Most of my birthdays, I have been able to stand back, look into a mirror, and still be satisfied with the way I look. Until pretty recently, people would gasp when I told them my age, and comment on how I still looked I was in my 20s. I would have my thank you response prepared, this happened so much. Until I hit 39, and suddenly, when I looked in the mirror, I found myself face to face with the fact that I am aging.

I am not sure what the exact moment was. I endured some stress in the last year of my life and I found myself finally seeing some real signs of aging in my face. I have done all the things right. The oils, the LED mask, the vitamins, the diet, the water, the satin pillowcase, the face masks, the facial sprays, the collagen peptides, the sunscreen. Heck, I worked for a skincare brand starting in my early 30s. I know all the things that one should do to slow down the signs of aging, and did them all, minus cosmetic procedures. For all intents and purposes, I should not look old!

I decided to give myself a photoshoot for my birthday. The photo you can now see on my About page was the result of that day. I didn’t exactly know what I was getting them taken for, but it felt important to take them at that point in time, especially because I did feel like my beauty was waning. People suddenly were guessing that my age was in the 30s and I knew this meant I was starting to look my age. 

The photographer loved the photos, especially the ones in the green sweater, which was my favorite look too. Still, when I received the photos, I was a bit surprised to see the crows feet around my eyes. They were not just the lines from my smiling but indeed, wrinkles.

Some people freak out at 40 but for me, 39 hit me hard. Maybe 40 will still hit me hard, but 39 was a big signal that my 30s are nearly over, and I have about a year to become okay with that. No matter how I looked at it, I was unable to convince myself that I am still young. And my face, aging despite the fact that I did all the “right” things, was a testament to that.

I didn’t have a big freak out over 30 and a very small one at 35. All the evidence points to the fact that I have only ever progressed to better and better versions of my own life. Why was 40 scaring me? It was hard to come to terms with the fact that I, someone who generally rebukes tradition, culture, and social norms, was experiencing them at that moment. If I have only gotten better with age, including my looks, why should I assume that I would not still be beautiful?

It took me a while to remember that in Islam, my religion, 40 is actually the age of completion. The Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) received his first message from God at 40 in our tradition—as if he was finally ready at 40 and finally at the right time to receive his message. As Muslims we believe Jesus’ life on this material plane as we know it at age 40. Indeed, it was Carl Jung who said, “life really does begin at forty. Up until then you are just doing research.”

All of this made me a little more comfortable with the fact that my next big birthday is forty and eased my anxiety. Lately, my friends are a variety of ages, and while I don’t have many friends who are my elders, I have come to realize how much I appreciate it when I interface with those who are my elders. I even enjoy my parents more and more the older I and they get.

But the fact remained that it initially made me uncomfortable due the changes to my face which seem to be coupled with this new maturity. Another fact about this that makes me uneasy is the fact that I am considered beautiful, and in this society, we may appreciate the changes in beauty in men as they age, but for women, at best, we would say “she looks like she was beautiful when she was young.”

I have enjoyed the strong suits and the drawbacks of being beautiful likely longer than I have been aware of them in my experience. I have a lot of feelings about them and have always tried to mitigate how much I related to my physical form, mostly because I think that is a dangerous path to walk. And yet, losing this privilege that I tried to never fully embrace also scared me.

In my many friendships, something new is friendships with people who are significantly younger than me too. I always try not to acknowledge our age difference when it comes to my younger friends, except for moments in which we really need to. And yet, at the same time, it is also getting harder and harder to not acknowledge it as it is becoming more and more obvious. Not in a bad way, but in a way that I am becoming an elder.

I think I have been mulling this over for a while, this becoming an elder. In his book “Polishing the Mirror,” Ram Dass holds in his heart ways other cultures respect and revere elders and holds that in juxtaposition to western culture, in which we don’t appreciate things for anything more than its most superficial parts—including human beings. 

I have been alive for almost 40 years and on various occasions have gone unarmed and unabashed into the dark nights of my own soul and came out feeling a new kind of alive. I know I have something more to offer the world than I have, perhaps now more than ever before.

As I hiked with my husband, Carlos, in San José del Pacifico yesterday, I wondered if he’ll still think I am beautiful as I get older. With a 10 year age difference in which I am his elder, we see ourselves as quite normal but I sometimes forget that to most outsiders, we are not. Carlos isn’t just young, he is handsome. As we walked to the hike, which wasn’t supposed to be a hike but our walk into the woods to find his friend, some girls, likely aged 14, snickered as we walked by, said “hola!” and then giggled when we responded. Carlos will likely still be considered attractive for years to come whereas my days of being a beautiful woman are limited.

