On Turning 70

From Unspoken Dread to Spiritual Milestone

Over the years, I’ve come to embrace aging as a gift and privilege: the growing freedom, the welcomed lessening of ego, the early signs of wisdom.  Then turning 70 snuck up on me.

Things began simply enough, making plans to celebrate my milestone birthday. But it got complicated. First, a good friend who’d thought she could be with me on the big day had to cancel. Shortly thereafter, I found myself unable to stop myself from dropping hints about gift ideas to my husband and family. Then, I laid plans to do a commemorative issue of my blog, departing from featuring others’ work to celebrate my own history of 30 plus books.  And finally I called several friends to talk about things that out of the blue had started bothering me. Troublesome issues with projects I hadn’t even started yet, colds that could turn into pneumonia (but hadn’t) and more.

This isn’t the first birthday I’ve found challenging. But turning 70 felt qualitatively different.  Even my older friends had stopped laughing at me when I expressed astonishment at my age.  “Sixty’s not old” my friend Connie Goldman said to me when we first met sixteen years ago, and I was desperately in need of mentoring by one older and wiser than me.  But even Connie, upon hearing I was turning 70, was moved to comment “Well, you’re certainly no spring chicken anymore.” Connie, may she rest in peace, was 86 then, and she always told it as she sees it. Spring is over.

I guess Connie was right.  Seventy is as fair a marker as any to divide the seasons of life.  But the truth is, aging cedes territory on a daily basis.  Every day we are somewhat slower, somewhat less connected.  The only thing that comprises “more” for us at 70 is the effort it now takes to try to maintain what came to us so effortlessly just moments ago. The slippage is often so gradual, we become used to accepting that we have been changed before we notice what happened.  But surrendering does not diminish the fact that there is pain involved.

The loss of control associated with aging is the last thing I want to acknowledge.  Me, who views aging as a new life stage.  Who experiences growing older as a spiritual experience.  “This wise, old woman” is how I prefer to think of myself and at my current age of 76, this is truer of me now then it was then. But at the time, in my unconscious denial of the shadow side of growing older, I had become brittle, reactive, controlling.  And what’s more, I didn’t realize I was doing any of this—and certainly not that it might have anything to do with turning 70.

Connie listened patiently.  Took a deep breath.  And then, as she always did so adeptly, laid it on me.

“You’re attempting to pour concrete on your life—to freeze who you once were so as not to let it erode any further; to protect yourself and those for whom you care from the uncertainties of the future.  But no pushing through, battling or overcoming will have ever proven, in the end, to be enough.  Instead, why not try opening up empty space into which you can be free to flow? Then let yourself be open to whatever unfolds, giving yourself permission to accept the whole of life as it arises, sometimes sad, sometimes joyful, sometimes flat out astonishing!”

Connie said more, but I had begun quietly weeping as my revivified heart cracked open, shattering the concrete into little pieces. In fact, soon I could only catch an occasional word or two between the sobs. Something about hope. Something about acceptance.  And there I was, on the eve of my 70^th birthday, reduced to a wordless pile of rubble melted into a puddle of love.  And here I remain, years later, still recalling her words floating into me on tears of gratitude.

This is a gift of turning 70: this ability to witness and then detach from the urge to shore up, protect and control, to descend—or is it elevate?—into true acceptance. In this place of simply being, one can grow deep and one can grow wild.

So happy 70^th birthday, dear one.  As it turned out, my friend could come spend the day with me, after all. I no longer felt the need to commemorate the next issue of of my blog to my own books.  I got some sweet gifts but it mattered less, now that I’d remembered that I am beloved no matter how annoying I’d been of late.

And here’s the real key to what I learned about turning 70.  If one is fortunate to endure long enough, that which we fear can change into something one no longer hopes to escape. Rather, one becomes willing to embrace the whole of it with a deep, quiet understanding of the bittersweet nature of life. Letting go of what once was or might or might never be is no longer a punishment, but a place so full of love and gratitude, so true and so deep, it can’t be spoken.

It’s great to celebrate a milestone birthday. But the real gift of turning 70 is not an experience to be shared with others, but rather, a private affair so precious one prefers to keep it to one’s self.