I found this pic of me a few days ago on an old camera. It’s from January 2005 – seven years ago, almost to this day – and I was waiting to pick up my youngest daughter from school. I was just a few months out from my divorcing of the ExHole. Hurricane Katrina was still 8 months away, and there were still a few weeks left before Kirk and I officially got back together. Kristyn and I were living in a beautiful condo right on the Gulf of Mexico in Long Beach, Mississippi, right next door to my bestie Christine, with whom I was spending lots of girl time and having a blast. I was dating, working hard and making good money, and enjoying the hell out of life. I had really come into my own in regard to my witchcraft. I felt good. I was 37 years old and very happy with the direction in which things were going for me, and I had the world by the tail. It was a really, really positive time in my life.
Over the last few months I’ve been doing a lot of looking in the mirror, sometimes because I’m doing some spiritual work and I’m looking but not looking, other times it’s because I’m doing the day-to-day grooming thing, but lately I’ve also been looking at me – really looking – and have been examining myself, my skin, and my hair, and noticing the wondrous and frightening signs of getting older. It’s been kind of clinical, this assessment. I’ve got blotches, and laugh lines, and big pores, and crows’ feet. My skin is a bit more crepe-y and not as taut. I’ve got a shit-ton of gray hair which is really noticeable since my decision not to color it any more, and right now I look like a stripe-y cat while my hair goes through the growing out transition from processed to natural. Despite that, I didn’t really think that I’d changed all that much, but sitting here right now, looking at the me I was in 2005 and thinking about the past seven years, I have to say that one of the things that really strikes me about this picture is the difference in my appearance between then and now. In the pic, I am wearing no make-up. There’s no hair color involved – that’s 100% mine and I recall there being just a strand or ten of gray. The photo’s not been photoshopped in any way and there aren’t any wrinkles or blotches that I can see. HOLY SHIT I look so young! WTF happened over the last seven years to age me so much? Or is this just the way it goes when one stretches from their 30′s into their 40′s? I think, for me, it’s a combo of both.
Since January 2005, life’s been really stressful. After my and Kirk’s reconciliation in March 2005, we were happily living and loving life, looking forward to the future, doing quite well financially, and then… in August 2005 that fucking bitch Katrina devastated our lives. We lost our home, most of our possessions, and endured a move to the Tenth Level of Hell (Ponchatoula) afterward that severely tested my nerves. Our finances were wrecked and our souls were crushed, but we made the best of it and kept going. Once we got settled back in NOLA in Janaury 2006, we bought a house, renovated it, and began our financial and mental healing process. THEN, I had to have a very seriously intricate surgery on my neck that left me missing two major salivary glands in my mouth and basically mucked up the collagen and fat distribution, leaving me looking like a turkey with a wattle… and THEN I had an on-the-job-injury that resulted in a year of hobbling around with a walker, a failed hip repair surgery, loss of income and career, two years of legal battles, and that left me 50 pounds heavier and very depressed. Toss in several health care scares with my mother and my sister, my daughter’s very medically complicated pregnancies that had me wondering at one point if she might die, and the other usual stressors of life on top of that, and it’s been a really frightening seven years.
All that being said, since January 2005, life’s also been really good. Kirk and I thankfully realized that we needed for he and me to be US again, and so we got back together, bought a house, got remarried on our front porch surrounded by good friends and family. It was beyond joyous! We watched our oldest daughter graduate from college and transition into an independent and successful young woman. We watched our youngest daughter go through two very difficult pregnancies to give birth twice and watched some more as she became an amazing mother to our beautiful grandsons. Compared to many, we have had relative financial security, despite our difficulties. We have good friends with whom we have fun. We love our city and we take advantage of her offerings whenever we are able. I am in love with a man who is so grounded, and so very good down to the core of his being that it staggers me, and I am so fortunate that he loves me right back. We are very balanced, we mesh well, we understand each other and we are very happy with each other and our lives together. After my injury and my surgeries, I rallied up from the depths of a deep depression and some severe mobility limitations to begin a very successful company, and got to experience the joys of being a French Quarter shop owner, which had been a long-held dream. I founded and coordinated a celebratory event for witches that was an undisputed and overwhelming success in 2011 – the New Orleans Witches’ Ball – and it is one that will continue for many years to come. After ages and ages of searching and growing, I am finally walking a spiritual path that is right for me, guided by an amazing creature whose souls so brightly shine and for whom I have the utmost respect and love, and with whom I feel a connection and bond that crosses time and space in a very real way. Through this path I have also met some new friends that are filling my life with much goodness. I have direction, I have a sense of self. I have an amazing life! I look at that picture, at the person I was in 2005, and the intervening years filled with everyday living and real challenges, and I feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction and sheer happiness that it”s also been a very delightful seven years!
I must admit that finding this picture and seeing the physical changes in me, from seven years ago to this day, momentarily induced a bit of longing for my 2005 skin and hair and youth. It can be difficult at times to be a woman in today’s world, with its focus on youth and beauty and its dismissive attitude toward older people as something of little value. I am not the ‘ideal” beauty, according to the mysterious “them.” I’m a past-prime 44, almost 45, year-old granny, I’m a fattie (don’t give me shit, I’ve owned the word and I’m fine with it), and I’ve gotten so much flack over not coloring my hair that it’s ridiculous and at one point actually had me questioning whether or not I would be less worthy if I didn’t cover the signs of my aging… but you know what? Fuck that noise. *I* know that I AM beautiful in ways that truly matter because I am a divine and light-filled being who is fortunate to reside inside of a unique and perfectly-imperfect physical body that has earned every wrinkle, crow’s foot, laugh line, saggy skin cell, and every single strand of gray by living a life of REAL-ness. I appreciate how those (im)perfections tell the rest of the world that I’ve been through the wringer, that I’ve made mistakes with some of the choices I’ve made. *I* know that I walk in awareness and BE-ing. I have a foot in this world and I have a foot elsewhere and I am connected to that which truly matters. I live a life of love and power and ecstasy. My face and body, through wrinkle and line, have been marked by Crow, who speaks loudly from the tree in my back yard and reminds me daily to walk my talk. Am I perfect? No, I am not… nor will I ever be. It’s very difficult for me sometimes to be balanced and clean, to view the world and other people and myself as bright and shiny jewels, to greet the Goddess in all that I see around me. My own particular characteristics are a part of what makes me wondrous and whole, and they come from me walking my path and experiencing my life in fullness and joy, and they come from me being a fallible human that doesn’t always get it right and that’s okay too. They are the worst of me and the best of me. They are my life story, they are my perfection.
And so, I will carry on with the growing out of my graying hair, and as time passes my wrinkles will become more pronounced, and I will sag and bag, and I’ll probably feel a bit sad about it every now and then, but I will also continue to be a work in progress, trying to achieve balance in body, mind, and soul, and I will work hard to make good choices and accept the fact that I’m going to fuck up again somehow, but that it will be okay and I will still be a good person who loves and is loved. I am hopeful that seven years from now, when I happen to look upon a picture of me as I am today and then turn to look into the nearest mirror, that I will have dealt with the fright and I will have cherished the delight that are forthcoming over the next seven years – those times and places and people and things that will mold the current me into that me of the future.
So mote it be.
