It's let's humiliate women day :-)

[tavalon]

64. You are right and I think we women can counter that. Decline societies definitions of us.

I turned 50 last year. I had noticed for a few years that people weren't talking to my boobs and that they were listening to what I had to say. About 6 months before that, my husband of 12 years decided we weren't working and I decided he wasn't going to make that decision. I left him and have made the decision to remain single. It's a gift I'm giving myself. When I look in the mirror, I no longer see my mother, who died when she was 36, but now I see her mother, a woman who chose to raise me in my teenage years. I miss them both but I remember more clearly the laugh lines and glint in my grandmother's eyes. I feel peaceful when I see I'm beginning to look like her. It felt for a while that I had no identity except being older than my mother was when she died. Now, I see Gram. I really like that. I loved them both muchly and I love to see them shining through my eyes.

When I was 29, I had a boob job, ostensibly so that I would look nicer in clothes but then who was I really doing that for? Now, at 50, I have encapsulated implants and can't get mammograms because they would burst and I would have to have emergency surgery. My doctors are badgering me and rightly so, to just get the mammogram and hope for the best. I've come up with a better solution. I've found the best breast reconstruction doctor in town and I'm going to have them removed. For me. On my schedule and then I'll get a yearly mammogram without fear. No, I'm not having them replaced with saline. I'm just going to have these removed. I guess my breasts will sag a bit. Boo fucking hoo.

So society tells me that I should be a sad middle aged woman, obsessing about my aging skin, alone in this world, destined to die alone and unloved. Except I am loved. By me. By my son. By my friends. So once again, I decline to take the offered choice. I choose now. I wish I had had that self love and self respect when I was younger. So many decisions I would have made differently.

As well, society made it clear I needed a breadwinner. Except that as a unionized nurse, I'm doing fine. I don't need someone elses money. I'll never be rich but I never cared about that anyway.

Thank you society for your input (not) but I decline.