Hey All,
Like many of you I was an athletic kid, had much success riding, 5th woman in the Davis Double Century, TOSERV back in '79, '80 and '81. Road my bicycle across Mississippi from Vicksburg to Birmingham, Ala in '73.
By myself. And I grew up in NYC.

Then I "grew up." I'm 57 now. I stopped riding in '82 and just started again two weeks ago.

I lost my fancy job in this recession, gained weight and got blue, and one day six months ago found myself watching a sitcom in the afternoon and weeping for the imaginary characters. Hell, commercials made me cry! I looked at myself not so much not knowing who the woman was staring back with back fat and a turkey neck, but so much worse, I could in no way relate to the woman I had been. That beautiful child that I was in my twenties....that's the person who was foreign to me. I had completely and utterly lost myself.

I don't know why or how, but I joined a gym and slowly, slowly, the absolute worse in every class I took from yoga to spinning, I began to come back. I lost the 18 pounds I had gained, and bought a new bike. I think that's the grace part in aging gracefully, the magic part.

I can't say how, or it would take far too long, but over the years I became afraid of the world. I don't know things that others seem to grasp effortlessly. I live in an intellectual bubble and quote the classics. I can empty a room with, "...as Swinburne said..." I can't cut and paste without losing everything.

I feel sometimes like giving up. Even after I bought my bike, I'd wake up in a panic attack. Then I found TE. And reading all these posts. I have felt like a ghost haunting them. But I'm not a ghost, or a forgotten menopausal woman. I'm just a little late to the dance.