Aging

Woke up and stared at yourself in the mirror suddenly realizing the wrinkles around your eyes and mouth?  Breasts sagging, stretch mark becoming more visible, tummy flabbier (despite desperate sit-ups), loose skin around the neck and alarming growth of grey hair?  These aging signs are unavoidable and causes certain amount of anxiety among most women.

Thank goodness for all the creams that promise youth; night cream, eye cream, neck cream, exfoliating scrub and with any imaginable ingredients; gold, pearl, AHA, seaweed, sugar and even placenta (recalled reading about it).  We sign up for gym and huff and puff our way through classes (which by the way is no longer called aerobics, they are now Body Pump, Body Combat etc).  We may even go for a wardrobe make-over, squeezing ourselves into clothes that we think will make us look younger (this explains why many mothers and their teenage daughters wear outfits that look alike).  

We struggle with the new technology trying to catch up with internet; blackberry, iphone, twitter and  facebook.  We need a dictionary to understand the latest acronym; lol (laugh out loud), omw (on my way), omg (oh my god) etc.  We go clubbing (not disco) to appear young even though we don't recognize any of the songs played.

Despite self-deprecating, I welcome the experiences life has taught me.  Most of us are more at ease with ourselves than we were in our 20's.  We are more secure about who we are.  We know what we want in life and are more confident to demand from life.  We have learned that we can't love others unless we first learn to love ourselves and we can't treat others right if we don't first take care of ourselves.  We realize we can't please everyone and has cut-off toxic people from our lives.

Our inner selves are more beautiful.  This is what aging gracefully is all about.