When you talk about growing older, what WORDS do you use?

BEFORE I learned better, here is what I heard from my parents, about growing old:
“It’s hell getting old!”

“Getting old is not for the weak!”

“I’m falling apart!”

When we had a big family gathering there was a settling on popular topics:

“Uff-dah, my _________ is aching”

“I went to see the doctor about __________.”

I was not set up for an optimistic viewpoint of what aging means. It was not something I was taught to look forward to, more something to dread. It is not something I questioned. I accepted it.

There was a BEFORE and AFTER that changed my mindset.

I lost a wonderful friend to glioblastoma (a complex, deadly brain cancer) when we were middle-aged. This was my AFTER.

It was hell to watch her suffer and it was beautiful to see what this meant to her. Her faith was never challenged or threatened. She lost her well-being and mobility and youth, but she gained an immense outpouring of love from the people in her life. Her co-workers sent her and her family on a trip to Mexico. She said she was “walking the walk” of having cancer and I was inspired by her attitude of acceptance. One step at a time. One foot following the other.

It was my first (best) example of radical empathy. The boss of all boss moves to completely accept what is. This was a shining example of living fully in a human body and loving it. She had empathy for herself. She made the most of it, despite the rude failures of her bodily functions and the pain. It was the best kind of tender self-care.

At almost every minute of experiencing life without her; a life of moving towards growing older, of measuring the milestones that she was missing … I changed my attitude about aging.

There was not one minute that she would’ve failed to treasure about growing old.

If I could honor her memory by treasuring what she had to miss, that was my honor. Even if it meant my knee ached. Because it also meant I got see my family grow, take walks with my dog, see the beauty of this earth, ride my horse, laugh with friends. Read. Sing. Dance. Love and be loved.

Everyday, as we grow older, we are facing the loss of people important to us, and the lessons we learn can inspire us to pick up a torch and lead the way into acknowledging the truth…

Growing old is a privilege.

It is a great luxury to grow old.

You only have to talk to someone facing a life-threatening illness to know this truth.

Yet we complain about growing old. I know, we are whistling in the dark, making light of something that is heavy. I get that. But I am a serious-minded person who embraces “the suck” because I was taught to do so by my friend who died too young. We can accept what is.

We don’t like to talk about (or even accept) that we will die.

And as we “walk the walk” towards our eventual end of our precious time on earth we can accelerate our potential before our time is up, or we can resist it. Resist what is. Complain about growing old.

Change is scary and we generally try to protect ourselves from experiencing change. Our brains believe change is a threat and will do anything to protect us from this harm. The fear makes us want to contract, keep safe, limit our options. Maybe menopause is a force of stepping in the right direction?

We are forced to experience menopause and reckon with it. In menopause, we return to the state of the hormones we had when we were pre-teens. We return to the self that we used to be before we experienced puberty, became fertile, maybe got pregnant, maybe gave birth. Before we were all that, we were ourself at our most simple.

This does not sound bad to me.

Menopause, the “Change of Life” as we used to call it (heh, and only if forced to call it anything at all) is asking us to accept what is.

Its a major re-set and return to ourselves that we experience as a threatening change. But if we accept what is, if we love how its a return to ourself, if we practice radical empathy and love living in our bodies, can we change how we talk about growing old?

I reckon so.

What if we learn to fall back in love with ourself? After *gestures wildly, all that we have been through we are returning to something simpler and lovely. Lovable.

And the road we walked to get here was not easy, we experienced loss, pain, illness. But it seems like walking the walk through pain helps us recognize others in pain that might need our help. We become softer and more empathetic than if we never went through hardship. There is a humility to growing older. It might be the superpower we gain. We look back and see how others helped us, we find things to be grateful for, and we find glimmers of joy and contentment.

When I talk about tender self-care, this is the ultimate expression I’m trying to practice. To accept what is, despite rude functional failures and pain. To walk the walk of aging and practice the radical empathy of love for ourselves and our fellow humans. To inspire confidence in myself and my friends and family about growing old.

Let’s fall in love with ourselves and explode our potential. And lift up everyone along with us.

Let’s say different things about growing old:

“I’m still here and I’m lucky as hell”

“I know better now what is important and I’m chasing it with all my might”

“I can look back on the life I’ve built and forgive myself my mistakes and treasure the sparkly moments”

“This is my second chance and I’m running with it”

Words matter.

Have you loved and lost someone yet? Did losing a loved one change your mind about growing old? Can you pay close attention and choose words that honor growing old instead of repeating words that bring you down? Do you have a BEFORE and AFTER that changed how you thought about life?