Sometimes I feel like my arm has been sucked into an electrical socket. Other times, I feel like I will die from the exquisite beauty of a dying world.
On June 5, I turned 72. A few weeks later, Paul McCartney turns 84.
Apparently Geminis never get the memo that we’re supposed to stop starting things.
People often ask what I’ve learned. Fair question. But honestly, what has changed my life far more than what I’ve learned is what I’ve had to unlearn.
At 72, I’ve accumulated some wisdom. I’ve also accumulated reading glasses, a bad knee, and a growing inability to pretend things are fine when they’re clearly not.
The real gift of aging, at least for me, has been subtraction.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped needing everyone to understand me. I stopped needing to be right. I stopped trying to win arguments with people committed to misunderstanding me. I stopped looking for a guru, and I stopped waiting for certainty before taking the next step.
There are other things I’ve put down too: the need to explain every boundary, the need to convince people of my lived experience, the need to earn rest, the need to look younger than I am, to be impressive, to turn every struggle into a lesson. I no longer feel compelled to perform healing, optimize my humanity, or fix myself. I refuse to earn anyone’s love.
I don’t want this to sound like 72 is a pinnacle or a rose garden.
I struggle with the changes in my aging body. I hate having to be so aware of limitations and having to work so hard every day to keep my body vital and strong—or, more honestly, to work toward vitality and strength daily.
I was never a gym rat. I loved moving my body outdoors—on a bike, on a trail, camping, backpacking, rock climbing. I never did exercises, though I went through periods when I practiced yoga.
In 1998, at age 44, I suffered a complicated knee injury skiing, a major life event that ended my rock-climbing days and changed the level of activity I could participate in. But I stayed active.
Now I have to be diligent about moving my body whether I want to or not. I attempt the hated exercises. I walk every day. I ride my bike because I want quality of life at this stage of life, and I’m determined to do the work it takes to have that. When I was young, staying in shape was easy. It was never a struggle. I was lucky that way. Now I’m paying for that ease. I have to work at it. If I don’t, my bones will disintegrate.
Another truth about aging is the foreshortened horizon. Yes, it’s a thing. You know how you can drive or travel forever and the horizon always stretches out ahead of you? Well, at 72, that’s no longer true. It used to feel like a million miles stretched out ahead. There was always more time. There was always more.
Now, I’m realistic. I know I won’t live forever. Death waits somewhere on that horizon. I’m trying to see death as a horizon instead of an end. A portal not a wall.
I focus on the incredible life I’ve had - a hard life in many ways, yes - but truly amazing. I’m proud of the way I lived it. How I met every challenge with my whole heart even when in hindsight I can see the ways I fucked up, missed out, or didn’t get it.
So many areas of my life are coming full circle. It’s a beautiful thing to come full circle.
T.S. Eliot said it beautifully:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
I wish I could transmit that to you. You see, at 72, I’ve come to understand that life is an unfolding, not an event. I understand now that I didn’t live life. Life lived me. Life carried me through and revealed its secrets on the way, especially now - at the end.
My struggles and attempts to control it, my fear and my lack of understanding did not stop Life. Life kept living me, no matter how much I fought it.
Today, this 72nd year, we’ve finally come face to face, Life and I.
And all I can do is weep with gratitude and thank it.
And that’s why I’m drawn, more than ever, to spaces where people can arrive without having everything figured out.
Where no one has to be the expert.
Where curiosity matters more than certainty.
Where we can bring whatever feels alive for us right now: a question, a struggle, a story, or simply ourselves.
Which brings me to Women Are Talking.
The older I get, the less interested I am in experts telling women what to do and the more interested I am in women talking with one another.
Not to fix ourselves. Not to become projects. Not to optimize.
Just to talk, listen, laugh, question, rage, and remember who we are beneath all the things we were taught we needed to be.
So at 72, I’m starting something new.
Not because I have answers.
I’ve simply become more interested in good questions. And in being present.
The most important things I’ve learned didn’t come from experts.
They came from conversations. From dark nights of the soul. From sitting with discomfort.
From listening.
From people telling the truth about their lives.
From discovering that we are often far less alone than we imagine.
From rooms where people are allowed to be human.
So I’m creating a space for more of those conversations.
A monthly Zoom salon where the conversation isn’t curated by me alone.
The room will help shape it.
Bring whatever feels alive for you right now. It could be a question or something you’re wrestling with.
Or nothing at all.
Mostly, just bring yourself. Come as you are.
The first salon will be June 30 at 5:00 PM Mountain Time.
The most important thing anyone ever said to me was,
“I believe you.”
Here, we believe you.
Women Are Talking
Last Tuesday of every month
5:00 PM Mountain Time
First Salon
June 30, 2026
Cost
Free for all subscribers.
Format
This isn’t a workshop, panel discussion, coaching session, or networking event.
It’s a conversation.
Participation
You’ll have an opportunity to introduce yourself if you’d like.
If you write a newsletter or have a creative project, you’re welcome to mention it.
Participation is always optional.
Listening is participation too.
Zoom Link
The Zoom link will be emailed on June 29.
If you don’t see it, please check your Spam, Promotions, or Updates folders.
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There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was) ™
“There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was),” is a phrase I coined to name the truth of our untouchable wholeness. Recovery (from anything).
One Thing
A pragmatic suggestion
Join like-minded women on June 30 for the first-ever Women Are Talking Salon
On Repeat
Songs to compulsively listen to.
We are the daughters of the silent generations.
WOMEN ARE TALKING PLAYLIST
My question is, what would be the form of an economy that took the imagination as its model, that was an emanation of the creative spirit? ~ Lewis Hyde
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Yes, yes, I love what you wrote. Well, I'm 90 with diminishing bandwidth and lots of physical challenges. I concentrate on whatever legacy I can leave that will be sustained and I love the process because I get to pour my creativity and my sense of completion into whatever I do and I'm doing that so it offsets the pain because I get so engaged in leaving the legacy and doing the decades of healing, anything unlike love, that the pain is more of an opportunity. I know that sounds strange even to me, but it's not so painful. That's the point, because the completion of this life is so much more powerful, simple, and straightforward. If I stay focused like on a tightrope, every step I take has to be rebalanced, and that takes up a lot of my energy, so it takes energy away from pain, if that makes any sense.
With my 69th looming in August, this year in particular, has me asking more and more, how DID I get here? (yes, a good song too!) For some unknown reason, the years in numbers seem to have suddenly snuck up on me and it's almost like I'm missing huge chunks of life. The woman in the mirror looking back at me catches me out as not me, but my mum, who suddenly died alone at 72. And I won't be that woman again.
The finally diagnosed serious degeneration of 3 vertebrae this last week, causing chronic pain and nerve damage for years with the thought of the now 'possible life changing' surgery, is almost like it's necessary for someone else! Like I am not that old body the surgeon talks about. How can it be? I'm the woman who has never stopped. Never not worked. Never laid in bed. Never been looked after. And now you expect me to do all that!
And yet, becoming 68 has brought me so much freedom of mind, curiosity, awe and wonder, Aquarian excitement for the future and, not giving a shit any more, well mostly! There are times when the shit builds up inside and we end up with the house and a particular man being sprayed with manure from a 60 year old silo. But the silo is getting more empty than it has ever been.
Having such a different mind and body catches you out. I don't ever want to be that 20/30 year old again but I wouldn't mind just a bit of her body back!
Anyway Kelly, I hope you had a great birthday week and......I hope you all have a really great conversation in this great Salon, as I slumber here on my own 'mountain time' (how weird is that too?) as if I am in another dimension, and hopefully I can catch a reply? 💚