Nobody really prepares you for getting older.
Not the wrinkles or the gray hair. We hear plenty about those things. There are entire industries dedicated to helping us hide them, slow them down, or pretend they aren’t happening.
I’m talking about the other parts.
The moments when you stop and wonder how you got here so quickly. When you realize that the years you thought would last forever have somehow passed, and you’re still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.
I’m 46 years old.
And sometimes that number doesn’t even sound like it belongs to me.
It’s funny because I don’t necessarily feel 46. In so many ways, I still feel like the younger version of myself, just with a few more life lessons and a little less patience for things that don’t matter.
And then I catch my reflection in the mirror, or look at my grown children, and I’m reminded that time has been moving along whether I’ve been paying attention or not.
For a while, I was getting Botox and joking that I was aging like fine wine.
And honestly, I felt pretty good about it.
I don’t regret it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to look younger or doing things that make you feel beautiful.
But lately, I’ve found myself drawn to women who have stopped trying to cover every sign of aging.
Women embracing their silver hair, their natural faces, and the beauty that comes with looking like they’ve actually lived a life.
There’s something about it that I find incredibly beautiful.
So I’ve stopped getting Botox. I’ve stopped coloring my gray hair.
Now, before anyone thinks I’ve reached some beautiful state of complete self acceptance, let me be clear.
We’re still very early in this experiment.
I may have moments when I question the whole thing.
But right now, I’m curious to see what happens when I stop trying to hold on so tightly to the way I used to look.
I’m not sure I would call it embracing aging just yet.
Maybe I’m simply learning to appreciate it.
And for now, that’s enough.
But the more I think about getting older, the more I realize that the changes happening on the outside are only a small part of it.
Because somewhere along the way, something else begins to change.
The way we see our lives.
The decisions we’ve made.
The people we’ve loved.
The things we got right, and the things we wish we could go back and do differently.
I think that’s one of the harder parts of aging that nobody really talks about.
The older we get, the more we understand things we couldn’t possibly have understood when we were younger.
And sometimes that understanding comes with regret.
There are decisions I’ve made that I wish I could take back. Moments I replay in my mind, wondering how differently life might have turned out if I’d chosen another direction.
Things that seemed right at the time but look entirely different through the eyes I have today.
And that’s a strange place to find yourself.
Because you can’t go back and make those decisions with the wisdom you have now.
You can only look at the person you were and try to understand why you made them.
I think we can be incredibly hard on our younger selves.
We expect them to have known better.
To have recognized things sooner.
To have made choices that would have spared us, or the people we love, from certain experiences.
But the truth is, we didn’t know then what we know now.
And perhaps nowhere does that realization feel heavier than in motherhood.
I can still remember being a young mother, thinking I had all the time in the world.
The days were long. The house was loud. There were probably more moments than I’d like to admit when I wished time would move a little faster.
And now, somehow, those years are behind me.
My children are grown.
Sometimes I look at old pictures and wish I could step back into them, even just for an afternoon.
Not because I want my old life back.
But because I would love to experience certain moments again, knowing what I know now.
To hold them a little longer.
To appreciate the ordinary days I didn’t realize I’d someday miss.
To have a little more patience in moments when I was overwhelmed.
And yes, to do some things differently.
That’s something I’ve found myself thinking about more as I’ve gotten older.
And I think there’s another layer to motherhood that becomes clearer as we grow older.
We begin to recognize just how much of who we are was shaped long before we ever became parents ourselves.
By the things we were taught.
The things we witnessed.
The things we needed but didn’t always receive.
And sometimes, by the things we promised ourselves we’d never repeat.
I think a lot of us become parents with this idea that we’ll do things differently.
We’ll break the cycles.
We’ll make better choices.
We’ll give our children the things we wish we’d had.
I know I made those promises.
And in some ways, I kept them.
But in other ways, I fell short.
And I think that’s one of the hardest truths I’ve had to face as I’ve gotten older.
Because recognizing where certain behaviors or decisions came from doesn’t mean we get to excuse them.
Our upbringing may help explain the people we became, but it doesn’t erase the impact of the choices we’ve made.
And sometimes that’s an incredibly difficult thing to reconcile.
Knowing what certain experiences felt like when we were young, yet realizing that despite our best intentions, we may have allowed some of those same patterns to find their way into the lives of our own children.
Not always in the same ways.
Not always intentionally.
