Growing up in the 80’s, being a supermodel was synonymous with everything I wanted. Fame, beauty, clothes, attention. I knew I had it in me, I just didn’t have it on the outside. So I drew inspiration from beautiful people like Cindy Crawford, Paulina Porizkova, and Christie Brinkley. Christie was recently on Dr. Oz looking like the 80’s were last week. Fresh, young, and oh so radiant. Women’s wellbeing was not even a concept I could grasp. Why would it? I had health and energy to spare.
As a impressionable teen and young woman, I compared myself with her. I wanted to be her. She was the epitome of every fresh, and natural, and beautiful. I aspired to shine as bright and as beautiful. I almost wanted see that she let herself go now that’s she’s in her sixties. You know, to even the “scales” out and…to remember that there’s a God. But noooo, she looks just as beautiful, bright, and youthful since she first smiled on camera for a toothpaste commercial. Fortunately, she doesn’t keep how she maintains her youthful looks a secret.
My Perfection Idol
I looked to Christie as a source of aspiration, despite not looking anything like her.
She had long beautiful blonde hair, I had curly almost “Roseanne Roseannadanna” brown hair. She had a big smile of blinding teeth, I had a tiny mouth, crooked teeth, and large chipmunk cheeks that occluded my mouth like an eclipse. She had a slim figure with impossibly long legs, I had thick tree trunk legs and a butt you could serve drinks off. Nonetheless, she was a source of inspiration and beauty to me. I told myself, if she could shine that beautifully, so could I.
Today at 61, her skin is still radiant. Her smile is still effervescent. Her body looks just fit. How does she do that? A couple of her anti-aging secrets are shared in this article.
On my good days, especially after a particularly great yoga class, I share out loud to my hubby, “I look good for my age”, which he always replies, “you look great for any age.”
I make a mental adjustment in my head, that’s right I look good for any age. It’s an adjustment that I know I’ll have to make again the next time I say it.
I strive to get to that place when that’s where I live. I look good for any age. In fact, I want to get to a place where I say, “I look great period.” That striving to be more is hard wired into my being, my operating system. Try as I may to release myself of it, I still keep striving for an even better expression of my myself— whether it’s beauty, my home, my career.
That’s who I am. I’m always raising the bar and putting impossible demands on myself. That’s the part of me that has aged me the most and brought on my chronic fatigue and adrenal burnout. That’s the part of me that worked my little ol’ thyroid to a point where it said, I didn’t sign up to work this hard. And that wear and tear dimmed my light.
Awareness is the First Step
Fortunately, with some help, I recognized this before it took me down the road to more serious illnesses and I was able to make some changes; namely to the way I think, the way I eat, the way I live. The real steps to wellbeing. I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time. I’ve restored my energy and my adrenals. I’ve gotten my metabolism back on track and returned to a healthy weight. I’ve got serotonin functioning in my system again so all traces of derision are gone. I do feel young. Not quite as young as when I first identified Christie as a role model, but young enough to feel great.
She’s still an inspiration of health and beauty to me today. Only it’s changed. I’ve changed. I no longer compare my looks and my beauty to her, I look to find it within myself. And from that place I’m just as radiant.
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