Piecing Together The Parts That Are Me or What Age Am I Today?

What age am I today? It seems a fitting question to ask considering that my youngest daughter is celebrating her twenty-first birthday today. Interestingly, I did not plan to write about age because she is a new age today. It just turned out that my thoughts came out this way. Though there really are no coincidences and so the balance of this is as it should be. Anyway, let's get started..

I cut my hair a few weeks ago. After a really long time of having it really long. And loving it that way. Long and wavy. And so friggin annoying after a while. But of course, when I decided to finally cut it off -which I had been thinking about for months - those last few days of long hair were perfect hair days. But I went ahead and did it. Chopped if off. Into a cute bob...named after my father of course :-). And I liked it.My new haircut.  A lot. Loved it in fact.

Until yesterday. 

I woke up yesterday and looked in the mirror and decided that I look much better with long hair. And so now I get to spend the next few years growing it out again. Luckily for me my hair grows really fast. Like really super fast. Like I can have bangs and then a few weeks later I don't have bangs anymore. And so this cute bob that made so much sense to get will soon be a shoulder length cut. But only for a short time before it gets long. Which is good because shoulder length hair is actually a hairstyle that I absolutely hate. It feels old. The proverbial middle age haircut that I see on so many women my age.

My age.

Which brings me to the point of this post today. Because I am still in this really weird place of not quite knowing what my age is. Not the number part, the other part. As in, what my age means. There are all these parts of me that are not adding up and so I am feeling a bit disjointed. And certainly not grounded and settled into where I am. 

Basically I don't know where I am.

I do know that I am not where I was before and certainly don't want to be back there. As in, I don't need to recreate my youth, recapture a young body, reclaim a past version of myself. That is not this at all. It is more like I have not quite figured out what this new place that I am in is. On so many levels. 

The physical one is a big one. My body. It's different. Softer. And less flexible -which for me is still very flexible in that dancer, loose jointed, hyper-extended kind of way. My skin is dryer and less elastic. My aches and pulls recover slower. And my attempts to exercise are more challenging. 

And so for a while - actually almost an entire year to be exact - I just did not. Exercise. At all. Well, I hiked. And walked my perfect Doberman puppy constantly. And attempted to run a few times, and work out with weights on this really cool thing called a Smart Gym. But really it was all a temporary, just a few days kind of thing and then I settled back into being way too sedate. 

And so now, in this place where I am today - a place that I am not sure about - I have committed to taking better care of myself. In a healthy way. Not a eating-disorder-let's-get-skinny-because-skinny-is-happy-and-it's-really-about-how-you-look-kind-of-way. And so I signed up for a twelve week program at this awesome place in Santa Barbara called Temple.

I am excited about this. It is not just a workout but more a whole body and mind and spirit journey that I believe will help me ground into myself. The new myself that I am trying to figure out. I will not rush this along. In that wise way that I have come to understand - at least this is something that has come from being older that I have gotten my hands around fully - I am really clear that this process, of putting the pieces of this puzzle that is me together again, will unfold over time. And I am good about that actually. Knowing that the process is the important part. 

And what I am hoping for, and believe will be true, is that this process, of integrating the physical challenges with learning what to fuel this different body will, in turn, trigger that deeper exploration into the spiritual and emotional - and as yet - unchartered pieces of the me that I seem to be now.