We can’t really understand aging until we’re experiencing it, and we can’t go backwards, so we must learn to live in the moment to appreciate all of the marvelous things that our bodies allow us to do. This, of course, is easier said than done. Aging is truly a privilege, and although good health is not a given, it can be cultivated. For many of us, the biggest challenge is to counter the effects of the mind – the negative effects of self-judgement that keep us from caring for and enjoying the body we have. 

How many of us look back at photos, thinking we looked pretty good in our twenties, thirties or forties, yet at the time we were concerned about what we were losing or what was yet to come? We see photos from today and cringe at the changes we see in ourselves, mourning what we think we’ve lost.

I have to use my tools to stay the path. I have been photographing and drawing my own body for over twenty years, and it is only through this process that I find peace with the changes I see. It is only through this process that I can leave the island of self-criticism to embrace the perfectly functional body that I have now, the only body I’ve got, which allows me to move about and live my life from day to day. 

My weight fluctuates, my relationship with food is often driven by emotions rather than by rational healthy choices, and at fifty-seven years old, I can feel the ways I am slowing down, when I just want to keep running around like before. Discouraged by my own heaviness, I stop taking pictures, and I stop drawing. And I lose my peace. In my mind, it is not a popular option to continue this process and to show my self-portraits at this age, at this size. But I will keep doing so in spite of the discomfort… even if I still only want to show myself in the best light possible. I will be honest and dare to continue this process. Because I am alive. Because this body is still me, and mine. Because my value as a person did not decrease when my waist got thicker.  Because I need to remind myself of all of this through the very process of drawing and seeing myself from a new perspective.

In the media, women’s aging is either shunned or idealized. In the spirit of inclusiveness, we see more aging models, but they are usually thin older women with exceptionally thick manes of long grey hair. We don’t see those of us who are ordinary, middle-aged and rounder, who are moving into the era of becoming grandmothers and slowing down our involvement in working life. This stage of life does not feel honoured to me, and I want to honour it, for all of us. We were once considered pretty, sexy or desirable, but now we have become invisible. And yet we’re still here, with all the richness of life experience that we are happy to share.

Thank you for reading my blog, for considering the dynamics we all have with aging, and for looking at these drawings of my now middle-aged form. It is through these drawings that I can best honour my body and all bodies, through this quiet revolution of looking at bodies as they truly are, and most of all, by not judging them.

What is your relationship with your body like as you observe yourself getting older? Is it peaceful, disconcerting, or something else? I would love to hear about how you are navigating this inevitable life process too.