Hello again ladies!
Tonight we continue our โ12 Days of Christmasโ Q&A blog post series … these answers are my gifts to you! ๐๐๐
And as always, I welcome your feedback at TheSirenRules@gmail.com if youโre inspired to write to me directly! Xo!
๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ #7
I have questions around aging. Iโve heard the phrase โto age gracefullyโ, what does that really mean, and what are some techniques or strategies to enhance cognitive health as you grow older?
~V
Thank-you V, what a beautiful questionโฆ aging well is a subject near and dear to my heart, and Iโm quite passionate about correcting the misperception that (especially for women) aging is a terrible, depressing process of inexorable decline toward death, and must be denied or avoided at all costs!
Clearly, that is how our agist, sexist society perceives the process of growing older, and yet since it is a process that happens to all of us, that irrational belief has led to widespread insane behavior, and a great deal of suffering. Itโs also a completely superficial, spiritually-bankrupt view, that presumes we are nothing more than expiring meat-bags, and leads to all sorts of fear-driven consequences and existential crises. In our modern materialist culture, most female celebrities are made out of more plastic than flesh – and go to extreme lengths to appear twenty-five foreverโฆ in my opinion, this is insane, self-degrading, and completely unnecessary.
A woman is far more than her youthful appearance – and certainly a Sirenโs appeal comes not from her looks, but from her confidence and charms. The most mesmerizing women in the world did not become so until after their youth had passed, and their sense of self had enough experience to be deeply rooted and truly blossom. To me, aging is not a matter of growing older, but of growing wiser and getting better at lifeโฆ each year, we are (hopefully) lucky enough to know more than we did the year before. We are richer and more experienced, we know ourselves more fully, we understand the world better, we prioritize more effectively, we second-guess ourselves less and speak up more, we have less and less time to please everyone and follow social expectations, so we choose to delight in expressing ourselves exactly as we are, and finally doing what we want for a change.
When you spend time with the radiant women I have had the pleasure to meet who are living very full lives in their 70s, 80s, and beyond, you donโt see wrinkles or grey hairs, but an abundance of character, personal strength, integrity, wisdom, and a well-earned, well-lived life. Almost without exception the older women I have known have told me that at a certain age they just stopped caring about trying to please everyone and do what they were told – and started speaking their truth. Hearing this for the first time as a teenager, had a great impact on meโฆ I could see what an incredible gift it was, and determined that I would do everything I could to develop my own courage, so that I would not have to wait until I was 70 or 80 to finally speak my mind and have the sort of freedom I saw the grandmothersย enjoying to do and wear and act just as they pleased!
I believe to age gracefully, means to age into yourself – to more fully embody exactly who and what you are in this world, rather than what society, parents, partners, friends, etc expect or want you to be.ย To shine your light and to speak your truth as loud and bright as you dare, and to give that freedom to others through your shining good example. The ripple effect we have in the world through others observing our actions is something we can not possibly measure, but I know it is far more than we imagine, and it may be the biggest impact of our lives.
Time and again Iโve personally been blessed with the experience of someone telling me (usually long after the fact) that seeing me be the first one to jump on the dance floor, or speak out against some local injustice, inspired and delighted them to lean into their own courage, embrace joy, and speak up for what they believe in also. Those precious examples when someone shared with me the impact I inadvertently had were incredibly touching and powerfulโฆ but how many others in these social or public situations must have also been affected, without telling me? I canโt even imagineโฆ but I do know that it would never be possible to have that level of personal strength and self possession in oneโs teens or young adulthood, where physical beauty and reproductive function is at its peak. And that this process of natural maturation is as perfect and beautiful as a caterpillar becoming the butterfly… it makes perfect sense that we only become our full and complete selves when we are closer to the end of our lives than to the beginning.
The practical aspects of aging well and maintaining mental and physical health would include keeping physically fit with activities you enjoy, plenty of brain stimulation through life-long-learning and a growth mindset, eating a healthy diet low in carbs and high in healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, managing stress, sufficient sleep, and having plenty of social connections. Isolation and stress, poor sleep and diet, kill countless people prematurely. I know of several studies that proved all cognitive health could be preserved across populations of seniors who learned new skills or had challenging mental tasks to perform as part of their daily routines (cloistered elderly nuns on an island in Europe playing intensive chess with each other every day and not having a single case of dementia or cognitive imparement among them was one great example in this research!)ย
Incredibly (or perhaps quite obviously) all seniors who continued to challenge their brains into their later years, never developed any cognitive decline – regardless of their genetics, diet, and the statistical probabilities of this happening to most western-world citizens. Continually building new neural-connections was key, and pursuing a new mental challenge such as learning a language or musical instrument that subjects had no existing experience with, not only maintained, but reversed cognitive decline in those who already had slight impairments in the research. This means that keeping our brain working well to any age our body reaches, is firmly within our control. Adopting a lifelong-learner mindset, and staying curuious about the world is key.ย
I believe healthy aging is growing older with no decline in physical or mental function, no weight gain, and no reduction in your favorite activities. The incredible thing is that we are so used to being chronically sick and unhappy in the US, that we can hardly imagine this is possibleโฆ and yet in many so called โprimitiveโ and eastern cultures, elders in their 90s and 100โs are cheerfully doing the same manual labor and same function in their community that theyโve been doing their whole lives – only with advanced years, more people come to ask their advice and council!ย
It would be lovely if we could adopt the wisdom of so many nature-based societies and eastern cultures in respecting and looking up to those with more years of experience, instead of being so fearful of death and aging that we refuse to admire or listen to anyone who doesnโt look 30 or younger on TV – particularly women. But it is up to us to be the change we wish to see in the world, and that means all of us have the opportunity to age fearlessly and inspire the next generation of women to embrace the sexiness of their confidence, wisdom, and hard-earned-chutzpah, over botox, lip-fillers and boob-jobs.ย
To close on an uplifting noteโฆ I invite anyone reading who has concerns about aging as a woman to watch interviews of Tina Turner or Helen Mirren in their 70โs – two fantastic examples of Sirens living their best life as absolute legends – radiant with confidence, success, joy, and passion in their committed relationships with quality men who worship and devote themselves to them. You know thereโs no way either of them would trade what they have earned and who they became as powerful, seventy-something icons, for their former insecure-and-abused twenty-something-selves. After seeing and hearing these incredible elder Sirens light up the room and speak about the happiness and fearlessness they found in their later years, youโll understand that age really is โjust a numberโ.ย
Much love!
๐ โ๏ธ๐๐โ๏ธ๐๐พ๐๐
~Selina (the Siren-Santa ๐)
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The Siren Rules 