I like the offhand grace of this photo with the guy walking down the street outside the salon.

Yes: I do recommend celebrating 50 with a makeup lesson.

The makeup artist was bright and cheerful. I bought the lipstick, eyeliner, and blush she used. The products did not cost a lot of money though.

A woman at the last book talk commented to the audience that she loved my memoir because it talked about clothes and makeup–“And Sephora-our favorite store!” she laughed.

Forgiveness is a buzzword for 50. The tee shirt I wore in this photo has black letters that spell out the words: grace wit poise love. These are the four horsemen of a woman’s strategy for getting older.

I kid you not at the book talk my mother told the audience: “Chris was chubby in her twenties.”

My story is living proof that you can lose weight, keep it off, and be fitter and healthier and stronger at 50 than you were as a young woman.

I urge readers to always maintain a sense of humor. Go to a comedy club. Watch a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoon marathon.

Acting with good humor is the way to go at 50.

I talked to a woman about why I titled my memoir Left of the Dial: how I covet living a life in balance with my thoughts and feelings on the left of the dial so that what I feel and think is in balance not noisy and distorted with feedback and tension.

As I near 50, I want to talk to other women who turned 50 to ask them how they felt as they achieved this milestone birthday. In my estimation: now is the time to let go of the clutter: the cluttered, negative thoughts as well as the physical clutter in our apartments.

As I near 50, this might seem unusual yet I regret nothing that happened in my life. Regret serves no purpose except to keep you stuck and unable to move forward.

The beat of our lives goes on at 50. I want this to be an upbeat time where I seek to do new things and achieve new goals. Each of us needs to focus on what’s possible instead of making excuses for why we can’t do something.

Fifty is the start of our new lives not the end of our lives.

Clearing out the clutter is in order. Opening our hearts and minds to our potential and to others’ potential is the way to go now.

Some things I’ve learned now that my forties are over:

You don’t need 20 tubes of lipstick. Six tubes of lipstick will do.

You don’t need to buy what the media is selling about erasing wrinkles. As numerous older women have proclaimed, “It’s either my face or my ass.” You might gain weight and have no lines on your face or you might gain only a couple of pounds and have wrinkles.

By the time a woman turns 50, it’s time to stop chasing perfection. It’s time to live the dream of what you’ve always wanted to do or to live the dream of a new passion you’ve discovered later in life.

At 50, I desire to live a life in balance. I’m able to accept that the past had an expiration date and that the future is an open book.

I’m not so foolish at 50 to think I can have everything or do everything in my life.

Instead, it’s time to embrace our imperfections, to honor and use our gifts and talents, to see the positive not focus on the negative.

If you turn 50 and you still don’t like yourself that’s not good when most likely you’ll have 20 more years on earth.

All woman have to love ourselves from wherever we are right now. If we don’t like an aspect of ourselves or our lives, we have the power to change things for the better.

I’ll end here by telling you to repeat after me:

You don’t need 20 lipsticks. You don’t need to hang on to guilt or regret. You don’t need to conform to how society tells us a woman should act and be and what a woman should do in her older years. Dare to wear purple.

Let’s celebrate ourselves at every day. Let’s break out the champagne.

Fifty is here. The world is our oyster now more than ever.

It’s not easy to wave a freak flag when you’re told to conform from an early age. I know I wasn’t the daughter my mother expected me to be: gingham and giggly. Instead, I stayed in my bedroom listening to college radio and sketching fashions, reading books and writing in a diary.

As women get older, the pressure to conform is still there. Magazines like Allure and Vogue feature teenage models with tape-measure limbs and flawless faces. Celebrities hawk miracle creams and hope in a jar of happiness.

What happens when the happiness we seek from physical perfection eludes us? What happens when we realize our mental muscle is starting to turn to flab as well as our bodies? Do we keep seeking happiness outside ourselves via products and praise from other people?

The goal is to be self-confident: not to be swayed by our critics or our fan club either way.

