Drop and Give me 50
- Lisa J. Perry
- Jul 31, 2016
- 2 min read
Today I met with a wonderful young lady who wanted to speak with me about my experience in education and leadership. She found me on Facebook, reached out and asked to get together over coffee.
As most introductions go, we both shared a bit about our backgrounds and how we got into the work we did. She and I bonded over our experiences raising childen-her, a new mom of a 1 year old and me, a 20 year veteran-mom with three children. I shared how I was in a transitional phase in my life where in about a year and a half I will be turning the big 5-0!
She asked me if I was dreading this transition or excited. I thought for a moment and announced that I was looking forward to it because I was already in the process of planning for that moment-that milestone. It is a celebration, I think, that when we turn 50 we are finally able to be okay with who we are...these perfectly imperfect beings that have been witness to a half-century of life lessons, struggles and hopefully some amazing successes.
I am looking forward to all that wisdom that I have worked hard to get by having a messy life thus far. I say messy because if you are living life fully, you are making mistakes, pain finds you, disappointments jump out at you at different times on your journey. It is messy because I have fallen many times only to jump back up, dust off my scratched knees and kept moving in the direction that life would take. Messy isn't bad at all. It doesn't mean that I wasn't happy. It doesn't say to the world that I didn't get things right.
What is means is that when you open yourself up and truly let life happen, the good days and the bad ones will make a life that is full of amazing moments, opportunities and lessons. I love that my life hasn't always been easy and that I have had to fight for the things I wanted and believed in. So as I grow older with each year, it makes me proud to be a survivor, a warrior, a perfectly imperfect woman full of grit and grace. That is a life worth writing about. So come on 50 and show me what you got...I surrender to the beautiful gift of growing older.
