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When men age, we call it distinguished, right? So why is it that women are taught to hide when we age? And maybe we're not taught, but that's how we respond, You know, we get a little gray, and instead of being distinguished, we're going, ooh, I gotta go get a a box of color for that, right? And so we get some lines around our eyes.
And where for men we're like, ooh, that adds character, it doesn't do that for us. So when when those same signs are showing up on a woman's face or body, suddenly we're talking about what we need to cover, tighten, fix, color, lift, all the things, And and I want to know what that has done to the way we think about aging for ourselves,
I want us to listen to some of the words we use, or at least commonly use when I'm meeting with a woman in a coaching session, right? She'll say things like, My neck makes me look old, or my hands give away my age. You know, we say old as though it means unattractive, as though looking at our age is evidence that something has gone wrong in our lives, And I don't think most of us consciously do this.
but we have absorbed this idea from advertising, from movies, you know, any type of beauty messaging, from seeing older men continue to, be cast in these roles as powerful and interesting and desirable while the women are cast in a completely different light. And and it's funny because, women can be praised for looking good for their age. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. Like, what does that even mean?
Right. And then eventually we start repeating these same messages back to ourselves when we're looking at ourselves in the mirror. So today I want to pull that apart a little bit because I absolutely believe in taking care of ourselves. You guys know that, I love skincare, I teach face exercise, I care about strength and nutrition, sleep, posture, all the things. And these those things help us live vibrant lives in our bodies. And so I do want us to age well.
But I'm becoming less interested into that question of how can I look younger and much more interested in a question of what does it actually look like for a woman to age well? Because I'm beginning to think we've been looking in the wrong place.
Hello Gorgeous!
Are you feeling weighed down by the physical and emotional changes that come with midlife? and Feeling lost and wondering who you are now that your kids are grown? Do you wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and barely recognize the woman staring back at you?
Welcome to Making Life Beautiful Again where midlife women find the guidance and encouragement you need to navigate this unique season with confidence and grace.
Hey, I'm Michelle. An empty-nester, grandma, and Jesus lover. I know firsthand what it feels like to wrestle with self-doubt and the inner critic during midlife.
I tried every beauty trick in the book, hoping to feel better, but the mirror kept reflecting my fears: 'Am I still beautiful? Do I still have a purpose?'
Then one day, I had a breakthrough and fell in love with the incredible woman in the mirror…the woman God designed me to be and I’m here to share it all with you.
So if you’re ready for a simple way to step back into your shoes, and live midlife like you mean it – this podcast is for you!
So grab your water bottle, lace up your walking shoes, and let’s get started making life beautiful again!
today I want to start with that question that that sits underneath all of this. And that is, who taught us that looking older meant that it looked we were looking worse?
I I want to think about how strange some of our language is when we really stop to listen to it. we tell women to age gracefully. we're we're all familiar with that term, but what does that even mean?
You know, age naturally, but don't look too old. Take care of yourself, but don't look like you're trying too hard. Don't obsess over your appearance, but don't let somebody think you've let yourself go. Like you tell me and feel free to put comments here. What does that even mean? Right?
I think when I think about it, it's like wear whatever makes you feel beautiful, but eventually somebody's gonna decide that something isn't age appropriate, right? There's this like teeny little target that we're expected to hit where we where we're supposed to age, you know, because obviously we're aging, but while some somehow we're supposed to make that aging itself look as unobtrusive as possible, right?
And if you ask me, that's exhausting. I tried it. It doesn't work. I'm sure you've tried it too. because there's no finish line. It's like a carrot that's always moving. You you don't get to achieve anything ever. It's like the laundry basket that's always being filled, right? And so you can spend an enormous amount of money and energy trying to make sure that nobody can tell that time has passed. And but I'm gonna have to tell you, time's still gonna pass, right?
And so now I want to be careful here because I'm not standing on the other side of this saying, well, just embrace everything, every change and stop caring. You know, that's not what I'm trying to say at all. You know me better than that, right? I think caring for ourselves a lot. And I think there are things that we can do to support our skin, our muscles, our hair, our strength, and all those things. And I do teach those things, right? I practice those things.
And you can read all about them inside of my book, Crown in Beauty, in chapter six. so they do really make a difference, But let's ask ourselves the real question here. Am I caring for myself because I value the life that I've been given? Or am I caring for myself because I'm terrified that somebody might actually realize I'm getting older?