But enough that we look back and wish we’d known how to do things differently.
And perhaps what makes that realization so difficult is that we genuinely believed we were doing better.
We were trying to give our children something different, while still learning how to become different ourselves.
And sometimes, we simply didn’t know how.
And I think those patterns follow us into more than just motherhood.
They find their way into our relationships, the people we choose to love, the things we tolerate, and sometimes even the way we see ourselves.
We grow up believing certain things about love, about relationships, about what we’re supposed to give and what we’re allowed to ask for in return.
And we carry those beliefs into adulthood, often without even realizing it.
Sometimes we repeat things we promised ourselves we never would.
Sometimes we stay in situations longer than we should.
Sometimes we make decisions based on fear, guilt, or what we believe is expected of us, rather than what we truly want for ourselves.
And it isn’t always until years later that we begin to recognize those patterns for what they are.
I think that’s another difficult part of growing older.
Realizing how much of our lives may have been influenced by things we didn’t even understand at the time.
And wondering how differently certain chapters might have unfolded if we’d understood ourselves a little better.
But perhaps there’s something beautiful in that realization, too.
Because while we can’t go back and change the decisions we made before we understood those patterns, we can begin making different ones now.
We can question the things we’ve always believed.
We can recognize what no longer serves us.
And maybe, for the first time, we can begin choosing the life we actually want rather than simply continuing the one we’ve learned how to live.
When I became a mother, I wanted so badly to get everything right.
I wanted my children to feel safe, loved, protected, and certain that I would always be there for them.
And while I never stopped loving them, I can look back now and recognize that there were times I fell short.
There were decisions I made that I wish I could take back.
Times when I should have handled things differently.
Moments when my own circumstances, emotions, or relationships may have influenced choices that affected more than just me.
And that’s a difficult thing to acknowledge.
Because when you’re a mother, your mistakes don’t always belong to you alone.
Sometimes they affect the very people you were trying so hard to protect.
And love, no matter how deeply we feel it, doesn’t mean we always get everything right.
I think that’s one of the most humbling realizations that comes with growing older.
Recognizing that we can love someone with everything we have and still make mistakes that hurt them.
And knowing there isn’t always a way to go back and fix it.
We can apologize. We can listen. We can acknowledge where we went wrong and take responsibility without making excuses.
We can grow.
But we can’t rewrite the past.
And I think that’s something I’ve struggled with.
Knowing when accountability ends and self-punishment begins.
Because sometimes, even after we’ve acknowledged our mistakes, we continue carrying them as though we’re supposed to spend the rest of our lives making up for them.
As though forgiving ourselves would somehow mean we weren’t sorry enough.
But I’m beginning to question that way of thinking.
Because motherhood isn’t just the moments we wish we could change.
It’s also the years of showing up.
The sacrifices nobody sees.
The sleepless nights, the worry, the laughter, the ordinary days, and the love that exists even through our imperfections.
None of those things erases the mistakes.
But the mistakes shouldn’t erase those things, either.
And perhaps that’s the balance I’m still trying to find.
To acknowledge the things I wish I’d done differently without allowing them to define everything I’ve ever been as a mother.
Because while I may look back and wish I could give my children a version of myself who knew then what I know now, that woman didn’t exist yet.
She was still becoming who I am today.
Maybe the people who love us remember things we’ve forgotten.
The ways we showed up.
The moments we tried.
The love we gave, even when we didn’t always get everything right.
And maybe part of growing older is realizing that the people we loved so deeply were human, too.
They had their own struggles, their own regrets, and their own decisions they probably wished they could change.
We just didn’t always see those things when we were children.
And perhaps that’s one of the strangest things about growing older.
We begin to see the adults who raised us as people, rather than simply the roles they played in our lives.
People who were learning as they went.
People who didn’t always have the answers.
People who may have been carrying things we knew nothing about.
That doesn’t mean every decision they made was right, or that understanding them somehow erases the ways they may have fallen short.
But it does remind me that being human has always been complicated.
And I wonder why it’s so easy to remember someone else through the love they gave, yet so difficult to look at ourselves beyond the mistakes we’ve made.
Why we can extend understanding to the people who came before us, or the people we love, yet struggle to offer ourselves that same grace.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve reached some beautiful place of complete forgiveness.
I haven’t.
There are still things I wish I could change. Memories that sting. Decisions I wish had gone differently.
