Editor’s Note: Esther’s back reflecting on the blessings of her 30’s and choosing to feel positive, excited, and empowered about growing older.

Alas, these changes which tend to bum me out all too often are also paired with some wonderful blessings and gifts which totally eluded me in my 20’s:

• Material comfort- finally earning a decent living, owning a house and an office, being able to fix up our home and buy nice things, traveling regularly, and treating myself to the spa regularly. For the first time in my adult life, I don’t need to worry about money and paying the bills. This has been a dream come true after so many years of struggling to get by.
• A 12-year relationship with the man of my dreams- feeling totally committed, cozy, loved, lovable, and sharing my life with someone who totally gets me and who is truly my best friend.
• The stability to finally have pets! I have two loving and adorable Siberian cats that add so much joy and comfort to my daily round. (Photo credit: suvodeb)
  

• A fantastic career as a therapist- I run my own private practice in person and via phone and Skype all across Canada and have no one to answer to but myself. I set my own hours, fees, and manage to find balance between work, play, and rest.
• Coming into my own and feeling comfortable in my own skin- I’ve learned to settle into who I am and to befriend myself in a way I never could have dreamed of in my 20’s. I actually like and appreciate who I am and have stopped apologizing for perceived flaws (either in myself or through the eyes of others).

Even with all of these blessings, I am completely bewildered at how I could possibly be turning 40 on my next birthday and don’t exactly relish the thought. Ideally, I’d love to be able to magically mix my 20’s looks with my 30’s wisdom and stability and stay 30 forever, but as we all know, this is an impossibility (maybe not for long due to how advanced science is these days…)

So I guess my only choice is to proverbially ‘like it or lump it’…I choose liking it-okay, maybe I don’t exactly LIKE it, but I am choosing to feel positive, excited, and empowered about growing older. I guess it beats the alternative- being fearful, resentful, and living in regret or staying stuck by denying the entire aging process altogether. I definitely don’t want to become one of those women who do anything and everything in her power to stay youthful looking as long as is humanly possible. I definitely don’t find that empowering.

The fact is, we are all going to get older (that’s if we live long enough and are lucky enough), so we might as well have a positive attitude about it. To end, I’ll leave you with a list of some things I hope to enjoy in my 40’s- the next decade life will soon hand me:

• Continuing the amazingly rewarding and successful career I have and trying some new things like doing more video/television work, seeing more and more clients via Skype and telephone, speaking at conferences and doing more tours with my books.
• Enjoying more of the good life with my darling hubby- taking fun trips, more dance lessons, more barbecues on our back deck, and enjoying our dear friends.
• Richer and more satisfying friendships with other women- I have started to build these in my 30’s and look forward to nurturing and enriching these amazing bonds with my peers.
• More time with my family- traveling to exotic places together and enjoying family vacations/family time.
• Letting go of painful things, which happened in my past in other words-more therapy!
• Enjoying my hard-earned wisdom and passing it onto future generations of girls and women.
• Accepting my looks and body, as they are no matter what age I am.
• Enjoying more hobbies I love but don’t spend enough time doing like reading, knitting, mosaic-making, dancing, and doing hot yoga. Doing more writing and publishing.

Esther Kane, MSW, Registered Clinical Counselor, is the author of the book and audio program, “It’s Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide To Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies” (www.endyoureatingdisorder.com) and “Dump That Chump”(www.dumpthatchump.com), and “What Your Mama Can’t or Won’t Teach You”(www.guidebooktowomanhood.com). Sign up for her free monthly e-zine, Women’s Community Counselor, to uplift and inspire women at: http://www.estherkane.com.

