I am just a girl...

I am just a girl...
I am in some ways the very same girl I was a million years ago you see in the picture with the white blouse and plaid jumper. I have naive moments where I am so surprised at the world around me. I get scared sometimes and still need my loves to hold me. I have the same childlike wonder when it comes to perfect weather days, great food and wonderful time spent with ones I love.
I hated the 4th grade picture you are witnessing. I felt ugly. Not ugly duckling ugly, where there was hope that I would turn into the beautiful, graceful swan but rather the kind of ugly referenced in the joke "beauty is only skin deep and ugly is clear to the bone" ugly. I was just a girl. I was just like everybody else who was insecure, scared and worried that I might never get everything I wanted. What if I never found true love? What if I never got friends? What if Henny Penny was right and the sky really was falling and I was the only one out there caught without a helmet?
The other picture happens to be my personal favorite. It's me when I was a single mom out on the town with my manfriend. It was a moment in time when I felt truly beautiful and happy. There is a story behind the red dress in my book. It's about the time I asked my mom to buy me a red dress to bury me in if I didn't live through the delivery of my last child. I dressed in very plain clothes back then. I wore on the outside how I felt on the inside. I looked non-descript. I could have robbed every bank in town without worrying about getting caught. Nobody could have picked me out in a line up.
Back then I was just a girl raisng my kids, trying to keep up with a life that overwhelmed me every morning my feet hit the floor. I was just the same girl who got scared about making bad choices and disappointing my kids, my friends and myself.

I'm softer now. Curvier, with hips wider than my shoulders, I don't just have junk in my trunk; I have an entire yard sale. I'm fuller around my face. Threads of silver glisten in the sun light through my hair. My body is rounder, richer than I was in my 30's. I noticed a shift in my 40's in the way I looked. I also noticed that same shift in the way I approached myself and the world I live in. I wasn't just softer in physical description, I was softer in my heart too. Age refines who you are. As an "older" woman I began realizing how very little certainties I maintained. I felt myself leaving more and more room in my thought process, allowing myself the ability to shift course if I so desired. And that's another thing I notice about me now. I have real burning desires. My passion for food, wine, wind, love, inclusiveness and justice are more rich, decadent, and luscious. Just as my body began it's spherical sweep, so too had my heart and mind begun to round themselves out. I am able to love more deeply now, than when I was younger, still focused on the search for acceptance. I am able to approach a total stranger with my fists unclenched and a soft smile on my lips with little or no pre-judgement. I am more comfortable in my own skin as just a girl still trying to do the very best I can with what I am given. I am finding myself letting go of hurts and disappointments faster; dwelling in the light rather than sitting alone cursing the dark. I forgive myself any indescretions ever so much quicker, without bludgeoning my psyche. I am becoming my own best friend. The trait I have been proudest of was that I loved my friends, not in spite of who they are, but rather because of who they are. My spherical living is allowing me to be as kind to myself as I try to be with others. I am human after all. I had abused my humanity, nearly to the point of exstinction. I have learned to admit when I am scared. I can open myself up, revealing the precious child that lingers in my soul. I hear with my heart instead of my ears. I touch with respectful, kindness instead of swatting away the misunderstood. I ask quietly for information from others so that I may learn and pass on any new ideas or thoughts. I remember what I don't know is so much bigger than what I do.
I am still very much just a girl. When a child seeks my attention and calls me "Mam" I turn, laughing at the very idea that I have grown up into such a mature title. I am reconciling accounts with my insides feeling young and girlish while my outsides look so much more like a mom or mam or worse still, a lady.
When I was in 4th grade I thought 45 years old was ancient. It's too bad I didn't know then I would still feel the best of my girl qualities at the ripe old age of 45. Maybe I would have been less afraid and enjoyed my 4th grade picture more.