Insult to injury

Add insult to injury.
My hair is gray. AND thinning!!!

And to pile on to my grievances, I am losing weight but most of it appears to be coming from my face and breasts.

Yikes. I'm having a difficult time feeling like the hot-mama I used to be or to trick myself into believing I still am.

Hell, the wheelchair definitely doesn't help.

On a recent bar-hopping excursion (when we crashed our friend's anniversary celebration), we went to several establishments I frequented in my younger and wilder hot-mama days. It was a night of dichotomys. The me that I was would have never looked twice at the me that I am. But I so wanted to jump out of my skin and chair and celebrate like I used to. Okay, maybe not exactly like I used to (I am after all 50 something and the mother of three adult children), but just for a moment and without any recriminating video proof!!

But now I'm getting over myself as I realize nearly every woman over 50 probably feels something akin to what am feeling. Mine is just exacerbated by the wheelchair. We feel loss - a loss of visibility in a way. Loss of sex appeal. Loss of an identity in a way - while my confidence in who I am has increased, my confidence in my appeal has diminished. And most days it's not a big deal, but that night I felt the loss acutely.

But then I woke up the next morning to John bringing me coffee and a day full of life 'outside my head'. Pity party was over.

But the insult is that aging isn't always pretty.

BUT, I am.

Wheelchair, thinning gray hair or extra 20 pounds or not. I am pretty.

Comments

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

When an ass is so much more

Body image. Body positivity. Or about coming to an appreciation for a previously much maligned back end. In junior high (that's middle school for all of you non boomers), I was given the nickname "big butt Bowen". It was a nickname that stung because I did indeed have a large ass. I tried to mask it, a difficult endeavor since the current fashion (and remember this is junior high when fitting in was paramount) was wearing hip hugger jeans with midriff tops and my disguise of choice were peasant blouses or dresses. That style choice earned an additional nickname, Mama Cass. For those of you that don't know who Mama Cass was, she was part of the Mamas and Papas and known for her beautiful voice but also for her large body. All about Mama Cass I was cruelly nicknamed at a time when nicknames can really mess with a girl's psyche. And I spent a lifetime as that girl with the messed up psyche. I'm sure there are more than one of you out there that can relate. B

Peter Pan no more

It's time. Peter Pan had to grow up. For nearly 18 months of his life, Matthew dressed in this costume. In this picture it's new, just out of the box. He picked the costume out of a catalog and when it arrived, two weeks prior to Halloween, he asked daily if today was the day he could finally wear his Peter Pan costume. He didn't like the hat and only wore it on Halloween, but the rest of the costume he wore daily! You read that correctly - DAILY. He wore it to Meijer (for those of you unfamiliar with Meijer, it's a cleaner, friendlier, more 'upscale' version of WalMart), to church, to play dates and preschool ... Heck, he was three and adorable and it worked for him! (Yes you read that correctly, he even wore it to church on one or two occasions when it seemed arguing with a three year old about not wearing a costume to church was not a battle worth waging. He once mentioned the priests wore dresses . . . I don't think Joh

Cabin fever made me do it!

Like nearly ever person in West Michigan, I have a serious case of cabin fever. I won't waste your time however, complaining about the two-hundred feet of snow that's fallen in the last two hours. I won't share about the twenty or thirty times I've had to shovel my walk today as gusts blew it right back in my face. And I certainly will not lament about the temperatures that hover around negative double digits making your nostrils freeze together within moments of stepping outside. To bore you with tales of how we have to shovel areas in our yard so that our large dog and can do his 'duty' because the snow is deeper than he is tall and dogs for whatever reason cannot poop in the same place twice, is not what I will share. You will not hear about how when I open the slider to let aforementioned dog outside, gusts of wind blow drifts of snow inside and require a shovel to once again close the door. Nor will I share how some roads around here are drifted shut be

The Glass is Half-Full

Search This Blog