Shine Sweet Freedom

I think the heart of this is not really aging. It’s the particular kind of aging that happens when you expected to grow older inside love—and instead find yourself having to learn how to grow older without the protection of that story.

And there’s something especially poignant about coming out of an abusive marriage seven years ago: your body is changing at precisely the same time you are finally getting the freedom to become yourself. So some days it can feel like you escaped just in time to watch the woman you thought you were supposed to be disappear.

I’d lean into that contradiction. Not a neat “aging is beautiful” essay. Not a “love yourself, wrinkles are wisdom” Instagram sermon. You don’t believe that every day, and the reader shouldn’t have to either. The honesty is what makes this powerful.

For a title, I particularly like “The Woman I Thought I’d Be Loved As”. It carries the marriage, aging, longing, beauty, and question of worth without explaining everything.

Here’s where I would begin:

The Woman I Thought I’d Be Loved As

I am somewhere in my mid-to-late fifties now, which is an odd place to find yourself.

Old enough to know better. Young enough to still occasionally look in the mirror and think, Wait. When did that happen?

I am seven years out from a seventeen-year marriage that was toxic and abusive. Seven years.

I finished raising my children. They are becoming lovely adults, which is one of the great miracles of my life. I get to watch them become themselves, and I am endlessly grateful that I got to be their mother.

And somewhere along the way, while I was busy surviving and raising children and rebuilding a life, I started getting older.

Not metaphorically.

Actually older.

My body has entered that deeply charming phase of womanhood where it seems to have developed its own agenda. Things have moved south. Things have changed texture. Things I once took completely for granted now require lighting, angles and occasionally a small amount of emotional negotiation.

My youthful beauty is dissolving.

There. I said it.

I know we’re supposed to say that beauty changes. That aging is a privilege. That wrinkles are evidence of laughter and experience. That our bodies are remarkable vessels that have carried us through life.

And all of that is true.

But sometimes I look at my face and mourn the woman who used to be there.

I still have good hair. I have always had good hair. And my eyelashes are ridiculous—long, dark and completely natural. I mention this because I am trying to be honest here, and apparently honesty includes documenting my remaining assets.

But I also live remarkably close to insecurity.

Everywhere I look there are advertisements telling me that I could be better.

You could have your skin back.

You could have your jawline back.

You could have your breasts back.

You could have your hormones back.

You could have your sleep, your libido, your collagen, your waistline, your hair, your face, your youth.

Apparently, for the right amount of money and with enough needles, pills, creams, procedures and strategically placed tiny machines, I could become a slightly improved version of myself.

And some days, I want to.

Some days I look at those advertisements and think, Well, perhaps that one could actually help.

Then another one appears.

And another.

And another.

Until the message underneath all of them becomes unmistakable:

You are not enough as you are.

And unfortunately, that particular message already knows its way around my house.

It doesn’t need an advertisement.

It has lived in my head for years.

You’re not worthy.

You’re not good enough.

Not good enough to be hired.

Not good enough to be admired.

Not good enough to be chosen.

Not good enough to be loved.

You name it.

And perhaps that is one of the strange gifts—and wounds—of coming out of a long abusive marriage.

You can leave the person.

You can leave the house.

You can change your life.

You can become independent and capable and strong and make decisions without asking permission.

You can build a beautiful life.

You can even become the woman who looks like she has absolutely no intention of ever needing anyone again.

And still, somewhere underneath all that competence, there can be a frightened little voice asking:

But am I lovable?

I don’t actually know the answer.

That is the part I wish I could wrap up neatly for you.

I can’t.

I don’t know if I will ever experience the kind of deep, uncomplicated love I once imagined I would have by this age.

I thought I would be safe by now.

I thought I would be loved by now.

I thought I would grow older beside someone who knew the whole story and still wanted to reach across the bed and take my hand.

Instead, I spent seventeen years married to someone who never loved me in the way I needed to be loved.

And now I am old enough to understand that youth is not waiting for me.

I wasted some of mine.

That hurts.

There are days when I feel as though I gave away the years in which I was most beautiful to someone who could not see me.

And now, just as I am finally free, I am watching the woman he didn’t appreciate disappear in the mirror.

There is something almost cruel about that timing.

But maybe—this is the part I am still wrestling with—maybe I have been asking the wrong question.

Maybe the question isn’t:

Will someone love me now?

Maybe it is:

Can I learn to live without making my worth dependent upon whether someone does?

That sounds noble.

It does not always feel noble.

Sometimes it feels like surrender.

Sometimes my brave independence is exactly what it looks like from the outside: brave and independent.

And sometimes, if I’m honest, it is armor.

I tell myself I am perfectly capable of living alone.

I am.

I tell myself I can build a beautiful life without a partner.

I can.

I tell myself I don’t need anyone to validate my worth.

I know that.

And then, occasionally, at three in the morning, some ancient insecurity crawls into my dreams and whispers the thing I have spent the entire day fighting:

You aren’t worthy.

I wake up tired from fighting a battle I didn’t even know I was still in.

So I get up.

I make coffee.

I go to work.

I love my children.

I laugh with people I love.

I make plans.

I try new things.

I make a life.

And every morning, in some small way, I begin the good fight again.

I don’t have answers.

I don’t know if there is another great love ahead of me.

I don’t know whether I will fall in love again, or whether someone will look at this older version of me and see something beautiful enough to stay for.

I don’t know if I will eventually make peace with my body.

I don’t know if I will ever completely silence the voice that tells me I am not enough.

And I don’t know whether I am destined to love and die alone, as my mother did—a force of a woman who somehow managed to be both fiercely herself and profoundly alone.

These are not rhetorical questions.

I really don’t know.

But I am beginning to wonder whether there is a life on the other side of them.

Whether there is a way to age without apologizing.

Whether there is a way to look in the mirror and grieve what is gone without believing that what remains is somehow less worthy.

Whether I can love this body—not because it is still beautiful enough, but because it is mine.

Whether I can stop trying to become younger long enough to discover who I am becoming.

And perhaps most frightening of all:

Whether I can learn to love without first needing proof that I am lovable.

I wish I had a beautiful answer.

I don’t.

I have questions.

I have some really good hair.

I have excellent eyelashes.

I have children who are becoming wonderful adults.

I have a life I fought like hell to get back.

And I have another morning coming.

So I suppose I’ll get up tomorrow and start the good fight again.

Maybe that is what courage looks like at this age.

Not being certain that you will be loved.

Not being certain that you are beautiful.

Not even being certain that you have finally healed.

But getting up anyway.

Looking at the woman in the mirror—the older woman, the changed woman, the woman who survived—and deciding, for one more day:

You are still here.

And that is going to have to be enough.

Maybe someday, I will believe that it is.