Thank you for being with us today. We will start at the top of the hour.

What do you find surprising, instructive, enriching, or healing about getting older? Be specific.

What do you find most interesting about aging?

How has growing old freed you?

Please share your comments and questions here in chat, we would love to hear from you.

I’m more pliable, willing to disbelieve even the long-held opinions that shaped my identity or were necessary for my career. So much of that persona feels like extra weight now, truly a burden to maintain if I continue to carry it around.

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

NO! (Julie)

@Julie :)

I see the new me (finally). At first, a few years ago I was appalled. Now I’m kinder to my image. It is what it is, right? I told a friend a while back, “I don’t have winkles, I have ruffles!” Julie

(Julie) I think I look a lot better with makeup…that’s not to say I obsess about it—I’m OK if going without it…almost!

If you would like to step in front of a mirror/hold a hand mirror, it could be helpful in this exercise.

I see a changing landscape for sure! I often see that I'm pressing my lips together in a tight line . .and I am shocked to see my neck drooping, and eyelids drooping like my dad's. I did find a book by Louise Hays, Life Loves you, where she talks about mirror work ..affirming this concept and it's not easy. The spirit looking at the image is the same, but the image has shifted. I also notice that when I do yoga and breathwork, and have found some amusement, I feel better and seem to look better too. Julie G.

It is a very intimate moment when I look in the mirror. No one else is there with that view of me --up close and personal. It is also a very quiet moment, unless I murmur something to myself. My reflection and I each know the truth. The me that projects the reflection is still the same me when I was any other age.

Pre-sunscreen living, riding a motorcycle for years without protection up & down the hills in San Francisco, always staying on the beach too long but who would leave Paradise? My lips are thinner, my brows have gone haywire but the stories that the lines & crow’s feet have left were worth every minute of it!

I am so grateful you have mentioned the plastic surgery of pubic figures. I feel sad for us that there is this external pressure, internalized, that drives us to “improve” our looks.

Oops, public!

thank you Mark for this unexpected but timely topic and helping me refocus and start looking forward again rather than just making the best of the present at any given time.

😊 Thanks...yes good idea! didn't know that about Louise, but do know that about Byron Katie, and wonder about that, as it seems excessive.

Have to drop off. Thanks Everyone!