Label Limitations

A label tells you what’s inside. They can be somewhat useful if the item is a box of oreo cookies. But even then, labels lie. A label is the only the perception of person slapping it on.

I am anti-labels. I’m just not a fan of them. I don’t eat food with labels, define my relationships by them or stuff myself into a category of any kind. Labels limit you to the definition you attach to the label.

I am not just this or that. I am many things. I am no-thing.

And the one thing that continues to irk me when I hear it used as a reference to define my age is this one:

Hello “woman of a certain age”! Grrrr…..Each article, ad, or post that passes my way causes me to cringe.

What the heck does that mean anyway ?

So I turned to my friend google for some answers and oh boy, did she provide an array. None of which make the matter better. The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as “which it is not polite or necessary further to define.”

The phrase was re-popularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, “Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self,” in which midlife spanned 35 to 54. OH crap! Where is that gonna put me now that I am 55? Does it catapult me into another category which will then define what I should and shouldn’t be able or willing to do – because of that number?

SO STOP IT. I am not this or that woman of a certain anything.

The only thing that is certain is that

I AM WHAT I AM.
and WHAT I AM IS AMAZING.

No matter what the number on my certificate indicates.

I don’t do numbers, sizes or ages.

Can we as women choose to be amazing at every turn, juncture, step and mis-step?

Can we change our minds about aging? Embrace the changes. Enjoy the changes. Welcome the changes. Because they’re coming. Botox Babes and Surgery Sisters beware ~ you are not stopping the inevitable.   Instead of trying so hard to change your body, change your mind… do good things for yourself, treat yourself well with food, and doses of fun, and tons of fabulous to all areas of your life.

Age is a only a mindset. At a certain age you understand this. And when you do, you stay young because you do what you love and what you want without the restrictions. (and fyi, the only one that can restrict what you do or designate it “age appropriate” is you – it’s all made up and it’s all up to you).

I don’t do age “appropriate”.

I often forget how many years I have been around until I do the math and even then I usually miscalculate the addition.

Because I feel what I feel. I don’t feel OLD.

To be clear. Is my body changing? YES. Is my mind changing? YES. My body is experiencing different and and my mind is experiencing different. Is that bad thing? Or is it just a thing?

I’m taking a page from my Dad’s book of life. That man has no concept of how things “should” be. He rocks amazingness. He’s on no meds, has a full time career in NYC, takes public transportation to get there, works the nite and holiday shifts, lifts weights daily, keeps a daily food journal, has a boys nite ‘in’ (watching movies) with high school friends, is GCing the addition on his home, and doing all the physical work and has 3 girl friends. Oh and he’s 74, if you are keeping score.   SO.. when I say “Dad ~ What is your secret? He smiles and says, I can’t hear you, that’s my deaf ear. I just smile back because the truth is that he can’t hear me. He doesn’t understand the question? To him there is no secret, he’s not aware of any other way of being.

He is just being who is with no attachment to any ideas, excuses or reasons he can’t.

What’s the motto of this story? Lose your attachment to the aging and anti-aging thing. Stop trying not to age. Stop defining yourself by what should happen at a certain number.

One thing I know for certain… this woman is all that. All that she is meant to be. I am that I am.

I invite you to think about who you are? By what definition are you willing to define yourself? Can you remove the label you’ve placed there? And can you remove the limiting beliefs that you’ve set for yourself ?