The Moment I Stopped Recognizing Myself and What Came Next

The first time I saw my aging reflection, I flinched. What if this midlife threshold isn’t something to hide, but something to honor?

I still remember the first time I saw how loose the skin under my chin had become. I’d caught a glimpse of it here and there, but on one particular morning, I was applying make-up and, to my horror, the angle of my vanity mirror reflected back to me just how much my neck had softened. It was no longer taut or smooth but seemingly losing elasticity by the day.

I flinched as I saw my reflection, shock flooding my body. I couldn't reconcile the woman staring back at me with the woman I believed myself to be inside.

I was appalled at how old I thought I looked and immediately made a mental note to avoid showing that angle when I was with other people. I couldn’t stand the idea that anyone else might see how slack my skin was.

Around the same time I started to notice that the tops of my thighs had developed a crepe-like texture along with my stomach, breasts and arms. When I looked down at myself, I saw my grandmother’s skin.

It seemed to have happened overnight. I’d gone from feeling fairly good about being in my mid-forties to suddenly having an unwelcome flash of insight that my body and face were changing in ways I wasn’t prepared for. It was a definitive moment. And I didn’t like it one bit.

After sitting with these emotions for a few days, I decided that since I was going to continue aging as long as I was living, I might as well embrace as much of the journey as I could. After all, what was the alternative? Hiding away? Afraid to let people see me? That didn’t sound much like living.

Also, as the very core of my work with midlife women was rooted in truth and courage, to turn away from my own truth felt incongruent and misaligned with what I wanted to represent.

So, within a week of that vanity mirror moment, I posted photos on social media of the unflattering angles I’d been determined that nobody else should ever see. Instead of hiding my so-called flaws, I chose to highlight them. Because I have learned over and over again that shame cannot survive illumination.

Instead of being terrified that someone might inadvertently see my sagging skin in a photo or video, or in real life, I opted to show the world intentionally. Explicitly. In a way that felt empowering rather than shameful.

February 2021 when I first noticed how much my skin had slackened.

As I began to make peace with this new chapter, I realized how utterly ludicrous it was that women spend their teens, twenties and thirties being objectified only to reach their forties and fifties and feel as though they’ve aged out of attractiveness and that they’re now becoming irrelevant or invisible.

I thought of the countless hours and dollars many of us have spent trying to make ourselves as attractive as possible in order to cater to the heterosexual male gaze, only to now spend countless hours and dollars trying to minimize or erase the signs of aging.

We’ve swallowed the lie that our bodies are something to be ashamed of. Too thin, too fat, too curvy, too flat, too dark, too pale… why not add “too old” to the list?

Better still, why not burn the list entirely.

It's taken ongoing work for me to reach a place of self-acceptance when it comes to visibly aging. Especially because the changes to my skin and body feel premature. I always thought it would happen later down the line. Maybe my sixties. Certainly never in my forties.

But a few days ago, when I noticed how the camera had captured my scrunched-up fifty year old skin, I experienced a genuine sense of ease about how I look. Because this is the reality of where I'm at. The truth of what it is to be in an aging body. Or at least in my aging body. My skin is never going to look firmer or younger than it does today. It will never be smooth and taut again.

Even as my mind readily conjures up a dozen images of younger me with clear, smooth skin and thick hair, I know I don't want those years back. I don't want to be that young woman again. Because I've changed. And I now realize that contrary to what I first thought in that vanity mirror moment, my body hasn't betrayed me, it's simply changed with me.

March 2025. Feeling a true sense of ease and peace about my aging body.

The Threshold We Don't Mark

That moment—the first time we truly see our aging reflection and don't quite recognize ourselves—is actually more than a moment. It's a significant threshold. Yet our culture offers no ceremony, no acknowledgment, no framework for processing this profound shift in identity.

Instead, we're bombarded with how to fix the ‘problem’. We’re offered serums and creams. Procedures and fillers. We're sold the idea that this natural process is something to be reversed, fought against, hidden, ashamed of.

What might change if we approached this moment with attention and intention instead? What if we paused to witness this threshold with the same deliberate presence we give to other life passages?

The disconnect between how we feel inside and what we see in the mirror creates a particular type of cognitive dissonance. Researchers have found that many women maintain a stable internal age identity, often feeling about 20 years younger than our chronological age. Our reflection becomes evidence of a truth our minds haven't fully integrated.

This discrepancy isn't something to solve. It's something to notice. To witness. To acknowledge as part of our becoming.

Finding the Pause

The journey from flinching at my reflection to feeling ease (and dare I even say joy) at my appearance has been far from linear. It's been a messy practice of returning to presence again and again. Of cultivating a different relationship with change itself.

Some practices that have strengthened my own capacity for this presence:

• Deliberately looking at my reflection without judgment, simply noting what I see

• Acknowledging out loud: "This is where I am"

• Asking thoughtful questions about what this body has experienced, what it has carried, what wisdom it holds

• Recognizing that my discomfort with aging is separate from the fact of aging itself

• Contemplating what I've gained rather than what I've lost
  

There's something powerful about the phrase "the woman I am becoming." It acknowledges that we are never finished, never complete, always in process. Midlife isn't an end point but a meaningful chapter of continued growth and evolution.

In the photographs that inspired these thoughts, I not only see my past and present selves, but also recognize the woman I'm continuously becoming. All aspects of my being deserve to be witnessed fully, with intention and thoughtful recognition.

What threshold moments have you experienced in your relationship with your changing appearance? How have you marked or acknowledged them?

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Ready to integrate all aspects of yourself? Try my free guided meditation on Insight Timer called The Wisdom Walk: Meeting Your Past, Present & Future Selves. This practice invites you to gather all versions of yourself, from childhood to the present moment, and walk together toward your future becoming, acknowledging each version's contribution to who you are now. It will help you view your aging process in a different light.