Standing With the Years
On aging, beauty, and the evidence of our living.
This piece moves differently when heard aloud, where the words have weight, rhythm, and room to settle.
She has always been beautiful.
Eyes alight, smile beaming.
The kind of beauty that pulls people closer.
But her heart doesn’t seem to remember this.
So, she covers it up, her natural glow.
And thinks that others may see her as better, as more.
My whole life, I watched as people moved toward her. Drawn not to perfection, but to her presence.
To her softness. Her steadiness. To the way she stayed kind even when kindness was not returned.
She was strong. Unpushable. Even when the ones closest to her tried.
We all saw it. Everyone did.
Except her.
I don’t know what she sees when she looks in the mirror, but the reflection doesn’t seem to show her what the rest of us see.
Maybe she sees a tally.
A count of ever-increasing years that she believes have taken something from her. She tries to shove the numbers back down, dyes, creams, careful layers applied like armor.
Not to become someone else, but maybe to prove she is still worthy of love.
The numbers don’t lie, and they will never obey. Why would they?
Those numbers are not losses. They are the reward. Evidence of everything she has lived through and carried forward. Of the woman she became, instead of breaking.
Her glow was never erased by time. It was written by it.
Yet, she searches for more. For better. Not realizing she has been standing in the proof of enough all along.
I wonder if she feels alone in this war with time…
She isn’t, of course.
I see it everywhere.
Women who flinch when their age is spoken out loud. In the way we apologize for our bodies before anyone asks us to. In how quickly we learn to mistrust the very evidence of our living.
We have been taught to view our years as a liability. They are something to minimize, conceal, outrun.
As if growing older were a failure of discipline instead of a miracle of endurance.
So, we smooth. We dye. We fix. We call it self-care, but really it is removal of self. A quiet agreement to disappear just enough to remain acceptable.
But what we are really hiding is our story. We think we are hiding what makes us unlovable, but we’re actually hiding what makes us luminous.
The laughter that stayed after heartbreak. The softness that survived impact. The wisdom earned the hard way, when no one was watching and no one was cheering.
This is the glow we keep missing. Not the shine of youth, but the radiance of having lived and choosing, still, to remain open.
We do not become less visible with time. We become more legible. And maybe that is what frightens us.
Maybe the work is not to turn back the years. Maybe the work is to let ourselves be seen with them.
If this resonated, you’re welcome to stay. I share reflections like this, by email, whenever they’re ready.
You are beautiful, don't doubt it. full stop.