It’s crazy how I can look back through these same eyes and see a completely different era.
An era of baggy pants, no cell phones, and magazines with my favorite celebrities waiting at the supermarket to be bought with my allowance. I would take them home, cut out the pictures I loved, and add them to a homemade collage. There was no posting it for anyone else to see. It was just mine, taped together on my bedroom wall because those were the things I loved at that moment.
I remember what youth felt like. I remember the air, the freedom, and being completely tuned into whatever was happening right in front of me. A social life existed without being constantly reachable. Plans were made ahead of time. Conversations ended when we went home. There was space between one day and the next.
Sometimes I miss that space.
Now I can sit in my car, gaze out the window as the sun begins to settle, and realize I am still looking at the world through those same eyes.
That thought catches me sometimes.
These are the same eyes that looked around a childhood bedroom. The same eyes that watched friendships begin and end, that cried over things I barely remember now, that looked at my children when they were small, that have watched years pass without realizing how quickly they were moving.
And somewhere inside, it can feel like not a bone in my body has changed.
Then I catch my reflection.
The face looking back at me carries more years now. My skin has changed. My hair has changed. Life has left little signs that time has been here.
I am older. More lived. More tired at times. I have worked more, worried more, loved more, lost more, given more of myself, and carried responsibilities that the younger version of me could never have imagined.
But am I still her?
I think I am.
She just lives in skin that has traveled farther.
Maybe that is one of the strangest parts of getting older. The outside keeps documenting time while something inside ofus does not keep a calendar. A song can come on, and suddenly we are seventeen again. A certain smell can bring back a room we have not stood in for decades. One old photograph can return an entire afternoon we thought we had forgotten.
Time moves forward, but pieces of us remain everywhere we have been.
My mind has settled in ways it could not have when I was younger. I am more open to change. Some things that once felt enormous no longer deserve that much space in my life. I know more about what deserves my energy and what I can finally put down.
And yes, I notice the changes in my skin, my hair, my face, and even the way I move through the world.
Maybe learning to feel comfortable in our skin means allowing it to tell the truth about where we have been.
Every line does not need to disappear. Every sign of age does not need to become something we fight. We spend so much of our youth wanting to grow up, only to arrive here and sometimes wish we could slow the growing down.
What if we simply let ourselves be here?
There is something beautiful about still having our minds, our laughter, our memories, our spirit, and the wisdom we can now give to the generations coming behind us. We know things today that only living could have taught us. We have survived days we once thought would break us. We have learned when to hold on and, hopefully, when it is finally okay to let go.
We live through the mind and through the soul, but this skin carries us for our entire existence.
It changes with us.
It stretches with life.
It carries every era of who we have been.
The younger version of me did not disappear.
She grew.
Maybe growing older is not about finding our way back to who we used to be.
Maybe it is about looking through the same eyes, recognizing every version of ourselves that still lives there, and finally becoming comfortable with the skin that carried us through all of it.
And being thankful that we are still here to see what comes next.
Cher Xoxo