Right. Those two motivations can lead to the same skincare routine, but create a very different relationship with the woman that you see in the mirror when you look at yourself. And so this is one of those reasons I love these conversations that we have here at Making
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Life Beautiful Again and inside the Facebook group. We can actually say these things out loud, right? We can admit, yes, I care about.
The wrinkle that's sitting on my face that I just noticed today. Like I want my skin to be healthy, and yes, I noticed that my my neck is starting to show signs of sagging. You know, we can talk about all of that without deciding that our worth rises and falls with what we see in that mirror, right? Because pretending we don't care isn't the answer either, And so I think the healthier question, though, here is and and you hear me say it all of the time, and you will
Continue to hear me say it, but how do I get to care well for the woman I am now? And so we we've said this before. We're not trying to take care of that woman that we were when we were 25, But what does it look like to prepare for the woman I want to be 10 years from now? How can I take care of her right in this current season? And once we start here, I think we have a much better.
interesting conversation about aging, right? There's actually a name that researchers use for some of the language that we've been talking about and they call it old, old talk.
And a 2026 study, so this is very recent, that was published in Body Image, looked at women who were ages 40 to 65 and described old talk as critical negative conversation about signs of aging in our appearance. You know, things were being said like, I look ancient in this picture, I can't wear shorts anymore because of these legs. my love handles have love handles. I heard someone say that the other day. and and what I found interesting.
Is that the researchers found an association? And I hope you guys hear me. So slow down and listen. They found an association between greater social media use with that internalized appearance pressure, you know, with more frequent old talk among the women that they studied. Now, I don't want us to hear that and go social media is the devil and delete everything. because that's not what the study proved, but but it does give us something worth noticing, right?
What are we repeatedly hearing about a woman our age is supposed to look like or live like or behave like? and then maybe even more importantly, like what are we repeatedly saying to ours about ourselves? You know, because I think sometimes this becomes so normal that we don't even hear it anymore. And then when we meet with a life coach or or a counselor and we're trying to dig for those lies that we believe about ourselves, we can't even identify them anymore because it sounds so familiar.
And it sounds so true, right? but I'm gonna I'm gonna point out a couple things because I want you to imagine here with me for just a split second, you're with a group of women and somebody pulls out their cell phone to take a picture, And all of a sudden you hear things like, make sure you get my good side, right? Wait, let me hide my stomach or delete that. I look so old. Let's try again. And pretty soon everybody is inspecting themselves instead of remembering why the picture was taken in the first place.
Okay. And I had this happen, recently. I I always take photos with my grandchildren. And of course I'm dressing for the for the occasion the way I should. I'm wearing an old paint shirt that can get thrown up on because I have grandbabies that are one and two. And so nobody's gonna look good in looking like that. so I was deleting them. And then I later went back and started noticing big gaps of time and it made me really sad.
So we can look at those photos, you know, when we're celebrating a birthday or a grandbaby or we're on vacation, and within seconds, the memory becomes a beauty evaluation. And so this matters to me a lot, you guys, because I want you to have a phone reel of photos that's full of the woman that you are on when you look good, look bad, all the things because you're living your life fully and you don't care. Like that's what I would that is my dream for all of you,
And so, you know, I don't think you should feel like you love every photo taken of you. I certainly don't, right? But I want us to notice when our first response to our own life is criticism. Because eventually saying things like, I don't like this picture easily turns into, I don't want to be in the picture. I'll take the picture. Or even worse, I'm not gonna go to the event anymore because I don't look good.
Right. And that that's a very different problem. And so that is wh why it it starts as appearance, but then it can easily affect our participation in our lives. Right. You stop getting in the family photo. You don't wear the thing that you really love to wear. You don't make the video or start the business because it requires you to be on video. You don't walk into the room with the confidence that you should, and suddenly we're not even talking about wrinkles anymore.
and it's it's about how much of your life you're willing to be seen and live to its fullest.
So today I want to ask you guys something. When you picture a woman who is aging well, what do you see? Please drop it in the chat. What do you see when you hear those words? Right? A a woman who's aging well.
do you do you immediately move to someone who's got
Perfect, smooth skin, a thin body, gray hair that's styled perfectly. maybe a woman who looks 10 years younger than she is. Because this is where I've really been challenging my own definition of what a aging well looks like. you know, we've been taught to ask whether a woman is aging well by looking at her face. And I think we're looking in the wrong place.
That's why I wanted to hear what you guys are saying. Because I think we need to look at her life, right? Is she still curious? Is she still participating and fully and engaging? Is she trying new things? Is she letting herself be seen? Is she still becoming because she is trying new things? You know, that tells me far more about how a woman is aging than the number of lines around that her eyes ever
could.
