Last week I was visiting my friends Martha and Jon in New York. We hadn’t seen each other in at least two years. “You look fantastic” Martha said. “Did you have more work done?”

“No.” I laughed. “In fact I’ve had less.” It’s true. I no longer go to great lengths to hide my age. I stopped taking Botox injections about 2 years ago.

As a result, when I looked in the mirror this morning, there they were – those vertical lines between my eyes that can make me look intelligent and thoughtful at best, angry and judgmental at worst. At a minimum, they show my age. I hadn’t seen those lines in at least three years. But there’s no doubt. They’re back.

As my fingers click these keys, I can’t believe I’m actually writing this – it’s like “true confessions of the plastic surgery kind.”

I’m a pretty private person – not one to air my dirty laundry with strangers. But, if you are reading this, you are not a stranger, you are likely another middle age woman like me wanting to look and feel her best and we’ve likely crossed paths in person or on the ether waves. My story may actually sound familiar.

What I am most shy about in airing this public confession are the few men who might read this post. Right?

As a woman, I really don’t want the men around me to know what I actually go through to increase my attraction factor. Do you?

But I made a commitment to come clean with my truth. So here’s another.

I also gave up the artificial hormones.

Oh, how I loved the estrogen and progesterone that were keeping menopause at bay; that made my hair thick and shiny, and kept my waist from getting wider.

In thanks, my body rewards me with incessant hot flashes – as if making up for all that lost time – a constant reminder that my ovaries are not the Spring chickens they once were.

I beg my other glands to step up to the plate and do their fare share. I take supplements, eat right, and coddle my liver and gallbladder. But, ech… I’m just where I am – a beautiful woman aging in a beautiful way and in perfect time.

Now back to my visit with Jon and Martha – “You are absolutely beaming!” they said. I laughed because I had actually done much more work on the inside of me than outside. I will admit, the compliments did feel good.

You see, before the Botox, there was the Blepharoplasty.

Genetics left me with a droopy left eyelid that gave me a sad, melancholy look most times. That combined with the fact that I rarely smiled, (less someone, e.g. a man, actually pay attention to me – which would make me super uncomfortable) kept me in my comfort zone of being unnoticeable.

The eyelid surgery ‘took five years off’ just as the Doc had promised. It gave me a new confidence to ‘try on’ beauty.

I worked out. I wore pencil skirts to show off my long legs. I wore pink pants to the office – just in case there was any doubt there was a woman in the conference room. I began to own my feminine power.

I began to meditate. (Hint: it’s better than Botox.)

Just like I had detoxed my body from artificial ingredients in foods, tablets and injectables, I detoxed from toxic relationships and did a few things I never would have dreamed. I became single again at 55 years old. I left a 25-year career that was suffocating my spirit.

My purge expanded to relationships and work – people and roles that were dragging me down – like ill-fitting shoes, I left them all behind and opted to walk barefoot.

I choose now to spend my time and energy with people who lift me up and inspire me to go higher, be better and who love me just the way I am. If I have a few lines, that’s ok. I am a beautiful middle-aged woman who is more vital, more passionate and more exciting than I have ever been before. 

I’m grateful that I am able to say, “I am beautiful” in this lifetime. Even if it took me reaching 55 years old before I could utter those words and believe them. In however many days that follow, I will be ever grateful for that knowing.