Editor’s Note: Esther Kane’s a counselor, published author and a friend of Women at Forty. She’s also a woman on the verge of turning 40 herself. In her piece, Dangling Over the Precipice of 40, Esther candidly shares her emotions about approaching 40. In part 1 she talks about not realizing the beauty of her 20’s, until her body began to change in her 30’s. I can relate to a lot of what Esther writes about as she dangles over the precipice of 40…

Although I’m not quite sure how it happened, I recently turned 39.  This came as a huge shock as I remember my 20’s so vividly- as if they were yesterday. It seems to me that once you hit 20, the process of ageing accelerates exponentially until you’ve barely gotten used to the decade you’re currently in and no sooner-whoosh! – It disappears in a flash of lightening and you’re propelled (or catapulted as it often feels) into the next decade kicking and screaming all the way. (Photo: Esther Kane)

There I was enjoying all the benefits bestowed upon us gals in our 20’s- gorgeous skin, great hair, enviable body, powering my way through the grind we call ‘higher education’, finding my soul mate, marrying him, moving in together, and buying our first home. I excitedly jumped into the workforce to pursue my dreams of becoming a therapist, only to be whacked over the head by a whole lot of grim reality (nasty boss, toxic work environments, little pay, long hours, and vicarious traumatization that many newbie therapists experience until we hit bottom and learn the delicate but life-saving art of self-care).

Did I appreciate how gorgeous and fabulous I was in my 20’s?  Unfortunately, the answer is an emphatic NO. I was never happy with my body, no matter how fit, flexible, or sexy it looked to others. I hadn’t yet realized how fleeting physical beauty really is and didn’t know that the really smart thing to do was to feel incredibly blessed and grateful for my youth and all of the gifts that come with it. I was too busy struggling in poverty while I worked my butt off in university to get the education I needed to live my dream of becoming a therapist. In all, it took 7 years of full-time studies and then a 2-year part time stint in family therapy school while I worked at meaningless, low-paying jobs to pay the rent.

So in retrospect, in my near-40’s wisdom, I realize that I may have had a rocking’ bod, great looks, and mucho sex appeal, but I was dirt poor living in damp, dark, miserable basement suites in Toronto and Vancouver and budgeting like crazy to make ends meet (which they sometimes did not and I had to beg family for money which felt terrible). And the exhaustion-it was sometimes overwhelming. So much studying, working, catching public transit to get all over the city, and crying in my bathtub at night from the stress and loneliness of it all…not fun.

Then 30 just happened to me one day while I was quietly minding my business and my 30’s have been a mix of blessings and disappointments. Among the disappointments, most have been physical signs of ageing which have all been new and somewhat traumatic at first including:

• Grey hairs- a word of advice- tweezing individual hairs eventually becomes a race no one wins- I’ve opted for hair dye
• Boobs drooping substantially- yes gals, it really does happen! Mine now resemble pancakes when viewed from the side.
• Body shape and size constantly changing- this includes new stuff where there didn’t used to be any in the form of extra fat (the biggest shock of all was discovering back fat- horror of horrors!) The term ’let it roll’ has come to have an entirely new meaning for me.
• The inability to lose that extra 5-10 pounds which mysteriously appears on my body as quickly as I used to be able to drop it.
• Looser skin around my eyes and lack of the ‘bounce back’ factor it used to have while applying eye makeup. I liken the skin around my eyes to a snail, which slowly slithers along and eventually reaches it’s destination.
• Lack of sex drive- you know you’re getting older when the idea of flannel PJ’s and a good book is more appealing than seducing the man who sleeps next to you (who is still very attractive BTW.)

But the 30’s weren’t all bad. On Wednesday Esther reflects on the 30’s that have also brought her wonderful blessings…

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Esther Kane, MSW, Registered Clinical Counsellor, is the author of the book and audio program, “It’s Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide To Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies” (www.endyoureatingdisorder.com) and “Dump That Chump”(www.dumpthatchump.com), and “What Your Mama Can’t or Won’t Teach You”(www.guidebooktowomanhood.com). Sign up for her free monthly e-zine, Women’s Community Counsellor, to uplift and inspire women at: http://www.estherkane.com.

Editor’s Note

Hello Fellow Women (Wait a second…aren’t “fellows” men? How do we feminize this word?), Well, hello to all of you anyway until we come up with a better alternative to “fellow”…

In this issue of my e-zine, I want to talk with you gals about that much-touted, not-so-easy to obtain, pop-psychology all-star concept; self-esteem. We all want to know:  What is it? How do I get me some of that?  How do I make it stay?

