I have been on the road lately, grateful to have enjoyed the sea in southern France, the vineyards outside Lausanne Switzerland and the sun and mountains of Spain- yes I am spoiled!
Today I am in London- it is cold, windy and rainy, a very different experience than the previous weeks but some things have not changed.
Here in blustery London as in those warmer climes I find myself observing an amazing diversity of women 50+
Each city, town and village has offered me an amazing range of characters.
Women past the celebration of their 50th birthday are: short and tall, skinny and wide, working and retired, re careering and minding grandchildren, divorcing, marrying, and loving in place.
I am struck by the wonder of this variety. Those who would market to us often tend to paint us into a limited number of gray aged types but the fact is we are all types.
We are, still at this “certain age” and I mean anywhere from 50 – 105, doing whatever we are moved to do. I believe that the mature woman of today has evolved outside the molds of the aged woman which have existed for generations. The fateful stereotypes did await us but we have found freedom outside the norm for our age. In so doing we are beginning to truly inhabit this time.
We are showing up for life 50+ in a way that our grandmothers did not. In fairness to grandma, her life span was not so long and her ancestors even her peers did not offer role models for vibrant aging. Given these circumstances it is unlikely that many of our grandmothers were able to imagine an attractive or energizing horizon before them as they turned 50.
Today we need only look around to see our peers trying on and conquering the world. Even on the pages and screens of our media, elegant, vibrant and capable women are beginning to take center stage for the astonishing 50+ lives they are leading. Far from feeling reduced by our years we have grasped the freedom and we are living this time as an intriguing new stage of human development.

I am not oblivious to the physical changes which may happen. I see the lives of some of my friends drastically altered by cancers and diseases of age but I do not see them stop, not permanently. They bend to the physical changes and alter their step as required and they move on. Bridget Bardot is quoted as saying that the secret to a contented old age is “to walk like it does not hurt”.

The term “Coming of Age” has taken on a whole new meaning as we play in life free of the battered self esteem and co dependent worries of youth. They say as you get older you are more vulnerable, perhaps physically this is true but emotionally and intellectually it seems the opposite is true. When you have lived long enough and seen enough, risk is not such a big word. Dare is not such a scary word. Trying and reaching and doing what our heart moves us to do becomes the way of life.

Are we living now like there is no tomorrow- that sounds a bit too reckless, maybe we are just living like we know there will not be as much of it? A good awareness for these years which turns our attention to what is before us today, this day, to do and to be.
Be well in whatever life offers you today.