I recently updated my profile photo on Linkedin. No particular reason at the time, just a really strong urge to do so. But the penny dropped why and i thought I’d share it:

• My last profile photo was taken 7 years ago. I look nothing like that person now. A marriage, 2 children, a middle aged balding head, countless life experiences. It’s really not me now.

• I’ve grown wiser in that time. But some part of me was still chasing freedom, dieting, exercising and dreaming of embodying that younger “better” me. I let that go. There was so much effort and pain trying to do that unconsciously.

• Embodying my age, my wisdom, my weight and lack of hair has been liberating. It’s not by chance in society, that we have terms like ‘a lightweight’ or ‘a heavy hitter’ which represents a sense of personal power, which comes with experience. Although I wouldn’t consider myself the latter, my old profile photo definitely represented the former.

• The death of youth, my freedom, those decades without responsibility has been painful. At times I still dream for that vast landscape of doing what I please 24/7. But what’s being birthed is something both emerging, unknown, and more beautiful than I imagined. It’s just my life as it is now. So I thought I must reflect that publicly.

• The benefit of not pressuring myself to be someone/thing that I’m not is a relief. It’s like a deep wave of peace to transcend my day to day reality. No pressure to restrict eating, meditate, squeeze additional productivity, exercise regularly, or perform beyond what I can. I simply stop when I need to. The never ending lists of things to do don’t go away, but the timelines and expectations shift. Perhaps the difference is that I now listen to my needs, and voice/act on them intuitively.

• Struggles are still there. They come, and go, and new ones come. I’m pretty used to death by this age. I’ve experienced extreme changes in my health. They may come again. I will deal with them if they arise.

• But I’m still very vulnerable to anything which may happen to my children or family. I always will be. It’s my achilles heal. But if we are human, we all have one/many.

My new profile photo reflects all of this on my face now. No false ideas of being bullet proof. A still very opinionated, and sometimes patronizing face. But one that’s willing to proven wrong, apologizes if I hurt another, and is infinitely more empathetic than what I was in that previous photo.