LOOK FORWARD, LOOKING BACK

The days ahead need not be such a mystery: In every ‘now’ decision, our future is being revealed.

___________________ 

Three sons. Each with a singular way of looking at the world.

At ten years old it was discovered the one ‘most-visual’ was tearing his favorite pages from my fitness magazines and secretly tucking them in his backpack for all his friends at school to see.

 Let me put your mind at ease. There was nothing smutty about the images, but there was a distinct theme—beautifully fit female bodies, dressed to varying degrees.

Upon discovering the ‘extra’ contents of his pack, my first inclination was to ensure, above all other outcomes, that my son felt absolutely no shame. There is nothing shameful about the human body, only how we view what we see.

In looking through the images, I recognized a part of myself—that is, the desire as a woman to live the best version of me.  

Without second thought, I realized the appreciation my son felt, was something I shared.

 “Look at these beautiful women!” I celebrated. “I know first-hand how hard they worked to get their bodies to look like that.” Then, I took the secret contents of my son’s admiration and displayed them on the front of our refrigerator for all of us to admire.

And…just like that, a moment that could have gone so differently, ushered in a motivating chapter in a family’s life.

During stretch class this past week I told this story. Amid the scattered laughter I could feel the tears welling in the corners of my eyes. Looking back to that consequential moment, I grieved how the women of a certain ‘senior status’ are depicted so opposite—so incapable, slow, bent, and frail.

With knees on the mat and toes curled, I reached one arm and then the other up, and back, imagining something curious as I strained to grasp my heals:

What if, instead of the admiration of youth, we placed a different vision in front of our children, in front of our adult selves—

That is, the extraordinary beauty of a body [in the best shape possible] that has lived many beautiful and hard stories through the years.

This is the woman I imagine magnetized to my refrigerator now—

She is reminder to women who come after that we only get one body, one life.

She holds her body as sacred in how she speaks, eats, moves, thrives.

She rejects the notion that beauty is something “put on”
but results from what is let inside.

I wonder, in this moment, what became of the women my son smuggled into his fifth-grade class.

Did they take their vitality along with them on their journey,

or take for granted their fitness, their beauty, their youth?

These young women. Hung on my refrigerator door.
Today, they would be in their late 50’s. Not too far behind where some of us are now.

Are they living as I have, with some measure of disappointment in myself—

That I failed to hold my body as sacred, failed at consistently prioritizing my health?

Vitality. A comprehensive, all-encompassing word.

My definition? To be less dependent on intervention and more dependent on oneself.

There is great comfort in knowing that there is very little left to fate or chance:

The days ahead need not be such a mystery: In every ‘now’ decision, our future is being revealed.

It’s so disheartening to see our medical establishment’s version of what it is to be “senior” played out on the screen.

The women in my life, who have lived a few decades more than some, are the ones I tuck inside my Life Backpack, the one that carries every pivotal life lesson, looking forward, looking back.

NOTES:

I have lived many lives through different seasons—

Some were focused on a fleeting beauty.

Then on the others [little ones] that I loved.

There was also a season of ignorance. Not meaning that I didn’t know.
But in the sense that I ignored certain signs that something wasn’t right.
It’s rarely some grand overture of decay that sounds the alarm.
More, it’s the subtle signs that the body is giving in.

That was me. Tired and very aware of it. Living with an insidious little pain
[here and there] all the time.

This is NOT the way we are to treat our bodies—ignoring, abusing, overusing—our Creator is clear on this.

Do you not know that your body is a temple? Do you not know something extraordinary lives with you there?

It is the Spirit of the holy, the Creator of every cell.

ON VITALITY—

The word itself is derived from vita or “life.” In the physical sense, vitality refers to feeling healthy, energetic, even capable.

I think most of us recognize the embodiment of the spiritual aspect when we are in the presence of someone who is “light.”

You know who they are. And when they’re near, they give you energy, so opposite of those who take…and take.

ABOUT THE IMAGES

 [ABOVE] This rare image. Me with my fifth grandson, Grayson. I have unusual permission from his parents to share the two of us here. I love the candid nature of it, the unfussy, un-magazine-cover way that I look. The point here is, entirely, you are as young as you feel.

I think all of us who are grandparents agree, these babies have a way of making us feel youthful, vital, purposeful in [perhaps] ways we’ve never felt. This is the great mystery of the circle of life. And I’m still leaning all the way in and listening to what it has to teach.

[BELOW] I can’t bring myself to call these gorgeous women “seniors” but I can say that for at least fifty-five years and counting, they have put us all to shame. Each woman pictured, in one way or another, has profoundly impacted my life. Some for a season. Some through the best and hardest years of my life.

If you’re wondering where your beautiful face is, so am I! If I missed you it means I couldn’t access a recent picture or I believe you are not yet fifty-five. Please send your image and I’ll add it to the collection!

Blessed by you. Inspired by you. Love you.  
P.S. I had to add my mama, Jacqueline, my French maman, Nicole, and Ron’s mom, Robbi to this mix of women who are fabulous to their core.