I am woman

My birthday is looming, moving me closer and closer to thirty. This really isn't something that bothers me. I don't really fear age, I only fear not owning my age well. I hope to age gracefully gaining wisdom, experiences, and a lack of wrinkles. I think I feel settled adding a year to my life because I feel 28, in a good way. I have a baby, a husband, a career, a second-glorious home, etc. These are things I think I should have at this age and am proud of them. I sometimes don't feel my age and am shocked that I have all these things, however, when I say the number 28 out loud it makes perfect since that this things have accumalated.

And with this age has come a certain amount of wisdom. When I was a kid I hated the fact that I was a girl. The only way I felt I could be happy and successful was to act as boyish as it was possible and look as not girlish as I could. I felt that since my insides were so fun and active, my outsides couldn't be girly or it would ruin everything.

Then, as I got older I felt that I was selling out to adulthood if I dressed girly-ish and that people wouldn't know the real me inside because the outside me would look so different. However, this year I have had a realization. I have slowly started dressing nicely, wearing real make-up, matching my purse to my outfits, etc. And it has made me feel pretty and poised. Poise and presence are things I aspire to in adulthood.

I have realized that I want to look nice. I want to wear pretty, frilly dresses, business suits, make-up, heels, product in my hair, etc. I want to so I will be respected in my career, because I feel better about myself and more mature and because I weirdly want to be feminine for my son so he will be proud of me. But the real eureka moment came when I realized that this new desire in me in no way takes away from my inner self.

Just because I wear a frilly dress one day does not mean that I quit being a first degree black belt in tae kwon do. Walking around in high heels doesn't mean that I never packed parachutes or went sky diving. In fact, I think I am more kick-ass because I can do both. I am still an awesome world traveler since I know that I should choose tennis shoes while catching a train in France, even though I now choose heels for work or a night out.

With my maturity has come an understanding that to be an awesome, happy woman is to except all of my womanhood. That means that I can strive to be pretty, read literature and make "that's what she said jokes" all at the same time. I can cry at movies now without any regret because I understand that crying while female does not mean I am weak but that I now have so much more to love and lose in my life which allows me to empathize with storylines in a way I never could before.

At the age of almost-28 I can now embrace all the caveates of my womanhood and I wouldn't trade one wrinkle or stretchmark for that knowledge.