Embracing Aging

On the outside, I’m 55. Grey hair (dyed purple and blue), skin that’s beginning to wrinkle around my eyes and lips, a few more moans and grunts as I go through my day, and eyesight that has faded to the point that I need glasses. But inside, I’m 22 and full of life and energy. I have new ideas and goals each day. I’m just getting started in my mind, but my body is beginning to lag. That’s how I know I’m aging. Correction, that’s how I know my body is aging. My mind seems to grow more youthful and curious as time passes.

I had spent most of my life caring for others. At age 19, I had my first child and married, and three more children followed swiftly behind. Homeschooling, housekeeping, church gatherings, family holidays, parties, birthdays, moves, new friendships, new hellos and old goodbyes, life… Decade after decade flew by in a flurry of events and occurrences that were mainly about others, and my needs and desires were pushed to the side, placed on the back burner until life decided to give me a break.

My story is common

Change, endings, and goodbyes are never easy. Divorce. I was losing my church home. My children are moving out. My parents passed away. Every event was a painful wound, leading me closer and closer to freedom. I didn’t know. I couldn’t see. But once I got through the tears and stood fully in my new normal, I realized that I had nothing to hold me back from those dreams I had so willingly pushed away in the past. There were no longer any obstacles that would keep me in a place I no longer wanted to be. But I was still too scared to move out into the world alone. I had never been alone.

Can you relate?

When I was 49, my youngest had a crisis and needed her mom’s support. So I sold my car, bought a one-way ticket to Phoenix from Portland, and flew to be by her side. I created a temporary life for myself in Arizona while I helped my daughter through a rough patch. Once she had worked her issues out and was ready to do life on her own again, I realized that I didn’t want to return to Oregon and my world back home. I wanted more.

Have you been at this crossroads?

I had proven to myself in Arizona that I could recreate a life anywhere I wanted. So why not do that again? I started with a lifelong bucket list dream of living in a commune. I went online, found a website devoted to intentional communal living, and searched through the communities, looking for the right one for me. What a scary time that was! I was chasing a dream and moving across the country alone.

Do you have a dream tucked away in your mind?

Why shouldn’t I be embracing the freedom I was experiencing with my four children growing up and starting their own lives? They were finding partners, starting careers, and having babies. Their focus was becoming more on themselves and less on me, as it should be!

After decades of putting all of myself into my marriage, four children, and household, I was ready to start putting my energies into myself. I began to follow my heart, chase my goals, and create an exciting and fulfilling life for me and me alone. This was foreign territory for me, but the feeling of freedom was intoxicating, and I flew from my cage with delight. I was free! I was alone! I was untethered!

Do you ever feel caged or that you’re living someone else’s dreams?

After a season of living in the Eco Village (commune) in southern Indiana, I flew home for my oldest son’s wedding. I spent a year at home creating another temporary life until I decided living on Kauai might be fun. I put an ad on Craigslist spelling out all my qualifications and wanted a work trade position for a home and job. Three days later, I was contacted by a woman who needed a caregiver for her son. I flew to Kauai a few weeks later to create a new life again.

Since then, I have lived in Arizona a couple more times, Nevada, and even a couple of months in the US Virgin Islands before COVID-19 hit and ended that adventure.

2020 gave us all a chance to reflect on our lives and to decide if they were actually what we wanted. Some of us found that we were living to please others. Some learned that they had unique talents and gifts that they now wanted to share. Old careers died, and new opportunities presented themselves. A new ache entered the hearts of so many, calling them to new adventures. Many of us decided we wanted more for ourselves.

Did your heart reveal new desires to you over the last few years?

There’s freedom in aging. There’s an abundance of unfulfilled dreams and desires stored up in each of us, and when life starts releasing us from the responsibilities of our younger selves, we can choose to get lonely and sad, or we can embrace the lack of structure and fly.

Some fear and fight against aging or “growing old”, but I say, embrace it! As the chains of life start to fall away, we can choose to feel the weight being lifted from our shoulders as a blessing. As a release!

We are older now, and we’ve experienced so much. We can now share our hard-earned wisdom with those coming after us and more freely follow our hearts to our new normal. A normal that embraces who we are now, what is most important to us, includes our heart’s desires, and is fueled by our newfound passions.

Embracing aging is healing, fulfilling, exciting, scary, and often confusing to those around us. Still, it’s our journey, and we are not obligated to make sense or make others comfortable.

This is your chapter. You alone are the author. What will you write? Only you can know. Your story doesn’t have to be as extreme as mine has been. Its only requirement is that it brings you joy.

I have spent the last three years as a dog nanny and personal assistant to an executive who lives in Portland. It was an easy job that kept me close to my grandkids and two of my children. I have still been following my heart and creating a life that is pleasing to me. This chapter has just been closer to home.

But I have a new dream that’s birthing at this very moment. I’m embarking on it now. I’m changing jobs and moving again. I’m too young for stagnancy and old to be doing anything that doesn’t bring me the energy and emotions I need. I am finally free to experience life on my terms, and I’m taking full advantage of the stage of life I’m in. I will keep going until I can’t, and then I’ll sit in my rocking chair, smoking my weed and telling stories of my adventures. I have embraced my age and used my freedom wisely so that one day, I can rest in the knowledge that I spent my days as I wished and ran my body as long as possible.