Anyone reading my blog can see that I’ve not been very consistent. Something newsworthy happens and I mull it around for awhile – until the news cycle passes me by and my input becomes irrelevant!

Then, just the other day, I found myself looking through a list of over 700 quotes I have collected over the past couple of years. They come from a variety of sources and tend to be pithy comments on the human condition – many of them a source of midlife wisdom. Never irrelevant!  mmmm.

Idea!  Once a week, I will select a quote sequentially from the list and write whatever comes up from the mindset of a midlife women intent on aging with grace, gratitude and gusto –  allowing for the occasional kicking and screaming! My wish is that all you midlife women tuning in will leave your impressions or comments on the quote, or my response to it, as well.

Here goes:

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. Judy Garland

The obvious take on this message is to assume that it is about one person trying to emulate the life of someone they admire… and falling short. We’re so programmed to be the person we learned we “should” be that many of us haven’t discovered the fullness of who we authentically are.  So we put on airs, adapt someone else’s style, and become an actress in a play called our life. Unfortunately, trying to “pretend” to be the person we would like to be takes its toll. We minimize ourselves, we’re always on guard, secretly fearing that we’ll be found out. There is little authentic intimacy in our life, as we aren’t intimate with ourselves. I know this because I lived it, as I suspect have many of you. It took me years to pull apart my “shoulds”, challenge them, and then sit still long enough for the real me to bubble up. It’s still bubbling.

The less obvious response to this quote is that many of us midlife women are still trying to emulate the life of the young woman we were – and falling short. We hold on to roles that we’ve outgrown, clothes that no longer flatter us and jobs or relationships that have become unfulfilling.

Truth is, we can only ever be a second-rate version of the younger woman we were. And I say halleluiah!  It’s time to stop pretending we’re still 30, grieve the loss and let her go. It’s not that our looks become unimportant. It’s just that in midlife we have the opportunity (and some would say the responsibility) to take the focus off our packaging and redirect it to our essence. We get to celebrate who we really are and become a first-rate version of the woman we’ve become! Beauty-full.

Now, if I could only sing like Judy Garland. 🙂

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 4:25 pm and is filed under AMAZING GRAYS Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.