Why I Don’t Romanticize Youth at 62
On aging, lived experience, and why getting older hasn’t made me want to go back
At 62, I don’t wish I could go back to an earlier time in my life. I remember too well what followed the good periods. Life has always come with difficulty, no matter the decade.
I also don’t feel like I’ve peaked. Not physically, mentally, emotionally, or professionally. That doesn’t mean things have been easy. It means I’ve learned that struggle is not age-specific.
In my 40s, I was a single mother on welfare. I lived for years with major depressive disorder. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and uncertain about whether life will stabilize. Those experiences didn’t disappear as I got older. They inform how I see aging now.
Being in my 60s also means living with loss. I’ve lost several friends to cancer. I lost my dog after 13 years. Grief doesn’t resolve itself. It becomes something you carry, and over time, you learn how to live alongside it.
My body reflects its own history. I’ve dealt with slipped discs, sciatica, stress fractures, and a torn rotator cuff that took years to recover from. Physical setbacks don’t stop with age . What changes is how I respond to them.
I don’t idealize youth because I know what came next every time life felt light or uncomplicated. Age hasn’t made life easier, but it has made me more stable in how I handle it.
Aging isn’t about being anchored in the past. For me, it is the season of understanding what I’ve already endured and what I can still do . The confidence I have now didn’t come from uninterrupted success. It came from having to rebuild more than once.
When people say they wish they could go back, I understand the impulse. For me, there’s no earlier version of my life I’d trade for the perspective I have now. I don’t feel finished. I don’t feel done .
Getting older hasn’t taken away what matters most to me. It’s given me a clearer sense of myself and a better ability to deal with uncertainty.
