When I turned 40, I had a celebration with my girlfriends. There were no gifts allowed, but a girlfriend gave me a gift in what she wrote in a birthday card. She wrote:
“Remember when you were 30 and looked back on the photos of yourself when you were 20, and thought – wow, I looked great. You will be thinking the same thing when you’re 50 looking back at yourself now.”
At first at thought … “Gee, thanks for the reminder of how much I am aging!” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was actually a lovely thing to say. And so very, very true. Because when I was in my 20s, I didn’t like the way I looked. Same for my 30s.
And now in my 40s? No, I still don’t love the way my body looks. But I have come to appreciate it and be so very grateful for its relative perfect health. Because that’s what it’s all about: relativity. Perspective.
In fact, I use perspective all the time to slap myself out of negative mental spirals. For instance, when my babies were young and up in the middle of the night and I was so tired that nausea was kicking in, I would hold them in my arms and feel grateful that all they had was a dirty diaper, or a stuffy nose, or even a bad fever. Because my dear friend had lost her dear baby due to serious illness at 8 months old. See? Perspective, right.
All this to say, that I thought this video clip was really worth sharing. It is a visual rendering of the words my girlfriend shared with me about aging. I’d love to know what you think about it this video too.
It’s called “Love. Your. Body. Now.” The photos are of a woman named Shannon Bradley-Colleary, who writes for a number of online publications including her own blog A Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.
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