Shared from Roses of Prose blog.
What do you see when you look in the mirror? If you’re a woman, do you see the young lass you were? Do you see wrinkles and age marks? Do you see your mother looking back at your through your own eyes? I see all this and more.
At one time, I was a young lass. We were all young lasses, but for me that was a few decades ago. I had long, and I mean, long dark hair, was skinny as a fence post, and flat chested as the proverbial pancake. At some point along around the end of the 70s, I cut my hair and permed it to a shoulder-length mop. Yes, this was me circa 1980.
I remember that young woman. I liked her. She had spunk, sassiness and the guts to pose in a bikini. She’s still inside me, but the outer shell is a bit changed.
I look in the mirror today and see a few character lines. I do NOT have wrinkles. My hair is white, mostly, and permed. When I compare the me of now and the me of then, I see the same eyes and smile. I kinda like both. Today I see a woman who is pretty darned sure of herself, who has spunk and sassiness, and the wisdom to avoid bikinis like the plague.
I also see my mother looking back at me. Mini-Mommy, as she was know to all my friends (she was barely 5’1″ where I was 5’8″), had the greatest giggly-laugh. She loved nothing more than a funny joke, a good book, and terrific conversation. She taught me to listen, think, and then speak, a lesson I generally tend to ignore. I don’t often think before I run my mouth, but that might be a topic for a different blog post.
The point here is, we are all of our experiences. We are our mothers. We are our sisters and cousins. Part of our young-lass self still lives inside the older and hopefully wiser current self. Both selves make us who we are today.
The naysayers, those who would diminish our value through put-downs and bullying, have no place in our circles of friends. We need to look in the mirror for a different image, the one where we are fearless inside. The classic Facebook meme to the left is what we should see when we look in the mirror. Brave. Strong. Willing to look the world in the eye and roar.
I like the young-lass me. I like the worldly me. I like the me my mother helped form. And I like the lion me.
Which one are you?
Even inspired by your very fine writing, Betsy, I am not moved to publish a photograph of myself in a bikini. That said, I do recall the young woman I was, the middle-aged woman I became, and the woman who found she was, in unexpected ways, her mother. I remember clearly the moment I looked down at my hands, preparing one of my mother’s special recipes, and saw her hands performing the same task. I remember, too, no longer dreading becoming like her but actually enjoying it. She was a feisty broad. I am a feisty broad, perhaps in my youth more shrill, occasionally obnoxious, than feisty. But out there on the front lines for what I believed. I suppose I still am, with the encouragement of a community of strong women like you. Thanks for posting this.
Thanks, Dean. It’s up to all of us to embrace my inner mom…