There is this ageist and noxious idea in our culture that as people age, they are no longer able to change.

I notice the pundits say it all the time, our President, at 71, can and will never change. This puzzles and pains me because aging is all about change, and there is no aging person on the earth who cannot speak of change and adaptation, it is at the very core of getting older and moving towards the edge of life.

I am learning as I get older to embrace myself, and to acknowledge and accept the person I am, even if that is not the person I wanted to be, or even claimed to be in my own mind, or that people think I ought to be. In the past decade, almost everything about my life has changed. The other day, I wrote about the uncomfortable truth that I was not like the other children, and am not like the other grown-ups either.

I like to say that I was no good at being young, I am much better at being older. and I do not look back on my youth with nostalgia, it was a painful and unrewarding time for me. At that age, I could never change, and I was always ashamed of myself. I am not ashamed of myself now.

This morning, I woke up and was trying to explain to Maria why the obviously wonderful and awesome eclipse – the whole country was in awe –  just did not move me much.

But then, I said, I am not like the other children. No, she said, you certainly are not and I love you the way you are. This is still a shocking idea for me. But for the first time, I didn’t say it apologetically or with shame, I said it with pride and what I call radical acceptance. It just is.

it is okay to be different from other people, I not only have come to accept it, but I have also come to embrace it. I have come to embrace myself. In a sense, social media has been a great gift to me in that way. