Member-only story
What’s the best part of getting older that no one talks about?
LOVE.
I’m 72. I spent a gazillion years never speaking my age out loud. I always looked younger. The red-blond-sometimes pink hair and freckles still make me look younger than I am. However, now I embrace my age! When people ask me, I state it proudly.
Love, back to love.
Over and over again we chase love. We look for it, long for it, die for it, marry for it, and divorce for the lack of it. When all the time, it’s the self-love and confidence that we really need to develop, the understanding that “I am enough.”
This is what I’ve learned over the years — how to love. First, and foremost, I’ve learned to love myself. I have two messages that pop up on my calendar daily. I love myself. I am enough and More than ever before I am willing to love and be loved. They are simple messages but let me explain what they mean to me.
As a young girl of 11, I fell in love for the first time. Of course, it was my cousin, John, and then his best friend, and so began years of joy/heartache/passion/disappointments/life experiences, but most of the time I lived my life around LOVE.
In early 2008 when I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy, I remember shaking myself and saying: of course you have ‘heart’ problems…