And there are days when I look back with far more disappointment than compassion.
But I’m beginning to question whether I’ve been fair to myself.
Whether I’ve spent so much time thinking about the things I wish I’d done differently that I’ve forgotten to acknowledge the things I did right.
Because both deserve to be remembered.
And I think that’s something worth remembering as we grow older.
We’re so quick to expect ourselves to have known better, but we forget that wisdom is something we gain through living.
Through mistakes.
Through heartache.
Through relationships, motherhood, loss, and all the experiences that shape us along the way.
We don’t get to begin life with all the knowledge we’ll have at the end of it.
We learn as we go.
And the funny thing is, even now, we’re still learning.
I think there’s a misconception that by the time we reach our forties, we’re supposed to have everything figured out.
Our careers, our relationships, where we want to live, who we’re supposed to be.
But what if we don’t?
What if we’re still changing our minds, discovering new things about ourselves, making mistakes, and trying to understand what makes us happy?
I know at 46 there are still things I’m trying to figure out.
There are decisions I’m facing now that I may look back on ten years from today and see differently.
There are lessons I haven’t learned yet.
Parts of myself I haven’t discovered.
And maybe that’s okay.
Because there’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.
After all, this is our first time at life, too.
No matter how old we get, we’re still experiencing things for the first time.
We’re still navigating chapters we’ve never lived before, facing decisions we’ve never had to make, and learning things about ourselves we couldn’t have known ten or twenty years ago.
Just because we’ve lived more years doesn’t mean we’re supposed to have all the answers.
And maybe one of the beautiful parts of growing older is realizing that we don’t have to.
We can look back with regret and still appreciate the life we’ve lived.
We can wish we’d made different choices while recognizing that those choices helped shape the people we’ve become.
We can take responsibility for our mistakes without spending the rest of our lives punishing ourselves for them.
And we can still change.
I think about that when I look at my children now.
There’s so much pride in watching them become their own people, but there’s also something humbling about learning how to be their mother in a completely different way.
Because motherhood doesn’t end when your children become adults.
It changes.
You go from being the person who can scoop them up, kiss their scraped knees, and usually find a way to make things better, to someone who has to stand beside them while they navigate their own lives.
You can offer advice.
You can encourage them.
You can remind them that you’re always there.
But you can’t make their decisions for them, and you can’t protect them from every difficult lesson life might have waiting.
And perhaps part of motherhood, just like aging, is learning to loosen your grip on the things you can’t control.
To love them through every version of who they’re becoming.
And maybe to offer ourselves a little of that same understanding.
Because I wouldn’t want my children to spend their lives defining themselves by every mistake they’ve ever made.
I’d want them to learn from those mistakes.
To grow.
To forgive themselves.
To recognize that one decision, or even a difficult chapter, doesn’t have to determine the rest of their story.
And perhaps I need to learn to believe that for myself, too.
There are so many things I love about getting older.
I like that I understand myself better.
That I have a different perspective on things that once seemed so important.
That I’ve survived seasons I wasn’t sure I’d get through.
That I’m beginning to recognize the difference between the things I can change and the things I simply have to make peace with.
And I like that I’m still learning.
Because the older I get, the more I realize that life isn’t about reaching an age where we finally have everything figured out.
Maybe it’s about becoming a little more understanding.
A little more forgiving.
A little more willing to see the beauty in the imperfect lives we’ve lived.
And remembering that even with all the years behind us, there’s still so much life ahead.
There are places I haven’t seen.
Things I haven’t tried.
Conversations I haven’t had.
Memories I haven’t made.
And versions of myself I haven’t even met yet.
I don’t know how I’ll feel when more gray starts growing in or when another birthday comes around and that number gets a little bigger.
Maybe I’ll love it.
Maybe I’ll struggle with it.
Probably a little of both.
But I’m beginning to think appreciating aging doesn’t have to mean celebrating every wrinkle, every change, or every passing year.
Maybe it’s simply learning to look at our lives with a little more grace.
To appreciate who we were, acknowledge where we fell short, recognize who we are, and stay curious about who we might still become.
Because I can’t go back and be the woman I wish I’d been in certain moments.
But I can keep becoming the woman I want to be.
And maybe that’s one of the most beautiful things about getting older.
We can’t change the years behind us, but we’re not finished writing the ones ahead.
As for the gray hair?
Well, we’re still doing it.
One silver strand at a time.
