Letting Go & Such

In this year’s month of March, we celebrated youth day here in Zambia and with the rest of the world we celebrated International Women’s Day on the 8th of March. These two days had me thinking about being a woman, a woman that is growing older by the day, as I should. 

The older I grow the more I get confident that the younger me had it all wrong. Not that she was wrong, no she was amazing in many ways, but she had a lot of wrong ideas about life and living. You know that young energetic energy that young people have, and they put their whole heart into something that might not even be for them? I do believe in making your own mistakes and I don’t think I would have told my younger self to do anything different, but I do enjoy this feeling of having more of my shit together. More or less, I really enjoy getting older!  I am turning 40 this year.

Some would say that is still very young, some would consider me on the first step to pension. I am starting to believe that 40 really is the new 20 but with a lot more experience, and hence, wisdom. The mistakes I have made through my twenties and thirties have given me confidence in being able to make them, the mistakes, but also that I can recover from them. I care less about what other people think about me, both about me as a person and the things I do. I get less angry. The younger me had way more energy and passion, but she was also a lot angrier. Sometimes being angry can have a healing effect but it can also be completely draining.

Age has calmed me down, making me respond to situations rather than reacting. I reflect more and hence take more time to make decisions. In the end that makes more nuanced life choices, and also less anxiety around the ups and downs on living life.      I grew up in a social climate where being young was the thing. I grew up in the 90ies and early 00s in Europe. The standard was to be young, stay young, look young. Aging was ugly. Female actors get roles any longer, models didn’t get gigs when they grew older. As a woman, yes particularly as a woman, you were supposed to stay the same age, or at least look the same age. I am now happy to see that this is changing. I can see that the women in my generation, and the ones ahead of us, are breaking barriers and continue to work, act, model and just stick around in the public view much longer. 

More and more women are getting out there saying that aging is a blessing, natural and beautiful, not something that should be carved out by plastic surgeons or made disappear with anti-aging creams.  And I am not to say that we should not take care of ourselves the way we want to. Go do that surgery or use those creams if that is your thing, but I am happy to see that there is another version of growing older being showed in the media now.

One where wrinkles and aging women are in focus, both respected and admired. Letting go of the idea of youth being the only version of womanhood is freeing. I want my kids to have that. I want them to feel that they are relevant and important their entire lives, that they are listened to, respected, and loved for whom they are as people, not for the idea of being young and pretty. I also believe that I can help them here. I can be a role model in the way I age, the way I chose to live. It is a big part of my parenting, to show them how I really am as a woman, not just an idea of how a woman should be.   So, are we still obsessed with youth in this day and time? Are we still glorifying the “no-wrinkles and looking like 20” look? I want to believe we are in the process of letting it go and welcome a more diverse look on ageing, a more diverse look at life and living too. Being young is amazing and fun, but growing old is also all those things, plus a little bit more wisdom. Let us try it!