50 is not the new 30!

I love hanging out on Instagram - and lately, I have been doing a lot of research about mature and wiser Insta-users, especially women, for my next online program (all will be revealed, patience, please).

All these incredible looking women with the confident hashtag #50isthenew40 are something I totally get. Only one generation ago, our sisters had much less opportunity to keep their bodies in shape as we take for granted today. To my mum, ‘self-care’ was a whispered word tightly associated with guilt because a woman’s work is never done, and the devil finds work for idle hands.

But #50isthenew30? Nope, I'm drawing the line at that. I may still fit into the same dress size and love to dance an occasional night away, but I am proudly as far away from 30 as my age confirms.

#50isthenew30 just denies us all the wisdom, experience, joy, and utter deservedness of a life we live well; it denies us our status as wise women.

To start with, I spent my 30ties totally sleep deprived. At first, I still partied the night away like #30isthenew20, surfing into work fuelled by coffee and adrenalin. Then followed the babies who wouldn’t let me sleep at night, now that I wanted to. My thirties gave me my first glimpse of growing old and desperately missing my free and wild world travelling lifestyle.

My thirties made me struggle with the fact that my identity was taken from me, from being an interesting person with a career and a wide social circle to being invisible because I now had a snotty kid attached. “I used to be relevant” `I remember thinking when my husband received named invitations to achingly cool events to which I suddenly was the plus one.

In my thirties, I felt I knew a lot (and I did), but one thing I definitely could not comprehend at all is the value of experience, that underrated thing that for my teenage daughter basically is the same as “over the hill.” Experience really is quite lovely. It allows you to act with a calm competence and total confidence that you are correct. That you can help and are able to make the world a better place with your knowledge - because you have seen it all before.

While I knew things, I also still struggled to figure out who I really was. My wild 20ties behind me, there was the juggle of career, wife, sex kitten, party girl, student, yogi, mum personality to deal with - I simply had not quite settled into my full female identity, and in my attempt to build the perfect life, opinions of others mattered a lot.

It took the beautiful and bumpy life journey to my 50ties to truly blossom again after late thirties motherhood. Not only do I have the self-confidence to speak up when someone is rude to me or others (much to the embarrassment of my girls), but I KNOW WHO I AM.

While my dharma path always was without a doubt to serve, I also don’t really give a f*ck what others think of me, and have become perfectly unf*ck-with-able, because I had the privilege to grow older, and wiser.

I totally put in the work to stay flexible, healthy and fit, but my body definitely requires more TLC - it’s been around for a while, you know? I for one, am done with being 30. Hangover coffee and adrenaline have been replaced by coffee, a good book and plenty of yoga. Good luck to you girls, you have an exciting ride ahead of you if you are younger - and if you are already there, #wisewoman is a much better hashtag.

Like what you read? Do you want to be the first to know about news, updates and events? Sign up for my weekly love and get a free eBook to go with it.