“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream” - C.S. Lewis
Growing older is one of the most difficult aspects in life with which to come to terms. Am I right? None of us want to lose the free, energetic and timeless feeling of our youth. In fact, industries are built upon the premise of staying young and thousands of products and programs are developed annually, with the promise of washing away the natural evolution of aging. Somehow we have been led to believe that growing older and the way it appears on our faces and bodies is something about which, we should feel awful. The focus is on the way we look externally and the number of years we’ve been alive, rather than the wisdom, experience and spiritual growth that we have acquired and hold within us.
One of my greatest preoccupations before and during my divorce process was my concern over my chronological age. I was fifty-one at the time my ex-husband and end a seventeen year marriage. In all fairness, it took me close to ten years to get to this point, through a great deal of contemplation, psychotherapy, general unhappiness and a feeling that my inner soul was shriveling up and dying. Somehow, as we hit fifty, there is a shift in the way we may view ourselves. We are well aware that we are no longer kids. We are clearly the adult in the room and in most cases, passing the beauty baton over to our daughters and sons and in some way, accepting that we are no longer “hip” and “with it” the way we might have still felt in the decades prior. While today, fifty may be the new thirty in many ways, in reality, we know, it is not.
For women, we know that our beauty regimens have changed and involve a bit more than they once did, to help us to look our best. Going through or approaching menopause has its own set of challenges mentally, physically, and emotionally, and our self esteem may suffer a bit, as we have to work harder to look and feel as good as we did, even just a decade earlier. All one has to do is flip on the television, watch a commercial, look at a billboard or browse through a magazine. Airbrushed models with the perfect, lineless face, amazingly shaped figures and of course, long, thick luxurious hair are all around.
And while many of us have come to a certain place in our lives where we are not necessarily worried about what others think of us or our opinions, and have a relatively stronger sense of ourselves than we might have had earlier in our years, there is a sudden “Oh my God! I’m old” feeling that can overtake us when we contemplate or move into the realm of divorce.
All of a sudden, we are mentally concerned that we are too old to reimagine our lives or get out of a situation that we have outgrown or doesn’t serve us any longer. Mentally, it might sound like a good idea, but practically speaking, some of us may view the idea of being “unmarried” as a life sentence for eternal loneliness and so many other negative possibilities.
Trust me here, the idea of being over fifty hit me hard, in and of itself. But, when I coupled that with getting a divorce, it seemed like I was going to be walking into an abyss of unknowns. I turned fifty when I had known for nearly ten years that I was unhappy in my marriage. I knew deep down that I had a choice to make - I could easily stay in this unfulfilling and limiting connection and in the blink of an eye, I would be turning sixty, and I would feel just as dead, just as unhappy, only to have wasted ten more years of my precious life, or make the bold move and go down a new path.
In the abstract, I wanted to venture out and reinvent my life! I had no idea how, but I just knew that my marriage was not the place to do this. However, on the flipside, I had this gnawing feeling that I was too old to start over; that while I did not want to be with my ex-husband, and fantasized that there might be a more fulfilling relationship out there in the world, I was afraid that not being a wife or continuing along the path I was on would find me nowhere, good for nothing else and most terrifying...alone forever!
What I found was that nothing could have been further from the truth! And if you are plagued with the same fear or feelings of inadequacy, uncertainty, fear of the unknown and the myriad of other emotions about leaving an unhappy marriage, let me say one thing to you - FORGET YOUR AGE.
Did you know that you are timeless? Our souls, our thoughts, our essence, are all timeless. If you are unhappy in any way with the current status of your life - either contemplating divorce or recently divorced as an individual in their fifth, sixth, seventh - even eighth decade on this planet, the very first thing you must do is to forget your age. This is not easy, as I said, particularly with all the “reminders” around you.
You’re probably thinking, “yeah, but Elisa, my hair is graying, I see more lines on my face than I did before, I’m not as limber and my memory is not as sharp.” You know what I say - so what!
If you are feeling old, you are paying too much attention to society’s definition of beauty and age and not going within to embrace the timeless person that you are.
You have more power than you may realize in feeling, looking and being young. When your mindset is grounded in feeling empowered and self assured, something amazing happens to the way in which you view yourself. Your confidence increases, you stand a little taller, you take better care of yourself from the inside out and you embrace a youthful attitude in your stride.
You also release much of the stress that adds to the aging process, relaxing your body, lowering your shoulders and allowing your facial muscles to stop tensing. As a human being, living in a three dimensional forward moving world, it is not likely that you can stop the aging process altogether, but you can certainly alter and stop the negative and critical way in which you view yourself with each passing year and replace this with kindness and compassion towards the evolving you!
With this new mindset, you will be able to see more clearly through the blinders of chronological age when deciding if divorce is the right next step for your soul's evolution and life's happiness.