03/09/2026
Absolutely love all of these words. Resonate with so much of my life and still hanging on in there at 71. ###
I am that woman… and at this point in my life, I am no longer going to apologize for being her.
I am that woman who carries more than forty winters in her body and no longer needs permission to exist the way she chooses.
The woman who stopped living according to other people's opinions because she finally understood something it took her years to learn:
No one has the right to judge a life they have never lived, nor to criticize a body they have never inhabited.
I am that woman who has stretch marks where youth once lived, scars where wounds once were, and skin that no longer pretends to look twenty.
And so what?
Every mark tells a story.
Some speak of children, others of loss, change, difficult nights, and moments when I had to rebuild myself without anyone noticing.
My chests no longer defy gravity the way they once did. My waist has changed, and my face has learned to carry the years around my eyes.
But I have also learned something that no amount of youth can teach you:
A body does not lose its worth simply because it changes.
It is still a refuge, a source of desire, an embrace, a home, and a memory.
I have gray hair and scars on my soul.
I have cried over people who did not deserve a single tear, and I have smiled while I was falling apart inside.
I have loved with an intensity that some people simply didn't know how to hold, and I have also had to learn to walk away from places where I stayed only because I was afraid to start over.
I have known betrayal and, even so, I refused to let it turn me into a woman incapable of trusting.
They broke my heart more than once, but they never convinced me that loving was the problem.
The problem was always giving my heart to someone who didn't know how to take care of it.
Yes, I am intense.
I feel too much.
I think too much.
I love too much.
And for many years, I believed I had to learn to feel less so I would be easier to love.
Today I know I don't need to make myself smaller just to make someone else feel comfortable beside me.
I have my quirks, my silences, my difficult days, and that habit of disappearing for a while when I need to find myself again.
I also have my laughter, my desire to live, my endless conversations, and those little pleasures I have learned to enjoy without asking anyone for permission.
I no longer want half-hearted relationships, beautiful words without actions, or people who only show up when it benefits them.
At this point in my life, I would rather have a truth that hurts than a lie that keeps me company.
I would rather have my peace than any company that forces me to betray myself just to keep it.
Because after forty years, I finally understand that life isn't about preserving the version of yourself that other people once knew.
It is about daring to meet the woman you have become.
And that woman may no longer have the body she once had, the innocence she once had, or the patience to tolerate what she once tolerated.
But she has something far more valuable:
She has herself.
So yes…
I am that woman with the gray hair, the stretch marks, the scars, the mistakes, the desires, the contradictions, and the desire to keep living.
The woman who can still fall in love, laugh until her stomach hurts, dance without caring who is watching, and begin again even though she is no longer twenty.
I am that woman.
And after everything it took to get here…
I am not going to apologize for being her.
