Aging Well ... Yes, Life Chose Me After All
And three letters to myself from three different ages and stages of life.
Several years ago, I wrote the first portion of what I’m sharing here today, about the Dar Williams song, “After All” and how much I related to it and why. And it all still resonates but today I’m thinking of a different song and how much it also resonates, her song, “You’re Aging Well,” and so I added that to this piece to share here today.
Earlier this week, I joined a Foster writing workshop hosted by Jen Vermet and we wrote letters to ourselves at different ages, and as I went to hit publish on this piece, I realized that it made sense to add those letter drafts in here as well. So, not particularly edited but straight from the heart …
“After All”
This morning I'm listening to old Dar Williams songs. I love such a range of different music from different eras. I grew up in a time among people who were a bit snobby about music ... it was only cool to be edgy and different and to know the bands that no one knew yet. I spent my early twenties in coffee shops with poets who would ask, "have you heard of XYZ band?" and look down their nose at you when you didn't know this obscure band. It never bothered me a whole lot, although certainly more in my late teens and early twenties than at any other time in life. But also, the music I did listen to then is often the music I go back to again and again.
Music does funny things in our brains. I'm still trying to understand the neuroscience of at all ... how in dementia patients for example, the brain can remember music when it doesn't remember word-based memories. But I know that what we listened to in our teens and twenties sticks in the brain in a certain way, even if I don't know the science of it all. For me, Dar Williams will forever conjure up being twenty-something, wanting to be a writer, sitting in coffee shops questioning my creativity, wanting to be in love but having pretty much no relationship skills, and despite bouts of very serious chronic depression, FEELING things so deeply.
This morning, I re-played her song "After All" multiple times. It's a rich song, one of those storytelling songs that is uniquely about her own life experience while also having a universal feel. And a few lines throughout stood out to me from my own life experience, so I thought I'd share that with you today.
"And when I chose to live
There was no joy it's just a line I crossed
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost"
I have a history of depression. I am well today. I believe that my life experience, mental health knowledge, support system, self-care habits, etc. are strong enough that even during depressive times, I'm pretty much always going to be okay. But I have to be honest in saying that my life drive has never been that strong. I was never actively suicidal. But when I was younger I definitely had suicidal ideation. More than anything, I just wished life would stop so I could quit trying so hard to live it.
I am probably at the peak of my life in terms of life drive ... I have future hopes and dreams, short-term and long-term, and want to live them more than I ever have at any other stage of life. I'm in a really good place. And yet, I won't lie, those thoughts still occasionally cross my mind. I'l be in a plane with bad turbulence, and it'll cross my mind that we could crash, and I'll reflexively think, "it wouldn't be so bad if it was all just over right now." When faced with a fight-flight situation, I freeze.
So, those lines from above have always resonated with me. I did choose life, by not actively choosing to act on a death impulse. And at some point, I chose quality life by getting the help I needed to move forward with a more creative, active, fulfilling life. I chose life. But "it was just a line I crossed." I moved over just a little towards the life force and away from the death impulse.
Before I continue on with the Dar Williams "After All" quotes, I have to say that another quote comes to mind. I am embarrassed to say that I can't remember off of the top of my head who it comes from, although I'm thinking it might be an Anne Sexton poem? It could totally be another song lyric though. And I might be getting the quote a little bit wrong because I can't find it via Google but it's something like:
"I chose life and choosing life meant pain."
That brings me to the next "After All" quote:
"Well, the sun rose
With so many colors it nearly broke my heart
It worked me over like a work of art
And I was a part of all that"
Life does bring a lot of pain. It also brings a lot of joy. It also brings myriad other emotions that have so many names and nuances that I can't even begin to list them. In choosing to live, choosing not to just exist but to be present in my own life, I choose all of those feelings. And sometimes sunrises break my heart in the best possible way. (Okay, maybe sunsets would be more accurate for me personally, but you get the point.)
And finally the last part of the song:
"Cause when you live in a world
Well it gets in to who you thought you'd be
And now I laugh at how the world changed me
I think life chose me
After all"
I'm not sure my younger self understood that part of the song at all. But it resonates so strongly now. My angsty late teen self was at battle with the world and at battle with herself. She had a certain vision of who she was in that world - and although some parts of it were tough, creative, and inspired, there was also a lot of low self-esteem stuff in there that colored her ideas of herself in a way that erased the gentleness and appreciation I now have for those parts of me.
Life continued to happen. I continued to live it. I continued to love, to pursue passions and interests, to make friends, to have breakups, to learn about art and psychology and writing and all kinds of random things that my curious mind would dive down the rabbit holes of. And "the world changed me." and I do think "life chose me after all." And I am so grateful for it in every possible way.
And yet, in a lot of ways, I'm still that same girl. And although that girl would sometimes roll her eyes at my complacency about certain things, she'd also be really excited to know that this is where we would end up twenty years later. As I write this, I am sitting at my table with a San Francisco view, my puppy warmly sitting on the chair behind me. My boyfriend is about to come over - someone with whom I have a loving, caring, supportive, healthy, consistent, but interesting, dynamic, creative relationship with. We are going to do some errands, take the dog for a walk, then head out to see our friend's art booth at an event among redwoods. I'm writing this for people who care about what I have to say. How lucky am I?
Lucky. Lucky that life chose me after all.
“You’re Aging Well”
I learned this song in the late 1990s when it was on an early Dar Williams album, and I always loved it but also I was not quite twenty and I only understood it to the level that I could understand it then. I remember going to a Dar Williams concert witha high school best friend who I don’t know anymore and who always picked concerts that we would go to and we probably heard this song then although I don’t remember it specifically because I remember “When I Was a Boy” and “Christians and Pagans” and I remember the feeling of an audience of young edgy women who were claiming their places in the world.