In this article, I’m going to attempt to begin addressing these questions to get you thinking, questioning, and hopefully, moving forward to answering them for yourself.

In terms of what self-esteem is, I have found a few definitions by doing a web-search for the term. Here they are:

• Feelings of self-worth stemming from the individual’s positive or negative beliefs about being valuable and capable
• a feeling of pride in yourself
• dignity: the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect

I’d say those are pretty good definitions and quite straightforward. If only it were as easy to HAVE self-esteem as it is to define it! I wish I could tell you that I was one of those women who treats low-self-esteem like a ridiculous practical joke and just laughs it away while I constantly feel fabulous, brilliant, beautiful, and at “the top of my game”, but I’d be lying and I am really bad at lying and the guilt obtained from lying would decrease my self-esteem further, which is something I don’t need at the moment.

Yes, I have moments of feeling like I can take on the world and dance around the kitchen singing “W-O-M-A-N” at the top of my lungs along with the CD, only to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror to observe that, “wow- don’t I look fabulous today?” Then I have a great day at work and really get it that I’m helping people to live better lives and I give myself the old pat on the back for a job well done…

Those are the good days…

On the bad days, I have what I call “low self-esteem attacks” wherein I temporarily forget who I am, what I do for the world, and what is good about me. And I know I’m not the only one because every day I hear stories from my clients about the exact same phenomenon. When I have positive self-esteem myself I look at these amazing women in front of my eyes who think they’re “nothing”, “stupid”, and “ugly” and I want to jump up out of my chair and scream, “Who told you these horrible lies about yourself?! None of it is true! You’re brilliant, magnificent, and fabulous and have so much to contribute to the world!”

But, being the ‘good therapist’, I wipe the horror off my face and do my best to appear emotionally neutral and help them come to their own conclusions; in their own time. And I know that as a woman, it’s useless to tell another woman over and over again just how great she is and why I admire her. While it’s great to be reminded in our low times, we also need to work on remembering how fabulous we really are all on our own and not become dependent on hearing it from other people so much of the time.

Why is this so hard for so many of us? I have seen lots of women out there who really are convincing when they say that they don’t care what other people think about them, but I’m not so sure they’re being totally honest. I mean, is there one woman out there who has NEVER given a damn about what someone thought of her? If there is, I want to meet her and get her recipe for high self-esteem!

To end this brief thinking-out-loud session about women and self-esteem, I’d like to leave you with some tips on how to boost your self-esteem when you’re having a “low self-esteem attack”:
· write down all the negative things you’re thinking about yourself on one side of a piece of paper, and on the other side, counter them with evidence to the contrary. For example, if you write, “I can’t present myself professionally in public”, you may counter it with, “Yes I can. I did a great job when I did the _______ presentation at work last week and people commented on how professional and organized I was.”

• Call a woman who is less prone to “low self-esteem attacks” (I always call my mother!) and ask her to remind you who you are because you’ve temporarily forgotten…then have a good laugh and ask her how she’s doing.
• When in the midst of a “L.S.E.A.”, seek upliftment (is that a word?) from strong, you-go-girl women who make you feel like you can do anything and take on the world. For example, you may have a favourite female singer who tells it like it is and makes you feel powerful. I don’t know about you, but every time I listen to Aretha Franklin belting out, “RESPECT” or “THINK”, my self-esteem rises considerably.
• And lastly, if all else fails, PRAY!!!!!!! Pray to who/whatever you believe in that has ‘higher power energy’ to help you let go of ‘playing small’ and to send you some reminders of your real self. Pray in earnest and then wait to be pleasantly surprised!

Esther Kane, MSW, RCC relocated to the Comox Valley over two years ago from Vancouver. She is in full-time private practise as a psychotherapist in Courtenay. Esther has over a decade of experience counselling women and their loved ones with a multitude of presenting problems. Her main focus is helping women to become free of barriers which keep them stuck so that they can become all that they dream of being. You can learn more about Esther on her website www.estherkane.com.

This article was originally posted on www.estherkane.com. It is reposted with the authors permission.