What did you imagine this time in your life would look like?
Were you right? Probably not.
When you were a little girl, you thought your grandma was old. And maybe she was. Women weren’t given much room then to live boldly, even when they were young. Your grandma probably had a lot of ideas, dreams, and desires, but she was more likely to put her energy into helping her children and grandchildren achieve their potential than to explore her own.
Being an “old lady" is a different proposition these days, but hitting Sixty is often still a cause for concern (panic). We were not raised to think that this would be, or even could be, a vibrant time of growth, creativity, and productivity, and an exciting time of new adventures, new friends, new passions.
As I approached Sixty, I was aghast at that number. How was it possible to be that age when I felt exactly the same? I remembered asking my Grandma when she turned 85 what it felt like to be that old and she told me she felt the same as she had at 27, but with a less cooperative body.
As luck would have it, Jane Fonda and her championing of The Third Act entered my world around that time. I came across a show called Dear… and watched the episode featuring Jane. In it, she describes her journey from young starlet to activist to Third Act booster by responding to letters from women telling her how she was the inspiration for changes they made in their lives.
After that, I watched Jane’s TED Talk on The Third Act and it was a revelation. She describes the gift that maturity is and how we can use the final third of our lives to fully become ourselves, without apology.
I didn’t need permission to keep being the person I was, but I realized that I had needed assurance that it wasn’t crazy to see myself as still on an upswing, still climbing, still tapping potential, and that other women were doing that, too.
We become braver, bolder when we grow out of needing to be pleasing, needing for boys to like us, needing our mother’s approval, needing to fit in, needing to go along. This confidence is born of maturity, but it is partly from realizing many women around us have also grown out of those things. At some point, those, and many other things, seem just plain silly and we wonder why we ever gave a shit.
Vibrant Femmes is where we hear our stories. It’s where we can find or give each other inspiration, advice, support, a laugh. We will talk about living vibrant lives of discovery, purpose, meaning, and fun. No topic will be off-limits, and I encourage you to contact us and get in on the conversation. Let us know what’s driving you and what you’d like to hear about.
With Love,
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