I have a touch of shock like the rest of us now that fifty is here and I’m being sold a bill of goods of impossible perfection I’m supposed to obtain. Let’s face it most women don’t have a peaches-and-cream complexion or creamy skin without pink blotches or fine lines.

“On with it!” is my motto.

I decided to have a makeup lesson for my 50^th birthday. It cost only $80 and I will bring my eye shadows and lipsticks for the makeup artist to review. Bobbi Brown in one of her beauty books calls this a “makeup facelift.”

Instead of buying endless products hit-or-miss I recommend booking a makeup lesson at a local salon. You’ll feel pretty and today with the outcome. Research a local salon that offers makeup lessons.

Hiding behind baggy clothes, slathering on hideous makeup like you did in your twenties, and not taking care of yourself are the easiest ways to make yourself ill physically and mentally. Read the Lauren Slater article in the Oprah magazine about how she spruced herself up to overcome depression.

Beauty is the birthright of all women.

Every person living on earth is beautiful.

50 is not the end it is the beginning of our new life.

Dare. Do three things on your bucket list by the time you’re 50.

Keep dreaming. Keep doing.

The best is yet to be.

Fifty is the chronological caboose, okay?

Yet rather than focus on the past, which had an expiration date, I choose to embrace each new day.

It’s true so much of our youth is gone: friends, badges of identity like music and fashion, desires, priorities, and values.

Yet a New York Times article on March 23^rd heralded our older years as an auspicious time to reinvent ourselves, reflecting on women and men who published books of poetry, invented a new business, and dared meet themselves in their fifties, sixties, and seventies

I will always remember my mother’s aunt who lived to be 82. I bought her an amethyst necklace from a gift shop for her 80^th birthday party. She told me: “Oh, purple is my favorite color.” (I hadn’t known that.)

The party was at an organic farm upstate, on wooden tables outdoors with a Mediterranean feast. “I love every birthday!” Aunt Angie proclaimed, lifting her wine glass in a toast.

The point is: giving up on ourselves is not the answer. We need to wrap with love the packages of ourselves we give to others. We can embrace the good and be realistic about the not-so-good that remains.

Even when there is pain, we can find pocket(book)s of joy-a Freudian slip-pockets of joy became pocketbooks, as if we can cherish our accoutrements of style.

Yet I can’t tell you I’ll be the “same Chris” at 60, or 75-or 80. In recovery as in life, there are no guarantees. The clock might keep ticking, so we can’t shut off our minds and bodies, nor remain stuck, blind to our potential and the possibilities in our “second youth.”

Truly, at 50 and beyond, acting resilient and having the bravery to carry on are the smart accessories in our mental makeup bag.

Now is the time to say “Yes!” to life.

“Yes!”

I wrote this ditty about seven months ago when I started to reflect on the end of my forties this coming April.

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Just for Today, At 50:

I will join a bowling league for fun, even if I barely score a 60.

I will refuse to get cuckoo over the right way to fold a bath towel.

I will use Brillo pads to scour the brown off the stove burners.

I will treat myself with the kindness and compassion I treat others.

I will accept that I gained 5 or 10 pounds because I’m still alive and have more good years left.

I will use the rear-view mirror as a cheer-view mirror to be proud of what I’ve done instead of regretting what didn’t happen.

I will go to the nail salon for a manicure and pedicure.

I will perform a random act of kindness.

I will remember that God wanted me to be born, that I live here now because life is good even though challenges remain.

I will refuse to take other people’s bullcrap.

I will take myself out to dinner for my birthday.

I will accept that a bad habit remains.

I will strive for excellence because it is attainable, instead of striving for perfection which is impossible.

I will buy a daring outfit: polka dots or stripes.

I will understand that This Is It: so I will live with the knowledge that most things don’t matter in the scheme of life.

I will get over my fears of not being good enough, thin enough, or popular enough.

I will tell myself that Maya Angelou was right: a woman should own a set of wine glasses with stems.

Then I’ll break out the bubbly and celebrate 50, because it’s a great time to be alive.