Karen’s Story: Powerful and Unstoppable

For Karen, this is the best period of her life so far.

As a lawyer, Karen loves that she can now “let herself take up more space,” and be a better advocate for her clients.

As a woman, Karen loves that she feels incredibly strong in her body, and she feels more powerful and unstoppable as she ages.

Watch the video for her full story.

Video Transcript:

My name is Karen. I am 45 years old.

Forty-five for me feels intensely better than being 25, and I'm not saying that 25 was bad. But I think that when you are in your 20s, you're struggling with this, "I know who I wanna be," but having none of the tools to become that person. And so, 25 is about feeling out all the things, but with all of the kind of insecurities and the pain around doing that work.

And then you get to be 30 and you start feeling kind of emergent. And you're, like, "Okay, I got this." And these tools start developing, but by the time you hit 40, you've got the tools, you've got the box, you know where everything is and you also stop giving a f*** about what people think.

So, then it just becomes about just feeling yourself, you know, all the way out to your skin. And I, honestly, this has been the best period of my life.

I think women feel stressed out about getting older because we are taught to fear it. Yeah, I think it's just a way to make you scared of your own fierceness.

I probably...I think our culture is scared of powerful women for many reasons. I come from some really specific backgrounds around that. My mother is an immigrant. I'm a lesbian. I'm a feminist, I'm a pretty radical feminist. And I think that when women are powerful, they are unstoppable.

I have never been afraid of my gray hair. I feel like I earned every one of those hairs. I really do and I love it. I think it's about change and not being afraid of change. I think it's about your hair going into a next state, and it changes texture. It becomes its own new thing and I kind of love the idea that everything is still emergent, and that aging is about moving into the next process, not about an end.

I do feel sexy. Sexy at 45, I feel like now I am that person who you go home and you write a journal entry about. Like it's real. Like it's very real and you know what you want. You know how to get it. You know how to do it. You know all of the things about your body. And when you are that deep down inside then nothing is a failure.

Nothing feels like a mistake, and then, you know, you don't compromise, you don't compromise your pleasure anymore.

And I think that that's exactly what I feel now. I feel like full in all of those things.

What I most love about my body is that I feel incredibly strong. Like, I, my partner jokes with me because I'll pick up giant suitcases and just kind of charge up the stairs with them. And I used to feel, you know, everything on me is big. I've got giant feet and I've got giant boobs and I have got, like, giant everything, and I used to really try to hide that or make myself smaller.

I feel, like part of the thing about aging is that I let myself take up space.

And I think as a lawyer, and as a lawyer who is going into, like, tiny little towns in places that are not used to seeing people who look like me, period, but especially not at the defendant's table, not being a defendant. Taking up space is an important way for me to be an advocate for my clients and for myself.

So, for me, my body is about power, and so I feel like that's something that has come with me with age.