How Hard Has Aging Hit Me?? Really?! Get Off My Back, Facebook! by Tori Ulrich

There is a new Facebook fad called the "How Hard Has Aging Hit You" challenge. At the same time as we talk about resolutions, taking care of ourselves, beating the winter blahs and struggling with seasonal depression, someone comes up with a way to have us compare pictures of ourselves from 10-ish years ago with the thinly veiled premise that we will look 'hit' by a truck or something. 

Why are we making this so negative? 

I'd like to put a reframe on it and say that the pictures I am seeing are awesome, and look to me more like some amazing people that have lived some life in the years between photos. Weddings, children, trauma, loss, victories, graduations, heartbreaks, sicknesses, vacations, struggle, cross-country moves, the politics of 2015-2019, C-sections, in-laws, promotions, food allergies, new jobs, new relationships, new friends... A lot of life. 

So, I ask all of you to keep posting these amazing pictures, but please BRAG about those laugh lines, BOAST about those hard-earned grays and CELEBRATE surviving 10-ish years of living your life. Living the ups, downs and the in-betweens. 

Aging didn't hit you with anything. You hit your life with some living.