Why Follow Me? Part #3

Nobody believes I’m 81.

I’ll be at a convention, a dinner, a random Tuesday. I see the look on their face. I see the calculation. Early/middle sixties, maybe? And I think: oh, the irony.

I spent most of my life convinced I was built wrong.

It starts in high school. It does for most of us.

I was medium tall. Big-boned. Size 8 hands. Size 11 shoes. I graduated from high school at 128 pounds. That sounds enviable now, but in that hallway, in that year, the pretty girls weighed 102. Petite was the price of admission.

My mother had four daughters and one great fear: that one of us would come home pregnant before marriage. She was strict. I was already sure my looks didn’t matter enough to get me into that kind of trouble. So I made a quiet decision. Boys could wait. I had other things to figure out.

College was intense. I stayed focused. Then I became a dental hygienist and wore scrubs every day for years. I have a real eye for color, line, and balance. It had zero impact on my work world. So I played with it at home, in my apartment decor and a modest closet of rarely used clothes.

I never learned to be flirty. I never learned to use my looks as a tool. I didn’t believe I owned that tool.

Instead, I developed an understanding of female energy.

I love the feng shui framework of yin and yang. Yang is the sun. It radiates, it gives, it drives. But without yin — the receptive force, the creator — it makes nothing. The sun pours itself out. Female energy catches it and creates worlds. It’s the power from which everything grows.

I never had the kind of pretty that turns heads in a hallway. I became a mother. A wife. A grandmother. A creator in every sense. I built things. I nurtured things. I made things that will outlast me.

Now, about that 80-year-old skin that looks younger.

My sister Ruth and I grew up on a farm. Every summer we were outside weeding, hoeing, picking — strawberries, tomatoes, on and on. Not a drop of sunscreen between us. While other kids baked themselves at the beach, slathered in baby oil, we were working. Unprotected. Busy.

A few years ago, at a Young Living convention, they ran a skin analysis, the kind that reads the deep layers and not just the surface. Neither of us showed the structural damage you’d expect from decades in the sun. They were baffled. We were baffled. Then we compared notes and confessed the same thing.

I only wash my face once a day.

That was the whole secret. No elaborate protocol. No aggressive exfoliation. No nightly acid. Leave it alone. Moisturize. Clean it gently, once, and let skin be skin.

I’m not selling this as a regimen. Call it a theory. The beauty industry has spent decades telling us the answer to processed skin is more processing. I doubt it.

I look at photographs of myself at 30, 40, 50, and I think: why didn’t I know? That woman was pretty. Not 102 pounds, not petite. Pretty in the ways that photograph well and hold up across decades. I couldn’t see it then.

I can see it now, and the timing is almost funny. The revenge of the big-boned girl with the size 11 shoes. Some of the tiny, delicate girls from that hallway in high school are on their second hip replacement. My strong build, the thing I was embarrassed about for years, has kept me upright and mobile into my eighties.

It’s more than good enough.

So. Prettier at 100.

I have nineteen years to go as of today. Here’s what I’m working with.

My hard-won optimism shows on my face. People who look for the good in life smile more easily, hold their features more lightly, and don’t carry a set jaw. Optimism isn’t naive. It’s a practice, and it’s attractive.

I walk every day. Five thousand steps, usually more.

I watch my food and my water. Essential oils and natural remedies are my first response to anything out of balance. I don’t take the body for granted. I’ve learned to listen to it.

I created a routine I do every morning to stretch every joint in my body. It takes about five minutes and concludes with an alignment of my energy centers (chakras).

At the conclusion, as I hold my Hara line nice and straight from heaven into the earth (look it up if you don’t know what I am talking about), I declare out loud to All That Is:

“I breathe, and All That Is breathes too. I move, and All That Is moves too. I love, and All That Is loves too.

But when I create, the heavens sing, for never again are they, or I, what we were before.

I smile, and All That Is smiles too.”

My routines are not punishing. I strive for consistency.

None of this is a beauty tip. It holds up a life I expect to keep improving.

I wasn’t pretty in high school. Or I couldn’t see it if I was. I’ve lived long enough now to watch beauty shift. It has little to do with cheekbones or dress size. It has everything to do with vitality. With being alive in your face, your gait, and your voice. That certain “I’m OK” sparkle.

I am 81. People think I’m in my early sixties. I intend to reach 100. I intend to look remarkable. And I intend to smile when someone does the math and gets that look.

The big-boned girl from the farm turns out to be a long-game player.

(Sitting on a beach somewhere in Europe in my mid 30s.)

There it is. Healthier. Happier. Prettier. I’ve told the universe. Now I’ve told you.

How about you? Are you willing to be healthier, happier, and better-looking in twenty years than you are today?

I’ll be sharing what keeps me moving toward it. Knowledge. Tips. Whatever inspires me along the way. If that’s a goal you can wrap your body, mind, and soul around, come with me. Tell me what you’re doing to improve your life every day. And kick that old belief — that age equals decline — right off the side of the road.

Let’s do this together.