Often it can help a great deal to read of someone elses challenges and tragedies as we live in an ‘everyone looks perfect world.’  What with social media and filters being used so you don’t see what real live human people look like everyday.  I think this causes a more broken society because people see others looking as a perceived perfection all the time and they wonder what is the matter or wrong with me?  You look exactly like you should everyday in life.  The make-up, filters, touch up software, curving, trimming, boosting and highlighting with fake programs/apps, and surgeries that are being used these days, HOLY FUCK, no wonder we are all walking around neurotic and enraged.  Whatever happened to, I am perfect just as God made me?

As a young girl I did not get into make-up, it seemed a daunting task to take on daily forever, so that threw me away from it.  And my skin seemed sensitive to it which also helped me stay away from it.  THANK GOD FOR THAT PART!!!  When it was time to shave legs, I refused to shave my upper legs past my knees and AM I GLAD I DECIDED THAT! Knowing what I do today I feel I would not shave my legs at all.  As for my underarms I too wish I had not done that either.  I don’t shave my underarms anymore and haven’t for many years now.  As for my legs I don’t shave them either.  However I do a hot natural wax once or twice a year.  As I am aging the hair is not growing in places on my legs, this makes the wax process easier and less time consuming. 

I have had to face alot of fake physical flaws as a woman.  And these flaws that I have faced into my 50’s are all created through a culture where we DO NOT ALLOW AND SHOW our real bodies, faces, hair and skin and ACCEPT WHAT WE SEE AND ARE.  We use makeup to create a skin tone all over that isn’t natural, eyes that have unnatural color around and sometimes under them.  Mascara that lengthens lashes that will never be that long naturally.  Blush on our cheeks and other places that show a natural glow we don’t have.  And  lipstick 💄 💋 to color lips that would never be that color even on our best day!!!  Everything we use to enhance, brighten, and hide what we really are that day.  And most of it is TOXIC creating a complete imbalance and poisoning our body, organs, blood and skin. 

I have faced a changing and maturing body as I come into my Crone years.  Sagging, weight gain, body dismorphia, breakouts, rashes, etc.  I never had any of this to face in my days up until about 51 years old.  I have seen myself as a huge fat woman, ugly, hair loss, etc.  I have looked in the mirror when I had the courage and been utterly repulsed and adverse to what I was seeing.  I have faced a perceived loss of my youth, vitality and beauty.  Watching everywhere the desperate hanging on to a youthful narrative that tricks us into turning on our self. 

In the indigenous cultures around the world some of the elders were interviewed and they did not even understand ‘aging.’  That there were numbers that counted every year we were here.  They accepted that they were elders with a brilliant, powerful, skilled and potent gift in their culture.  Age did not define their value one way or another.  They were accepted as everyone else was.  In fact becoming an Elder meant maturity, wisdom, gifts of life lessons to share and help their community along with.  They became the wisdom and truth tellers of their community who were honored and revered for their life lived up until then.  Beauty and youth were and are not the system that determines one’s value. 

I am a product of this beauty and youth culture whom has finally pierced her perceived value as a woman on this earth.  I one hundred percent participated in the system of a woman being as hot as she could be, although I did it without makeup (there I go again trying to justify, get points and make myself better some how).  And everyday of every moment was based around how attractive I could be to turn heads wherever I went.  I died my hair, straightened and curled it to alter my look to be what I perceived this narrative to want.  I over sexualized myself when out in public.  Used my looks and body to manipulate.  And then I ran out of the fountain of youth, it was here I began unravelling this PHONY CULTURE! 

And it was here that I was diagnosed with breast cancer.   Shining the light so brightly on this facade of mine.  Could I unravel every bit of this life I had lived? And find myself with all of these, what would seem from my past, utter imperfections, a discusting body appearance, tumor, breast annihilated, rashes, smells, hair frazzled and gray.   And an uninspired way of care of my looks and clothing presentation with an unwillingness to conform to an unsustainable upkeep of beauty for myself.  Could I find my way through this collage of trickery, hypnotic and brainwashed idealism of the perfect woman?  Would I ever be able to wash and cleanse myself free?  To see the imperfect perfect human being just as I am?  And even that statement still carries shades of the deception I lived and participated in.  Imperfect doesn’t exist in a culture of 100% acceptance of who I am.

This is a road highly travelled, paths broken in and raging rivers flooding my way at times.  I face this day after day in this morphed body I find myself in.  I continue the work to locate that lost part of myself that knows I am perfect as I am in this moment and all moments thereafter.  I insist on loving what I see, even when there is disgust or repulsion.  I continue to refuse to cover up with makeup, enhance with products, and bring in trickery to diguise what I actually am.  Sometimes, actually alot of times I just want to hide away, bury myself under blankets and not engage BUT I face myself through showing up on social media, video chats and in person visits.  I push into these crevices that want to believe it’s conditioning of ‘aging isn’t of value, narrative.  That I am a Goddess/Priestess and Crone.  No matter what I look like I am of value.  It is what my life story gave me that fills the library of myself.  And there are many great books to take out! Beauty and youthfulness is not our valuing system, life is!