Sooner or later, we all lose the battle against time.
Youth quietly slips away from our bodies, and gravity — stubborn and merciless — takes away what we spent years trying to keep in place.
There’s no cream or remedy left that can erase from our faces the marks of laughter, tears, sleepless nights, or all the pain we’ve swallowed over the years.
We take vitamins, collagen, and add lemon, ginger, honey, and apple cider vinegar to everything. We search for omega-3 and every “magic” formula people recommend.
We eat less so we won’t suddenly “look old” with a few extra pounds.
We break into cold sweats for no reason.
And sleep becomes a guest that rarely arrives.
One day, you realize there’s no such thing as comfortable high heels anymore, that without glasses you can’t even read the grocery prices, and that gray hairs are more stubborn than hair dye.
Our waistlines slowly disappear, our knees aren’t the same anymore, and our bodies simply no longer feel like they once did.
A moment comes when you get tired of comparing yourself in the mirror to the young girl you used to be.
We look at ourselves honestly — without filters and without dim lighting — and accept that we’ve already traveled more road than the one we
have left ahead.
And what a beautiful thing it is to live!
To feel.
To love and be loved.
To gain wisdom through experience.
To learn patience.
And what does it matter if gravity won and wrinkles have already signed their names across our faces?
What does it matter if we no longer suck in our stomachs or push out our chests to pretend?
Does any of that really matter when beauty now comes from within? A deep, radiant beauty filled with love and forgiveness.
Yes, we are growing older.
Beside us there are younger women, perhaps more beautiful on the outside.
But we carry life within us — and every hard blow the world has given us has made us wiser.
What an honor it is to be, and continue being, mothers, wives, sisters, grandmothers, and friends.
We still have so much love left to give — the kind of love that comes without conditions, the kind that no longer asks for anything in return.
What a blessing this stage of life is: the stage of simply being yourself.
Of loving yourself exactly as you are, flaws and all.
And after everything we’ve lived through, cried through, and learned... to keep walking forward with an open heart.