The dreaded 40. I had friends making a bucket list of things to do before they turned 40. As I approached my 40th birthday last year, I admittedly rolled my eyes at my friends. We’re 40, not dying. I didn’t dread that number. At 41, I still don’t. It’s an age. Your age is not something that defines you. You can very easily define that age for yourself, making it whatever you want. That’s the wisdom we gained with these 4 decades.

It doesn’t help that we get things thrown at us all the time. You get ads on your phone as you get older about all these creams or serums and honestly, I can barely apply basic eye shadow and mascara without it becoming a production. Poking myself in the eye with the mascara wand. Getting eye shadow glitter all over my face. It’s a disaster really. And you expect me to know what to do with collagen toner? These are things that I’m convinced are there are make us feel bad for those little lines we’ve earned as growing older in the efforts to contribute to the obscene coffers of these companies. I don’t mean this as a judgement to those who do make these investments. In fact, part of me is admittedly jealous that you aren’t overwhelmed at all these products.

We’re told to age gracefully, as women. We criticize those random gray strands we find. We analyze our face daily to see if we notice a new line that wasn’t there the day before. We are changing. Our skin is getting weird and dry. We’re getting antsy about what we’ve accomplished, and often times more focused on what we didn’t. If we’re moms, we have the added worry of juggling all these changes (both physical and especially mental) on top of “Am I doing enough for my kids?” Because that’s right; on top of convincing us that we need to be aging gracefully, we also need to be the perfect partners and parents.

You can age as gracefully or as not gracefully as you want. You can do that bucket list if it eases your mind. You can let your grays take the spotlight and rock it. You can proudly show off every wrinkle that you have earned, as your mind and body aged. Or you can erase the signs of aging because you’ve earned that right to do whatever you want to feel good about yourself. We’ve earned that right to age on our own terms and not let some silly numbers define who we are. To not let other people tell us how we should age gracefully.