“Patina is the beauty that time creates. It is the soul, wisdom and depth that emerge through the journey of life.”

As we age it is easy to see ourselves as getting older. Noticing wrinkles, the change of skin colour, or hair colour. Or the constant feeling or getting to the top of the stairs, only to go back down again, or the daily forgetful moments questioning if we have dementia.

The arrival at a certain age can bring with it a sense of questions and feelings that align with the what now. The obsession with our outer beauty, as we age becomes, it seems a mission, almost going back in time to our teens.

You wake up one morning and think, ‘How on earth did I get here, because inside you still feel sixteen, except on the outside your body has just not got the memo. It can become a daily job, looking this way and that way to find that sixteen year old.

The new cream, the new look, the reinvention, when what we are really looking for is that feeling that makes you feel alive, full of joy and bursting with youth and energy, but so many of us had to disconnect from her to look after families, life, work, and we put her aside. Some us even disconnect from her much earlier. But how do we return to her?

The market is amazing now with all the things you can take and do to bring yourself back to life after spending years of looking after children, working your fingers to the bone and surviving, It is such is such a great time to be a woman now.

The energy, that is rising, is exciting. As women throw off those cloaks and identities that kept them hidden, so they can be truly themselves. It is a time to feel alive. We can celebrate the beauty of the woman. But the recovery after being on a journey home, the recovery of the self, seems to require another level of strength.

Patina who is she?

But we forget as we get older what age brings with it, because we are focusing on that person that has arrived in the mirror when we weren’t looking, because we were surviving.

When we were looking after everything and everyone else, mainly staying alive, when trying to get out of bed with your clothes on correctly or even on, is a major feat when you have young children. Families, businesses and everything in between.

Patina, is the layers, the pieces and layers of the years of life that we experience that we wear on our face like a cream. It is noticeable, but we see it as old, but Patina is the the beauty of the soul and the wisdom that emerges from those years, that make us unique.

It is so beautiful when something has soul and has been through the years. I love going to a car boot, or a market where you can see and experience such soul and beauty. That gorgeous piece that has character, love and life. I love sustainability.

So why instead do we view ourselves, when we arrive in that place, where we suddenly have time in life, do we try to look younger, like trying to remove the layers of patina, the very thing that makes us look beautiful and unique.

Yes, like pieces of furniture we may have the odd dent, we may have a wrinkle or two, yes we may have a grey hair or two, and yes like that piece of furniture that has Patina, layers of life, which now looks even more beautiful because it is not prefect.

It has character. It has soul and above all it is timeless and unique. Yes we can reverse the signs of aging, from the inside out, but we have to acknowledge the wisdom and knowledge that the road and paths of life can give us. Reversing the signs of aging is acknowledging the roads we have been on. We first have to acknowledge where we have been, to celebrate and accept.

Yes I know its easy to say this because we all still want to look and feel our best as we get older, but the difference between perfection and patina is so different. Patina is beautiful, it is soulful and full of wisdom. It has a story and life to tell, but instead sometimes we try to strive for perfection instead of Patina.

That patina feeling, is about being connected from the inside out. Going through the doors to find who we are, to go and get her and bring her with us so we can experience the joy of life, the wisdom, and our intuition, which brings with it our inner beauty, not as perfection, but as Patina. Something when you look at it, it just gives you that feeling, that warmth. Everything is not about the way we look on the outside but the journeys we have had, the paths we have taken and what we have faced and over come. Patina is our stories, our wisdom that become timeless.

Timeless is not a jacket you put on and suddenly you become timeless. Timeless comes from years of living. Years of figuring things out, years of moving this way and that way. Years of of holding, years of creating and years of being those foundations. This is where inner beauty comes from, when we have the courage to go through our inner doors and return home to ourselves. Which we can do at any age. Inner wisdom and beauty is not just defined by our age, but by our journeys.

Why do we become jealous or yearning the flat pack, when you are the solid wood, just because we are looking at the exterior?

The life that we have, the losses, the loss identities, the things we learn along the way, some through mistakes, some through sheer determination, help us to keep going, we survive and we come through it but instead I see women everywhere focused on their beauty and wondering who they are now. The identities, the roles defining them instead of forgetting where they have been and what they have overcome and who they are without the roles and cloaks that we accumulate when we are young.

If you would like to know where Patina comes from. Find out who Loti (low-tie)* is.

You can find here: Who is Loti?