If someone had told me when I was younger that I would feel more beautiful in my fifties than ever before, I would have scoffed derisively.

In ‘those days’ – from childhood to 40 – my relationship with my body was based entirely on how it looked and whether it met the grade of whatever aesthetic and fashion standard was set at the time. This in itself was an exhausting exercise, being ever at the mercy of the latest trends and ‘must looks.’

Looking back now I consider this one of the meanest set ups in society: the ever-changing set of rules about how we must look, that leaves most of us not ‘in.’

Looking back, I also see how unanchored I was, having little to no relationship with myself on which to build a sense of who I was and what my purpose in life could possibly be.  

Looking back, I realise that most of the people around me were just as unsure and at the mercy of social pressures and the norms dictated by statistical commonality.

Looking back, I understand how this striving for some external perfection keeps us in competition, comparison and separation from one another, sizing each other up to see how close to the mark any one of us has got. 

Looking back, this is another cruel set up that keeps us at arm’s length from the very thing that breaks these beliefs and strangleholds… honesty, openness, connection, communication and relationship.

So, for much of my life I felt out of sorts and at times really desolate, knowing that this way of living made no sense.

In 2006 I met Serge Benhayon at an informal evening event in London, heard him speak, spoke to him a lot over the next months and years and in the safe hands of a building community that was opening up and practising honesty, came to hear what I had always known… we are beautifully, inextricably in relationship with one another and that there are no mysteries to life, only the veils we have laid over simplicity and truth.

I did not learn anything new working with Serge, but I got to unearth and began to access everything I had always innately known. What Serge and Universal Medicine have done is to offer a foundation upon which we can build ourselves back to our innate potential.

If this sounds off track from where I started, the point is that the way I was living (in absence from myself), meant that my behaviour and choices were governed by external rules, expectations and ‘shoulds.’ I am now developing a relationship with life from the inside out: I am me, in the world, understanding my purpose and responsibility – the part I play in a much bigger picture in which we are all so beautifully connected.

There is a sureness in this that means I enjoy being me, which has the gorgeous side effect of my enjoying the way I look, expressing myself with clothes, make up, in my house, at work…

I take really good care of myself these days, ensuring the basics of responsible self-care are sustained:

• Staying hydrated
• Resting well
• Going to the toilet when my body asks to
• Eating in conversation with my body, listening to its signals
• Bringing awareness to my posture and how I am holding myself

and then adding some finer details:

• Being super respectful in my relationships
• Letting myself love and be loved
• Exploring humility and the learning opportunities on offer when I make mistakes.

It is amazing and remarkable for me to say I feel beautiful at fifty and that I am looking forward to whatever lies ahead; growing old gracefully alongside a lot of very inspiring men and women in my life.

By Matilda Bathurst, Primary School Teacher, Nurse and Midwife, UK­

Related Reading:
‘The Joy of Ageing, Esoterically’
On the Shelf or Embracing Life?
Sexiness in the Older Woman – not Related to Age, Sex or Good Looks!