Who is that old woman in the mirror?
Making friends with my changing and ageing body.
This year I will turn sixty, and I find I’m having difficulty reconciling the woman in the mirror with the woman in my mind's eye - it's not just that I'm two dress sizes larger, but also that the shape, texture, colour and everything else about the way that my body shows up in the world is changing.
Even though I have been congratulating myself on how well I’ve been embracing the process of ageing, earlier this week I was attending an entry-level Pilates class (my gym-injured back having slowly been rehabilitated by physiotherapy) and found myself in a group of women in their sixties and seventies. I felt much younger than them, but when I saw the whole class reflected in the wall of mirrors, I realised that I was just like them; an older woman, moving gingerly in the beginner’s class on a weekday afternoon. I am no longer the young or middle-aged woman looking at older women. I am the older woman.
I am no long…