These days when I take a selfie, I’m often baffled at the person who I’ve captured. Who is that middle-aged woman? What happened to the past two decades??
I simply am floored at how fast time is passing. Ten years ago – ten years! –Twist Yoga in Downtown Edmonds opened. The first few years were lean: we opened our doors just as the recession hit: When three people showed up for class, it felt like a win.
At the time, I was still teaching high school full time and running a household, including mothering a three year old, solo. I would continue to teach school and run the studio simultaneously for another six years. There was no amazing Twist Yoga team then. It was just myself and a handful of teachers and front desk volunteers.
Back then, my selfies, which I’d never even occurred to filter, had game. Fast forward a decade, where I find myself snapping five different angles and five different expressions in an effort to capture an image which, if I’m really being honest, I don’t want to look like me.
I’m also starting to understand the value of those stupid selfie sticks: “Back up with that phone, Yo!,” I holler at my daughter she she snaps a pic with me. She’s 13, she still wants to snap a photo with me, although I sense those days waning.
Note: Anyone reading hereby has the permission to throttle me if you ever see me with a selfie stick.
In all honesty, though, my heart breaks for all of us women who, like me, cringes at being a 48 year old …. who looks like a 48 year old. (Or whatever life stage we find ourselves in).
As if the passage of time, and the inevitable tarnish that comes with it, is some sort of failure we should sort out.
This resistance to old things is a heavy label.
Honestly, though: Do we really want to be shiny new? Ugh, I cringe at the things I’ve thought, said and done, because I was new.
When I was newer, I hadn’t yet come to understand that we ALL are screwed up, broken, clingy, neurotic and scared …. Even the people who appeared to have it together.
I thought (still do sometimes!) I was the only one who was lonely, afraid and obnoxious. I compared (still compare!) my insides with the rest of humanity’s outsides and had yet to understand (sometimes I don’t still!) that we are more alike than separate.
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Here’s what, though, I’m thrilled to announce is new: Twist Yoga Richmond Beach! On this, our tenth year of existence, we’re adding a third location nearby, which joins our Edmonds and Aurora Village (also in Shoreline) locations.
We launch Saturday, November 17!
Between our three studios, we now have 85+ classes a week to serve our community. We are new in Richmond Beach, though, so we’ll start slow with offerings and adjust as we see the need.
Find Richmond Beach’s offerings under the “Shoreline” location of our App and web schedule. Aurora Village can be seen under Shoreline, too.
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I digress: There are a lot of people and organizations in the world who are making an absurd amount of money on us internalizing their message that we need be ashamed at the passage of time.
Until we can train our mind for sovereignty (hello, kundalini yoga meditation!) and more brave souls start posting realistic photos of ourselves – sans filter, with eye bags and double chins and all, we’ll continue to think this passage of time is something we should be ashamed of.
A recently friend stopped pretending she was still a brunette, took a selfie of her grey hair and posted it on Instagram this month. We all went nuts. Not actually for the grey hair, as that was but a little interesting, but for the fact that she showed us herself. Here I am getting older, no more hair color. My God I look so much better.
So could you all start posting photos of your beautiful, flawed, selves please?
Also, enough with this neurotic fear that if we take photos of ourselves, all the people we love will think we’re indulgent and self-absorbed. I’ll do it if you do it, because we’re all interesting.
And, maybe we’ll create the revolutionary idea that it’s OK, even quite good, to see ourselves as we are.