San José del Pacifico is nestled in a mountainous part of the state of Oaxaca. I have traveled throughout Mexico extensively before I met my husband, but the truth is as a Latino and a person who has lived here since he was 13, he knows it much more intimately than I do. I don’t think I would have made it to this little town known for mushrooms had he not brought me here.

I love the town’s shops and restaurants as well as its land, trees, and flowers. The shops are part shop, part tortilla making stand, part kitchen, and part living room. That’s to say, that people just open their front doors each day and sell things they make from the very place their lives take place. A restaurant we went to, La Casa Del Árbol, was similar. While it now was a fully fledged restaurant, you could tell it was once someone’s house and happened to be by the San José del Pacifico bus station, so a restaurant was born.  

This was so unlike where I come from, including even where we live in Mexico City. I love the little shops and cafes in Mexico City, don’t get me wrong, but you do not get the reality of buying a clay jaguar head from the man who makes himself for his shop/tortilla stand/living room. I was enraptured by how thick this town felt.

“Thick” may be a strange word for it, but I learned this from a woman named Robyn, who I met in the hostel we were staying in. She told me a friend says this, and compares a thin existence to a thick one, in that a thin one, while nice and comfortable may be just that, it may feel like it is lacking the breadth and texture of human experience to make it feel “thick.” I like this word.

Standing in San José del Pacifico at 39 with my husband who I finally found—the love of my life—yes, I would call this life thick. A few days ago, I told him that despite all of the difficulty I have experienced since we got together, I would not exchange my life with him for anything in the world. I would not exchange this thick life for the shiny but thin one I had before for anything.

The lines that have started to develop on my forehead are not thick, and are quite faint. That said, you can still see them. I tried to deny them, but being a truth seeker, I know I always have to face the truth. They are there, and all I can do is face them by acknowledging them. 

And yet, I will keep using the oils, the LED mask, the vitamins, the diet, the water, the satin pillowcase, the face masks, the facial sprays, the collagen peptides, the sunscreen. It is unlikely that I am showing signs of aging because I did anything “wrong” but because it is a fact of life that one must age, if they are blessed to do so. I am sure they all helped so much to keep the lines at bay for as long as they could. Thank you so much. 

I don’t love the lines, but I am learning to accept them. Hiking with my husband in part of the Mexican countryside with little paths and fewer directions in which you could be sure you’ll arrive at anything. At the crossroads of all these lines in the ground, I told him that I am okay with aging. 

It’s my time. 

And, you know? I still feel beautiful. Somewhat in the traditional sense of the word, but also in the sense that I have and will continue to lead a thick life, one in which I am constantly discovering more and more about myself in the world in a way that has made this life feel not just worthwhile but awe-inspiring. 

I am dumbstruck by how fortunate I am to have gotten to lead this life, not because I was beautiful when I was young or because I worked at a well known company, but because this is a thicker, richer, more colorful life than I ever could have imagined to ask for. And maybe it is because this life has been thick, my lines are those of smiling and wonder rather than anger and worry.

I am newly drunk off the forest. A small town, beyond its small, sparse buildings, is just raw forest. As we looked for the home of Paco, Carlos’ friend, we were on a trail clearly made by the people who happened to live off of it. The trail did not always make sense and was not entirely big enough to drive a car on comfortably, though the existence of one car proved it was possible. On one occasion, we were following the trail down a loop, when Carlos pointed out a steep but straight lined trail down to where he believed Paco lived. I refused to take it.

We did find Paco’s home, which is more like a shack in the woods. Carlos was not entirely sure where he was going and we were both okay with that, and he did eventually get us there. Paco was not home. A faded sign read “regreso en 20 minutos.” We took our shoes off to place our feet on the ground while we rested and talked on Paco’s door step.

I noted the pink roses in front of the door, as well as the cactus and fig tree, all plants that Carlos guessed Paco had planted. A few more plants lived in makeshift pots in front of Paco’s home, including flowers and tomatoes. For some reason, the idea of this man living in a shack in these beautiful, unabridged woods and still growing flowers to plant in the forest filled me with a deep enchantment. In the distance, some calla lilies, which are so ubiquitous to Mexico, were growing. We could not tell if Paco had planted these beautiful flowers or if they grew wild here in this unmolested part of Planet Earth.

In fact we saw many plants on our way to Paco’s home, and my husband started to get annoyed as I marveled at them. The purple flowers of my childhood, and the ferns—these were plants we had in front of our doorstep in Richmond, California, that always felt meaningful for me. My mom put them in vases. At some point, I reached out my hand and touched a pine tree. 

