I love this. I have to say that the older I get the more confident and self assured I feel. Sure I don’t look the way I did when I was 20, personally in ways I think I look better. I know myself better now, I can stop trying to be something that I am not, or can never be and have learned to accept and appreciate what I am and what I do have. There are blessings in youth and there are blessings in maturity, a wise woman (or man) would do good to take full advantage of both and not covet one or the other!

Julia Moulden:
Author, speaker and columnist

Today I turned 55. How do I feel about being five years into my fifties? I love it. I’m at the top of my game professionally (with a million things on my to-do list), and I think I’ve never looked better.

And I mean that bit about loving how I look. Sure, I’ve stood in front of the mirror and played “face lift” (the grown-up version of “doctor”), pulling up the corners of my eyes. But I’m beginning to realize that a new kind of beauty emerges at this age. Not the obvious stuff of youth, but something that’s hard won — the result of life lived and a body cared for.

This is why I was delighted to receive a copy of “I Feel Great About My Hands: And Other Unexpected Joys of Aging.” It’s a warm, wise, witty response to Nora Ephron’s “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” Shari Graydon set out to challenge the widespread notion that women over 50 should all be mourning the changes that come with age and invited women across Canada to provide alternative perspectives.

Comedian Mary Walsh weighed in:

After a certain age, it’s impossible to find anything to wear. If you’re over a size two — well, over a size ten, really, but still mercifully under a size triple-X — they don’t make anything to fit you, and it’s getting worse. Yesterday, because I’m blind as a bat in a felt hood because of my encroaching maturity, I ended up in the dressing room of a shop with a size-double-zero dress. Double zero! Where did that come from? Size zip. Size nada. Nothing. But now, not even nothing is good enough. We have to shrink ourselves down apparently to size double-nothings.