Notes From My 90-Year-Old Self

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
— Mark Twain

In two weeks, I turn 65

I normally do not celebrate birthdays. I love seeing people and spending time together, but I don’t “need” any gifts or a giant cake. And I gave up alcohol almost six years ago, so parties really hold no appeal.

Sixty-five, however, feels different. Not because I feel older, but because society has determined that this particular birthday indicates a shift in my existence. I am applying for Medicare, navigating the supplement plans, joined AARP (they really DO have great discounts), and scheduled the suggested routine medical tests

According to the rest of the world, this is the age I should “retire,” even though I retired from my 42-year career in 2024. I have been trying to lose the menopausal weight for several years, but I am in good shape. I exercise daily, eat well, and have excellent balance and flexibility. In many ways, I feel younger than I have in years.  Due, in part, to the lack of stress from said 42-year career

What bothers me about this birthday is how others are responding to me. There are questions about how I will spend my “free time,” with assumptions that I should simply travel or play golf.

Only a few people are asking about the new career I have planned. One that I have dreamed about for years.  It is taking longer than expected to fully emerge, but I am okay with that. It means I am also taking time for me. I have earned it

I have decided, however, that I am going to celebrate this birthday with gusto. Not because I am growing older, but to celebrate the truth that I AM NOT DONE YET.

I truly feel like I am in the “second spring” of my life. Ideas that I have had for years are finally putting down roots and beginning to bloom. AND I have more time for me, my family, and life in general.

That said, I AM going to be 65.

I routinely tell my children that I plan on living to 100. I have lots to do still, and I will need every second. Time is not closing in, but I am being more realistic about the need to pick up the pace if I am to truly get everything I dream of done.

And I see this marker of time as an opportunity to look back and review where I have been and where I still want to go.  Assuming I might only make it to 90, or even if I make it to 100, I wondered what my 90-year-old self would say to me about where I have been and where I still could go.

Here are my thoughts.

Things I did really well

1.  I kept becoming.

I never decided I was finished. I remained willing to question what I believed, who I was, and what I wanted my life to mean.

2.  I stopped drinking.

Not simply because I gave up alcohol, but because I chose to be present for the rest of my life. I interrupted a pattern that had occupied decades and discovered there was still so much life waiting for me.

3.  I told the truth about my life.

I stopped editing my story to make other people comfortable. I learned that telling the truth wasn't the same thing as confessing. It was simply refusing to hide.

4.  I turned what hurt me into something useful.

I didn't waste my difficult years. I let them teach me, and then I used what I learned to sit beside other women while they found their own way.

5.  I became CURIOUS instead of cruel toward myself.

Maybe one of the greatest things I ever did. I stopped asking, “What is wrong with me?” and started saying, “Interesting. I wonder what's happening here?”

6.  I NOTICED.

I noticed when I was disappearing. I noticed what I consumed, what I tolerated, what I repeated, what I feared, what I loved, and what made me feel alive. And once I noticed, I couldn't completely go back to sleep.

7.  I kept changing my mind.

I let myself outgrow ideas, identities, relationships with myself and others, and even things I once believed in with absolute certainty. I learned that changing my mind wasn't hypocrisy. Sometimes it was evidence that I was paying attention.

8.  I loved my children without requiring their lives to unfold the way I wanted.

I worried. I hurt when they hurt. I wanted desperately to protect them. But eventually I understood that loving someone doesn't mean saving them from being human.

9.  I became a grandmother who was truly there.

Not merely alive. Sober. Present. Awake. Interested. Listening. Watching little people become themselves.

10.  I created things.

I wrote. I taught. I coached. I built communities. I asked questions. I put ideas into the world without knowing exactly where they would land.

11.  I kept learning.

At an age when I could easily have said, “I know who I am,” I kept asking, “Do I?”

12.  I learned to trust myself.

Not because I always knew the right answer, but because I finally understood that I could survive being wrong.

13.  I stopped waiting for certainty before living.

I learned that safety was never the promise. Participation was.

14.  I came home to myself.

Not to some perfect, healed, enlightened version of me. To the complicated, funny, occasionally stubborn, frequently uncertain woman who had been there all along.

15.  I loved. A lot.

Imperfectly, sometimes anxiously, sometimes too fiercely.  But I loved my people. And in the end, I suspect that will matter more than almost everything else.

Things I wish I had stopped worrying about much sooner

1.  My body.

I spent far too many years believing it was something I needed to improve before I could fully enjoy living inside it. Meanwhile, that body has carried me through an entire lifetime.  Faithfully.

2.  Whether everyone understood me.

They didn't. They weren't supposed to.

3.  Whether people approved of me.

Some did. Some didn't. Astonishingly, the earth continued rotating.

4.  Whether I was doing enough.

Enough work. Enough exercise. Enough writing. Enough helping. Enough healing. Enough becoming. I wish I'd understood earlier that life wasn't keeping score.

5.  Whether I had finally figured myself out.

There was never going to be a final answer to “Who am I?”  I was a living thing, not a crossword puzzle.

6.  Whether my children were going to be okay.

Their lives belonged to them. My job was never to guarantee their happiness. My job was to love them while they lived their own stories.

7.  Whether I had wasted too much time.

I hadn't. Even the years I would never choose again became part of the woman who eventually chose differently.

8.  Whether I started too late.

Sobriety. Writing. Coaching. Teaching. Reinvention. Whatever it was….I started when I started. That was the only starting point I ever had. Or needed.

9.  Whether something bad might happen.

Something bad did happen. More than once. Something beautiful happened too. Usually while I was busy worrying about the bad thing that hadn't happened yet.

10.  Whether I was making the right decision.

There were very few "right" decisions. There were choices, consequences, adjustments, surprises, and new choices.

11.  Whether I was being selfish when I chose myself.

I wish I had understood sooner that abandoning myself never made anything better.

12,  Whether I needed to fix myself.

I spent an extraordinary amount of energy working on a woman who mostly needed to be listened to.  To feel seen.

13.  Whether I was behind.

Behind whom?

14.  Whether I should have known better.

I knew things when I knew them. Then I learned something else.

15.  Whether my life looked impressive.

At 90, I don't think I'm going to care much about impressive. I think I'll care about whether it felt like mine.

And perhaps the last thing on the page, written in a slightly shakier hand, would read….

I wish I had worried less about becoming the woman I thought I was supposed to be and spent more time enjoying the woman I already was.

And underneath that…..

Nothing was wrong with me.

I was unfinished.

Thank God.

Perhaps this is the most important gift the.90-year-old me can give the 65-year-old me.  I don't need to wait another 25 years to have her perspective.  I can start today.  Because tomorrow is NEVER a day on the calendar. 

So in celebration of my 65^th birthday, I hope you all will join me in stating simply, I AM NOT DONE YET.   Celebrate the woman you ALREADY are and let go of all that you think you “should” be…

Much love,

Lisa

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Lisa Hamil is a founding member and host for The SOS Collective, an online international women’s recovery and support group.  However, this blog and any classes or coaching offered by Lisa Hamil LLC are separate from and not affiliated in any way with The SOS Collective.