It had been so long since I felt the pine needles of a pine tree in my hands but I was consumed by the feeling as so familiar and deep, before I realized we had a pine tree in my house in Richmond too. And everything was just growing in the land on its own. The calla lilies looked exactly like the ones in my childhood home miles and miles away, during another time. It is funny how one can both be immersed in something so new for them but also feel so, so familiar. I felt this feeling of a deep cherishing, and appreciation for something that I had not known was there, but still felt like it was there especially for me to see that day.

My husband asked me to take the steep, straight path up when we left Paco’s house. I never met the illustrious Paco, which means we may have to have another trip to San José del Pacifico in our future. I agreed to take the path as long as we took constant breaks and so we began.

I could not remember the last time I walked a path like this—steep and obviously, not the path we were supposed to be taking. In California, “parks” as we call them are commodified versions of land. There is a clearly flattened, wide path you are supposed to walk, designated parking, maybe lots of fees to enter and park, and lots of people. No one can leave the path, and everyone just walks the straight line back and forth and goes home after getting their fix of supposed nature.

In retrospect, parks in the US remind me of an amusement park version of land. They’re designed for you to have a very specific, fun interaction with it. The idea that unbridled land can be dangerous or wonderous or endless or naturally grow plants we pay for is an idea foreign to many people from the United States. And I admit until very recently, I fell into this camp too.

Carlos broke into a bump next to the trail with the walking stick he had picked up earlier. The mound broke open and he announced that a tree had fallen there. “There’s an entire ecosystem in there, one bigger than you can ever imagine,” he said while pointing to it. I had learned about this in biology class, but never in my American upbringing, from in school to a walk in raw forest, had I actually seen and experienced it.

He kept poking as we walked and I was amazed as to how vast this ecosystem was. The tree that had fallen was large. As I was shocked at the size, Carlos pointed to the sky to remind me how big the trees could get if we did not cut them down. The dead tree under the dirt seemed to go on for eons because perhaps that is how long it was alive. It was not a young tree. It had something to give.

It sounds like cliche but it is a great gift to get older. It is an even bigger gift if you get to do it with wisdom, which is something I hope I do.

I know our culture does not value elders, and I also know I won’t become one overnight, and there is still plenty to learn. For one, I still don’t know what it feels like to turn 40. Maybe it will be extremely gratifying in a way I cannot understand now. Just a few weeks ago, spending some time with a friend visiting from Sayulita who is about my age, we both laughed and egged on our younger men, telling them life will be so much better when they get to their 30s.

Perhaps I will feel the same way about 40. Or 50. Or 60. Robyn from the hostel told me her mom survived cancer and got the chance to relive her life, and she is such a vibrant, beautiful version of herself that Robyn is looking forward to turning 60. I loved this sweet perspective and saw that from the viewpoints of many people ahead of me on the path, there is much to learn and I am still getting my bearings on life compared to them.

I know our culture does not value elders, but I think I am still excited to be one. Maybe it’ll surprise me in ways I can’t fathom. I told Carlos on that hike that I strangely feel more beautiful, in a different way as I am aging and starting to get these lines and he agreed. 

“You’re aging gracefully,” he said, which felt good to hear from my 29-year-old husband. I would like to think that through the bad and the good, I possessed a lot of grace in the way I live my life. Maybe that is what it means to age gracefully. Maybe that is how a face that looks like it is aging gracefully comes to be. 

Maybe the oils, the LED mask, the vitamins, the diet, the water, the satin pillowcase, the face masks, the facial sprays, the collagen peptides, the sunscreen—maybe they’re not supposed to stop me from aging gracefully but to foster it. Maybe it’s the being graceful, raw, and tall—not a manicured forest that we’re supposed to get our fix of nature from—but a real forest. Maybe to age gracefully—to be filled with grace—is the gift I have to give because it’s the gift I have received.

Maybe aging has so much more to it than how we look. Maybe I am going to find out what that means.

“Will you still love me when I get old?” I asked him while we took one of our breathers on the path. “You know, I’m going to get old before you. And you’ll still be young and handsome,” I said, sharing an insecurity of mine.

“Of course I’ll still love you,” he said in his tone of voice I know he uses when he is very sure about something. “You’ll always be beautiful to me,” he said, knowingly maneuvering the unkempt forest as he climbed ahead of me.

We eventually made it to the top of the steep path and eventually back to the hostel. I do my makeup in the hostel mirror every morning, the outdoor one for better light, and I also pluck my eyebrows to keep them tidy. In the outdoor light, I can see the lines in my forehead quite well, and yet, I think George, the photographer who took my photo on this website, was right, I do look a bit like Andie McDowell, especially now that I am aging. 

I am beautiful, not in spite of the fact that I am aging, but because of it. Perhaps like the deep ecosystem of the fallen tree—not everyone will know to see what’s beneath the surface, or even appreciate the surface, unless they know what they are looking. And maybe, that is perfectly okay too.