Right. And I want I want to sit with that for a minute because I don't I don't mean health doesn't matter. health matters enormously. And and I want my body to be strong and maintain muscle and full of energy. And I want my brain to stay sharp and learn things that I've never done before. Right. I want healthy skin. I want mobility so that I can keep traveling and living the life that I live.
And still being able to say yes to adventures when I'm 70 and 80 and Lord willing, like beyond that, like I want to be able to get down on the floor with my grandchildren and get back up again, not not with a bad back, right? Like I wanna create, you know, these things, this is what longevity l means to me, A healthy woman who is aging well.
so as we've been pointing out here with all the comments, you know, it aging well isn't simply adding years to our life it's being able to support the life that I still want to be living many years to come.
And that that begins to completely change this entire beauty conversation, and I call myself a health and beauty strategist, but I feel like those aren't really good words to even describe what my heart really is trying to achieve here. Because now caring for my face isn't about trying to convince the world I'm younger than I am. I mean, it's great if that happens, but it's it's caring for the whole woman,
Who still has something in her life that she wants to do and places she wants to go. I know a lot of people are sitting here probably thinking, like, Michelle, this is all really great, but I still don't like what's happening to my jawline and you know, my neck. And that's totally fair. I notice mine too.
almost on a daily basis because this is my job. So of course I feel like I have to show up, you know, accountable. and so this is where I think we can make a really important distinction between fighting aging and participating in how we age, right? Because you can't stop the clock. You can't stop time. And and I can't promise you that face exercise is going to erase every single line or return your face to what it looked like 20 years ago.
And frankly, that's not the goal. Because I I want you to age in a way where those wrinkles tell the story about your life, right? I think they are a scrapbook for your life. And I want my grandchild to see those smile lines and know that I have lived a life that has learned how to smile even in the trauma moments. There's been plenty of trauma, but Michelle Rose has learned how to smile and look at the silver lining and trust her Papa God to.
carry her. And that's what I want my face to say. Okay. but we we have muscles in our face, right? and so what the problem is is we will carry tension, our posture when we're down, you know, we get everything kind of crinkles together and we get extra wrinkles from that, And so learning how to become more aware of those things.
can be a piece of caring about ourselves intentionally. And again, my book in chapter six talks a lot about these. And there will be weeks where we'll talk more in depth, but today we're just gonna, I'm just gonna help bring you aware to that brain and beauty connection. So I want you to real quickly, before we even touch our face, I want you to sit normally the way you do. And I and I want you just to notice a couple of things. Like where is your head in proximity to your shoulders?
You know, are is your chin being jutted forward or pushed back? Because typically people who look down, their chin's being pushed back. Are your shoulders rolled in? You know, are you clenching your jaw? Are you pressing your lips together? is your tongue tense? You know, now I want you to let your shoulders drop, and I want you to lengthen your neck and head through the crown.
sit your head over your spine and all of a sudden the weight is taken off of those shoulders. Isn't that amazing? I want you to relax your jaw, let your face soften a little bit. And now I want you to, now that everything's in alignment, I want you to smile. Not a big performance smile, but something that you can feel the engagement of your cheeks waking up. Right? Hold that for a minute.
Now, I want you to notice how that has affected your entire body. your entire presence now feels different with the wrinkle on your face, right? And so what I mean when I say beauty can be participation, we're not standing here fighting ourselves in the mirror. We get to learn how to inhabit the face and body we have now, and we get to
Let it be the billboard of our mind. And if we are, if we're looking in the mirror and we're seeing things that we don't like, that affects our mind. And then our mind then affects how our face shows up. And so both of them work in sync with each other, right? And so that's why I don't love single solution beauty messaging. You know, so when someone comes to me for coaching,
It's not here's a skincare product, slap it on your face, and it's gonna be a miracle. We're talking sleep, nutrition, stress, posture, skincare, you know, it does matter. We're we're talking about the relationships in your life, the thoughts you're having, how's your walk with the Lord? You know, and sometimes the biggest thing affecting how vibrant you look has very little to do with whatever product is sitting on your bathroom counter,
And so today I just kind of wanted to take this beauty conversation in a completely different position, right? Because we keep treating aging like it's this cosmetic problem when it's actually this whole life conversation. That's why I titled this making life beautiful again, right? and so you know, also in inside of my membership.
Ageless Beauty Collective, we work across all of those pillars of health and beauty instead of just chasing down skincare and face exercise. But some some months we're talking about the face, but sometimes we're talking about nutrition and strength and and and stress, right? Because I want women to have the tools for the the whole woman. And I
want you guys to look in that mirror and stop fighting the person you're seeing. And I want you to engage with her and live.
the the most wild, vibrant life that you can live for as long as you can live it. Right. And so if you're hearing this and you're thinking, okay, Michelle, like where the world am I supposed to start? I've got you because I don't want you to try to overhaul everything this afternoon by any means. that's who I used to be. I'm I'm an all or nothing girl. but before I tell you about how to find that starting place, there is another layer that I want to talk about because Christian women
This is common for them when when we're talking about aging, right? because something we we we often think about when we say accepting our age means doing nothing. Or when we say that thinking about caring means that we're in we're vain, right? I don't I don't think either one of those are are a very useful definition of stewardship.
Which stewardship, when it talks about beauty, is asking, like, what does God put in my care and how do I care for it faithfully? Right? My body and my face, it's aging. That's not a moral failure. It just is how He designed our bodies. So now I get to decide how I'm going to care for it, right? And I also get to decide whether I'm gonna spend all those years that God gave me with this face and body.
If I'm gonna mourn its existence as it age, or if I'm gonna use this face and body and this voice and this life for what he has still asked me to do, the calling and the purpose still set before me, right? That to me is where this gets way bigger than beauty, you know, because maybe one of those most beautiful things about a woman who is aging well is that she's still available for her life, right? She's not disappeared or decided her best stories are behind her and she isn't
The youngest woman in the room, but she's still willing to learn and be alongside of them. There's no competition, And she's still willing to be used, even though her face and her body has changed. And and that picture of aging is what I would love to see happen most often, So before we finish, I do want to make this practical. I don't want you to leave here thinking, like, well, apparently I need another bit of
better skincare, stronger muscles, more sleep and all the other things I've listed. 'cause if you if you haven't gotten to know me yet, that is not my heart at all. so please don't do that to yourself. But what I want you to think about is what is one area of my health or beauty that if I cared better for it now would help me feel stronger, healthier, and more like myself. And I find most often it ends up being sleep, because we work so hard during the day and then we get there to that
Quiet moment at night, and we just try to stretch it out and give ourselves some extra time. And sometimes sleep is really just what we have to give ourselves, but I want you to think about just one thing, right? And that's why I created my beauty assessment
quiz. It's free.
and so it's designed to help you look where you are right now, identify that area that might deserve your attention first, right? So you may want to work on two things out of those eight pillars. Well, that's okay. After you get through the one, you can work on the next one. but if you're like, I love this conversation right now, you know, I I would love for you, if you're not already part of the Facebook group, jump into it.
but just make sure you start there with just the one thing. Go take the quiz. and and practically, if you don't want to take the quiz,
Just work on trying to catch yourself with that old talk this week. If you're saying things like, I look so old, I would love if you could train yourself to stop and pause. And you don't have to replace it with something you don't believe. Like, but think about what could be more specific that isn't attacking the person, the woman underneath that. my skin just looks dry today. So I can go put moisturizer on. Or I look tired. I really just need a nap. It gives you a solution.
To the thing that when you look at yourself and you think, boy, she looks old. Instead of thinking old, I would love for you to think about the thing that you actually need so you can take care of it, right? Because old isn't a diagnosis, It's just your age. It's just a number. And and I don't want to spend the next 20 and 30 years using the privilege of getting older as evidence against ourselves, right? We don't do that to men. So let's not do that to ourselves, right? And
So when someone's talking about aging well, don't stop at the face. Look at the life. Is she happy and free? Ask yourself that. Am I happy and free? You know, that's the woman I want to be. And I hope that's the woman we're giving each other permission to be, right? Especially here in this group. caring for yourself well to keep living strong for the woman you want to be. So so go take that beauty assessment quiz, figure out that next place.
and next week we're going to take this idea of still becoming in a completely different direction. My friend Tracy is going to be joining me. And you know, part of making life beautiful again is leaving room for God to do the things in your life that you could never have orchestrated yourself. And so Tracy has one of those stories, and her testimony is honestly, it's gonna blow your socks off. so if you've ever wondered whether God can still surprise you.
redeem something in your life and give you a second chance, you want to hear that. I can't wait for you guys to meet her.
We'll see you guys next week.
Hey beautiful! I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend who wants to find a better way to live midlife!? Also, please leave a quick review for the show on Apple podcasts. It lights me up to know this podcast is helping you!
Okay, time to go hang out with my grandson and live my best midlife adventure. I’ll meet you back on Saturday for another episode. Bye!