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It’s amazing how this little thing called aging can make me feel so insecure about my lovability.

How much of a role my looks play in my belief that I will be able to meet a man and fall in love and start a relationship.

It’s crazy to me how much I have aged in one year.

That a year ago, I was a catch, but now…I’m middle-aged.

I think of myself as an interesting, unusual person with many gifts and talents to bring into any relationship, friend or romantic, or otherwise. Is it really true that many viable men will now overlook me because I have age spots on my hands and some wrinkles on my neck? The sad fact is, probably.

But the truth is, it’s always been something with me. I’ve never been a traditional beauty, too round for my dance community, too outspoken for my bosses, too emotional for my spiritual teachers. I just didn’t fit the model.

I was recently declined entrance to a graduate program I had been applying for. They said I wouldn’t fit in. They said it was because I asked too many questions. In my mind, I asked questions because something didn’t feel right in the way they talked about the emotional safety they were providing, and I wanted to find out more before committing—and because I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t do well-being scrutinized under a spotlight by small-minded people.

Well, they were right. I don’t fit.

The one thing that surely is different about me now than whenever else I was operating in my perceived physically unconventional flaws of beauty, is that I know myself well enough not to care what others think I should look like, or feel, or act like to be considered lovable, beautiful…or feminine. The one thing that’s different now is I’m in my “f*ck it” 50s.

So, F*ck It.

I’m reinventing beauty—
what it means to be a beautiful woman.

I’m not just reinventing what it is to be a woman, I’m reinventing what it is to be feminine.

Just because I’m bold and can ask intelligent questions doesn’t make me butch, or over-masculine.

It just makes me smart.

Just because I have curves and some wrinkles, doesn’t make me not beautiful.

My beauty is shining from the inside out.

Radiant.

We are not used to seeing the unleashed and convention-free, untamed female. We don’t even know what she looks like well enough yet, to put her into a category. She doesn’t even just fit in the stereotype “wild.” There is no category for her yet.

There is no category for me.

So in my “f*ck it” 50s, I’m just going to claim who I am.

I am not one thing.

First and foremost, I am not one thing.

I am soft, and yielding, steadfast and curious, questioning and strong.

I am interesting, delicate, and joyful. I am deep, powerful, and sorrowful. I am playful, giddy, lost, and loving. I love all of humanity with such a passion, sometimes it hurts. But most of the time, I cannot understand or handle most humans, and I struggle with these two parts.

I like my body. I like it most when I’m naked, by myself, or lying next to someone I love. I like the curves and shapes and softness. For fashion reasons, I have always wished I was skinnier—I love clothes, and I love clothes on skinnier people. But when I’m not thinking of any external standards, I like being inside of my own skin. And I like being touched and appreciated by a man who loves me.

It’s the in-between moments that scare me. In-between love. I’m too weird for a man to find me attractive. That’s the fear. But it’s just another thought, really. And when I’m not thinking of external barometers, I do love myself.

F*ck It. I actually love myself.

And all of that…that sure, unsure, self-possessed, scared, vulnerable, strong, lost, longing, loving, curious woman,
that’s beauty.
That’s beauty.
So, f*ck it. I’m beautiful.
All of me.

~