Finally free at 50

THE best years of your life start when you decide to live.

When I was 29, turning 30 seemed quite the milestone and a sign that I was getting old.

My son was five-years-old and running after him kept me in good shape and my figure bounced back within a matter of months.

As a 30-year-old, I wore a bikini and lazed about tanning on Sydney’s beaches.

When I turned 32, I had my second son and I’d carry both boys under my arms across hot sandy beaches while hauling chairs and picnic baskets behind me.

Who was that superwoman and where is she now?

I am now 54 and feel sympathy for 30-something me trying to do everything and be perfect.

The scooping up of kids in arms was done to make things happen faster because two little boys can escape parental custody faster than Houdini from a chain while underwater.

I was constantly trying to be prettier, better, fitter and the perfect parent.

I worked as the editor of a Sydney magazine and trust me, that does little for the self-esteem.

There were parties with footballers and politicians, and far too many fundraisers where goodie bags full of Chanel cosmetics and perfumes were given away.

Thank you Nicole Kidman.

Then the forties came creeping in seemingly overnight and I was the age I’d once considered old.

The boys were older and despite a regular running routine, I felt fat and unsightly.

Why? Because I no longer had the body of a 20-something.

Or even a 30-something.

Those women had what I wanted.

A supple lithe body that fitted easily into the latest clothing trends.

I’d walk past a store I used to buy my clothing at and think if I wore those things now I’d be mutton dressed as lamb.

Mutton dressed as lamb?

I was in my 40s and I was as lamb as lamb can be.

But the stretch marks, lumpy thighs and little pot belly stopped me from putting on the black bikini and instead I started to wear a pair of shorts over full length swimmers.

I’d take my sons to the beach and see young mums wearing bikinis that barely covered anything and I didn’t feel envy, I felt shame.

I was ashamed my body no longer looked like theirs and that after two children I had a ‘mum bod’.

Let me explain one thing, back then I was an Australian size 12 and overweight in my own head only.

My father used to say ‘no one is looking at you, they’re more worried about how they look to you’.

Then something happened and my life changed.

It was something so simple yet so important and lifechanging.

I turned 50.

I looked back and saw me in my 20s and 30s struggling with small children and trying to be superwoman.

I saw myself in my 40s, having my daughter at 43 and being on an advanced maternal age watch with the local hospital.

I realised I had it wrong.

Life is a gift and it’s meant to be lived.

Screw those who judge mums with jiggly thighs and pooch bellies.

And the ones who whisper and laugh when a woman wears a bikini but has no ’bikini body’ are worst of all.

But that’s their cross to bear and it’s the sum total of their experiences that make them who they are.

I’ve always thought the human body is a beautiful thing in all its shapes and forms.

Except mine ... until now.

My 50s are the most freeing time of my life.

I don’t care if someone looks at me in bathers and thinks ‘yuck, she is fat’.

I do not care.

Turning 50 meant looking back and realising I wasn’t old at 30 or 40 and I put off so many things I shouldn’t have.

Nowadays I am unapologetically me and I honestly couldn’t care less what you think of me.

I am not perfect but I am alive and while I am, I am going to live to my fullest.

I discovered a musician named Passenger when I was pregnant with my daughter.

His music was played while giving birth and we saw him live in Brisbane with her as a six-week-old baby.

There are lyrics that stuck with me, words that made sense and I’ve carried with me for the last 11 years.

“Don't you cry for the lost or the living, get what you need and give what you're given, life's for the living, so live it or you're better off dead’.”

The message is not to spend your time bemoaning the past or dwelling on missed opportunities but instead to swim out and meet the waves head on and more than that … enjoy it.