t believing it. I thought I believed it, but I was
I Believe it Now
I have crossed a giant moat with this new realization and I want you to do the same. Whether your past is weighing you down or your current situation is not what you want it to be, shed that weight and you will breathe easier in a way you may have never breathed before.
I Love My Single Life
I love my single life, do you? Do you love your life or are you just telling yourself and everyone around you that you do? Dig deep to figure out how you really feel. Until you do you will never be fully happy.
Read MoreRepost from November 2015
Everything in my life is in upheaval. It is not all bad, but it is true. My thirty-year marriage is ending, I hope sooner rather than later. I have sold one business and will sign the papers this week for the sale of the second one. I am looking at a freedom that I have never had in my life
I was with a newish friend last week for dinner and we were just chatting and he said to me, “And?” I didn’t know what he meant. I wish I could remember what our exact conversation was, but I can’t. I looked at him and he said it again, “And?” It was all about how I needed to lose the frame of my story.
He said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I keep hearing about how you got to this point (meaning the end of my marriage, how I got my footing back, etc.), but then what? I don’t want to hear you start with that anymore. I’ve heard it.”
That was it. He didn’t hurt my feelings at all. I just didn’t realize that I always lead with my divorce. I don’t know if it’s because I write about it so much or if it’s because it kind of frames where I am and why I’m here, but I do tell my story an awful lot. Am I telling that story over and over again to pat myself on the back? To say, “Look what I did, I left a man with big money and a big house and big fancy cars and I am so brave and noble.” Maybe. Maybe I think I had status then and now I do not. Maybe.
And, that is my own soul searching moment right there. I didn’t even know I felt that way. Do I think I am better than the life I am leading now? I hope not, but I might and that is a hard pill to swallow. It is eye opening for me. I may still have a hangup about being divorced. Maybe I am marginalizing myself and if that’s the case, I can’t move forward.
Let me say that my friend had no idea what a firestorm he was igniting in my brain when he said that but I have thought of nothing else since. I have framed this chapter of my life with who I was, and that makes me mad at myself. I don’t want to give any power to that bad marriage and bad man, and by basing my current and future existence on it, I have done just that.
That stops now! Really, that stops now. It has actually taken an enormous burden off my shoulders. I no longer have to carry that big fat “boohoo for me” weight around my neck. Done. From now on my story starts after my marriage.
I know I’m not the only one who frames her life now with her previous life. Check yourself. Are you guilty of this as well? If so, only you can make that change. Only you can re-write your story. It won’t be easy but it will be worth it.
Read MoreGoodbye Marriage, Hello New Adventure
Original Post: November 2015
After thirty years of marriage, I find myself coming to the end of holy matrimony. I have to say, on one hand, I would have never thought this could happen to me in a million years and on the other hand… I knew at the wedding that something was off. Now it is goodbye marriage, hello new adventure.
My soon to be former husband (SBFH) wanted the house. After all, it sits on his prized golf course like a great big penis: as long as he has that house he is the man. So, I found an apartment, moved out one weekday and here I am in a one-room loft with my dog. I have been here for three months and I love it. I feel content and safe and at ease, without the stomach ache I had every day for the last, oh I don’t know, 15 years. I feel good in my own skin. And the longer I am in my new life, the more excited I get about my future.
I would love it if you would stick with me in this chapter of my life: it is going to be a blast!
Paula
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