Milestone

My friend Jules had been dreading a certain event with a little fear and apprehension. She captured it as best she could in words. She needed to express this for herself and for others, and so, I offered this blog as a safe haven of sorts. Please read and enjoy Jules very first post below. We hope she will continue to contribute here along with Hennessy and me.
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I turned 50 years old this past spring. It was something I had thought about for years - – the reality of actually being a half a century in age. It was not something I was looking forward to. I saw the age of 50 as an end to whatever “youth” was still left in me, as if it was the truly “over the hill” mark. I would no longer be looked at the same way, valued the same way, as if outside forces in my life were all the mattered – what others thought. I felt a certain amount of “stigma” attached to being a 50-year-old woman. For a good five years, I didn’t like saying my age either – I’m 45, 46…” But telling someone I was 49, well, I might as well have said I was already 50. I spent the winter months before my birthday (I am not a winter person anyway) pondering this inevitable birthday with total dread.

There was no awakening to the acceptance of being 50. It just came. In retrospect, my biggest critic about this age thing was no one other than myself. I bought into the idea of 50 being something negative, and it was me who attached that label of “over the hill” and “end of youth” to who I am. The Buddha quote, “You are what you think, and with your thoughts you make the world” made a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe turning 50 is something honorable - even if this world is obsessed with youth and being superficial.

I found it was far worse to think about turning 50 than being 50. I had friends who did kind things for my birthday – gave me interesting and unique gifts – friends who treated me to lunch, family who gave me not one but two birthday parties. I quite honestly think that my 50th birthday was possibly one of the nicest, if not the nicest birthday in my memory. It was because others went out of their way to make me feel special. And I did. All 50 years of me.

The actress Jamie Lee Curtis turned 50 last fall, about 5 months before I did. She has, in the past year, embraced who she is, not ashamed to pose on the cover of a magazine in her underwear showing her middle-aged body (she still looked pretty good to me though) with no makeup. She’s okay with her age. Yes, she looks older than she once did but somehow she emits a vitality that to me is far more attractive than being a physically youthful 20 something. I quote her thoughts about aging, “Aging is God’s way of telling me there is no time to waste.” She views life now as a time to shed bad behavior, work on the good, to continue to grow and be happy in who you are. She’s right. In the past year, I’ve worked to drop a few pounds, embark on a walking program for health benefits as well as a time to clear my head of all the crap this world throws at me that I often can’t do a thing about. I like the idea of “shedding” the negatives – the thoughts, the bad habits, a few pounds, and work on making what I can’t change things I move away from, or learn to accept.

“Forty is the old age of youth. Fifty is the youth of old age.”
~Victor Hugo