No Limits Magazine

25/12/2023

Still rocking 💪🤗

20/05/2023

This is a side by side of two women gracing the front covers of two well known magazines.

The one on the right we all know is Martha Stewart, age 81. The one on the left is Apo Whang-Od, age 106, a tribal tattooist in a remote province in the Philippines.

There seems to be an unwritten rule which equates beauty with youngness. In an interview, Martha Stewart told the reporter she credits her organic, home-grown, farm-to-table eating, yoga, and actively healthy lifestyle to her youthfulness. While that’s an admirable journey for her, let’s not forget the amount of privilege that kind of lifestyle requires.

On the left is Apo Whang-Od, who is a 106-year-old tribal tattooist in the Philippines. The wisdom she carries in every forehead wrinkle and frown line is stunning. Her eyes are glass, reflecting back all that she’s witnessed over a century of lived experiences. Her tattoos a reminder of the ancestors she seeks to honor.

Both women are beautiful in their own right. But I wish we as women didn’t play into this idea that we have to look younger—and thinner—in order to fit some unrealistic beauty standard which will grant us acceptance and relevance in the world around us.

I’m writing this for any woman who, like me, may have had a punched-gut reaction to seeing an octogenarian in a swimsuit on the cover of a magazine looking more like a woman in her forties or fifties: Anti-aging is not a beauty standard.

There IS beauty in wrinkles, and saggy skin, and drooping breasts. These are markers of a life hard fought for and well lived. It seems odd to try and erase these battle scars.

So while I applaud Martha for her fortunate body, carefully curated procedures, and pristinely styled makeup, I also applaud Whang-Od for what others may perceive as imperfections.

Anti-aging is not a beauty standard.
Authenticity is.

Credit: Maya Pounds

13/08/2022

Some women believe that as they age, they LOSE their looks.
Oh my friends how wrong this is.
A beautiful young women is a happy accident of nature but a beautiful older woman?
She is a work of art.

The Japanese have a practice whereby they fill any broken objects with gold, believing that something which is broken has earned its beauty and should be celebrated and decorated rather than discarded.

I feel this way about women.

It took a long time to find out who you really truly are.
A long time.
The acceptance that old age brings is freeing.
It brings with it peace and happiness.
Everyone knows, happiness looks good on us all.

Your body has been changing since the day you were born and will continue till the day you depart.
Ride with it, accept it, embrace it.
Be amazed by it.
Allow your face to represent your life, your stories, your joys.

The trick with ageing successfully my friend, is to pay as little attention to it as possible.

From ‘to the women’ by Donna Ashworth

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08LRGWY74/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_QXYBP1XQNKBHB07D6QHC

Image by Alpay Erdem

30/07/2021

Joy 💚☀️💚

With nowhere to go, Mary O’Neill started spending time in her backyard. On the opposite side of the fence, Benjamin did the same.

22/05/2021

BY 40, OUR MIDDLE FINGER IS AT HALF-MAST...

By 50, it’s full on UP.

By 60, both of those fingers are hoisted,
and not a single care is given any more.

I mean, we care about our family, our friends and our passions.
We care about the environment.
We care about equality and living in peace.
But we don’t care about ‘fitting in’ and we don’t care about what people think of us.
Not anymore.
Too many years were wasted on that.

We certainly don’t care to stay quiet, or bite our tongues,
we haven’t wasted all these life lessons to play dumb when the situation calls for our wisdom.

Neither do we care if our waistline is the acceptable size or if our thighs are toned and unblemished.
We have wrinkles, we have stretch marks, we have war wounds, warts and all.
And we are rocking each and every one of them in all their glory.

You see, there comes a time in every woman’s life where you realise that this is it.
This is the time to be alive.
To live without restriction or oppression.

To break free of the chains society binds us with and tear loose.
This is our time to be completely and totally who we were supposed to be along.

The sooner you get there, the better.

Life waits for no woman.

Donna Ashworth, from poetry collection ‘to the women’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08LRGWY74/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabt1_OYLVFbX4YR91V

Art, Iris Apfel by Joya Cousin Joya Cousin Portrait Painter

25/03/2021

🙌Sound familiar?

28/02/2021

When she was a little girl
they told her she was beautiful
but it had no meaning
in her world of bicycles
and pigtails
and adventures in make-believe.

Later, she hoped she was beautiful
as boys started taking notice
of her friends
and phones rang for
Saturday night dates.

She felt beautiful on her wedding day,
hopeful with her
new life partner by her side
but, later,
when her children called
her beautiful,
she was often exhausted,
her hair messily tied back,
no make up,
wide in the waist
where it used to be narrow;
she just couldn't take it in.

Over the years, as she tried,
in fits and starts,
to look beautiful,
she found other things
to take priority,
like bills
and meals,
as she and her life partner
worked hard
to make a family,
to make ends meet,
to make children into adults,
to make a life.

Now,
she sat.
Alone.
Her children grown,
her partner flown,
and she couldn't remember
the last time
she was called beautiful.

But she was.

It was in every line on her face,
in the strength of her arthritic hands,
the ampleness that had
a million hugs imprinted
on its very skin,
and in the jiggly thighs and
thickened ankles
that had run her race for her.

She had lived her life with a loving
and generous heart,
had wrapped her arms
around so many to
to give them comfort and peace.
Her ears had
heard both terrible news
and lovely songs,
and her eyes
had brimmed with,
oh, so many tears,
they were now bright
even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.
And because she was,
she was made beautiful.

~ Suzanne Reynolds, © 2019

Photo credit: Nina Djerff
Model: Marit Rannveig Haslestad