A couple of years ago, Dar came out with a new album, and I went to Freight and Salvage with my now-partner and saw her perform live. I loved the new songs, especially Berkeley because I was watching her live in Berkeley which I could have only imagined doing when I first saw her decades before in Tucson before I ever lived in the Bay Area and had made such a life for myself here, before I ever really knew for sure whether or not life would choose me after all. And she played this song and it struck me as the most powerful song ever this time around, powerful because it hit me newly in the heart as a forty something woman and powerful because twenty years later she was still singing it and somehow even though I’m not an avid concert-goer her older self and my older self had landed in the same place at the same time like we had when we were younger and there’s something magical in life about that.
The song begins:
“Why is it that as we grow older and stronger
The road signs point us adrift and make us afraid
Saying "You never can win, " "Watch your back, " "Where's your husband?"
Oh, I don't like the signs that the sign makers made.So I'm going to steal out with my paint and brushes
I'll change the directions, I'll hit every street”
And I think this is the part that resonated with me when I was younger, this feeling that layers upon layers of STUFF from life kept piling on top of me and I wanted to change all of the messages that were written on my world from somewhere else and creatively shape my own life. There’s a similar selection about the way we hate our bodies at 15 and that, too, resonated at 20. But at 40-something, what resonates is different.
“Well I know a woman with a collection of sticks
She could fight back the hundreds of voices she heard
And she could poke at the greed, she could fend off her need
And with anger she found she could pound every word.
But one voice got through, caught her up by surprise
It said, "Don't hold us back, we're the story you tell, "
And no sooner than spoken, a spell had been broken
And the voices before her were trumpets and tympani
Violins, basses and woodwinds and cellos, singing"We're so glad that you finally made it here
You thought nobody cared, but we did, we could tell
And now you'll dance through the days while the orchestra plays
And oh, you're aging well."
Because sometimes I still don’t like my body and sometimes I still get frustrated by the signs foisted into my life by others but mostly my life is music and dancing and making it. And lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the story I have to tell. I’m trying to fall in love with writing again after decades of a complex relationship with doing it as a career. A friend asked me, “who were you writing for when you first loved writing?” and I got stuck on my thoughts because I want to say “for myself” but also I know that I was always “good” at writing and probably did it performatively for grades and accolades. And my friend said, “maybe you just have a story to tell” and I realized that for so very long I have been telling other people’s stories and I am compelled these days to return to telling my own.
And the song ends:
“I was all out of choices, but the woman of voices
She turned round the corner with music around her,
She gave me the language that keeps me alive, she said:"I'm so glad that you finally made it here
With the things you know now, that only time could tell
Looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are
And oh, you're aging, oh and I am aging,
Oh, aren't we aging well?"
She gave me the language that keeps me alive.
Three Letters From Myself To Myself At Different Ages
As aforementioned, these letters were quickly-written drafts created through prompts offered by Jen Vermet (whose Substack letters you might love) and so they are drafts only but I want to share them today because the message is authentic:
Letter 1: From My Younger Self to My Today Self
Dear Kathryn of the Present Day,
I already know everything it is important to know. Yes, there are so many facts and ideas and theories and vocabulary words that you have collected over the years between me then and you know and they matter but also they do not. They will enrich your life in a million ways but they aren’t the essence of it at all. Here I am at 3 years old with so little of that information but so much intuitive knowing. I know that each day is a new day is a new day is a new day to try it all again. I know that clothing is a delightful form of self expression and that riding a tricycle down the street to get popsicles with Dad is the perfect way to spend an afternoon and that if what I think I need doesn’t fit into a bike basket like Toto does then I probably don’t really need it after all. I know that there’s a lot to learn but I aready know what’s important so just ask me when you aren’t sure. Most importantly, I already know that we are enough exactly as we are today.
Love,
Three year old K
Letter 2: From My Older Self to My Today Self
Dear Kathryn of the Present Day,
You already know everything that matters. Some of it has gotten covered up by all of the detritus of a life fully lived and so you feel confused sometimes but you are already beginning to let the mess of that fall away so that you can return to an inner knowing that has always been there. You are going to spend the next half of your life getting into deeper and closer alignment with that intuitive knowledge and as a result your life will unfold with beautiful synchronicity. You don’t need to worry so much. Everything is going to be more than okay because you’ve always known all of the answers. And you have always been enough.
Love,
Eighty year old Kathryn Lucille
Letter 3: From My Today Self to My Future Self
Dear the Kathryn who reads this letter next year,
I want you to remember how brave you were in 2024. You started writing grants and running workshops with an artist you admire. You kept at grad school even when you didn’t believe in it. You dove straight into a dog fight between 200 pounds of dogs and screamed for help to save a puppy’s life. You moved in with your partner after not living with one kind of ever and definitely not for the past seventeen years and you believe in it and in both of you and in live and it’s working. You stayed connected to your friends and your siblings. You determined to find a way to fall in love with writing again and you did, or you are. You let debt add up and tried to give yourself grace about it and believe that the right path and authenticity will take care of it all. You connected with your new neighbors and dealth with various professionals and kept doctors’ appointments. You took yourself off of a medication that you had known for a year wasn’t the right thing for you and you took yourself off of hormones that you’ve been on for well over two decades and you tried to be gentle with your body as it changed. You grieved. You rested. You got up. You tried again. You showed up. To commitments, classes, events, work. You showed up for the people that you love. You showed up for yourself.
You did this. Love,
Kathryn
This is how art and health intersect in my life. If you are interested in understanding this in your own life: Order a Creative Health Assessment or Book a 1:1 Coaching Call.
"It was just a line I crossed"
That quiet truth about choosing life without fanfare, without a dramatic turning point, just a small lean toward staying. Thank you for writing this so honestly.