Since I spent much of the past week camping and yesterday participating in a senior’s golf tournament, I don’t have a regular Fashion Friday post for today. Instead, I’m going to share some words of wisdom from Donna Ashworth’s book, To The Women: words to live by. 

Think about it, you have EARNED this face.

Every line, a laugh shared.

Every wrinkle, a year survived.

Every age spot, a day that the sun shone on you.

Some women believe that as they age, they LOSE their looks. Oh my friends how wrong this is.

A beautiful young women is a happy accident of nature but a beautiful older woman?

She is a work of art.

The Japanese have a practice whereby they fill any broken objects with gold, believing that something which is broken has earned its beauty and should be celebrated and decorated rather than discarded.

I feel this way about women.

It took a long time to find out who you really truly are. A long time. The acceptance that old age brings is freeing. It brings with it peace and happiness.

Everyone knows, happiness looks good on us all.

Your body has been changing since the day you were born and will continue till the day you depart. Ride with it, accept it, embrace it. Be amazed by it.

Allow your face to represent your life, your stories, your joys.

Why choose to be an older woman fervently chasing youth, when you could be that older women who knows what she is worth and has earned every minute of her hard-won self-acceptance.

The trick with ageing successfully my friend, is to pay as little attention to it as possible.

I’ve shared this photo before, but it’s one of my favourites from our time in China. I thought she was beautiful when I first saw her and I still do. I wish I could have spoken to her but language was a barrier. I have no doubt, however, that the well-earned lines on her face tell a story… a story of hardship, a story of survival, but hopefully also a story with some happiness in it. As we age, may our faces also tell our stories with grace and self-acceptance.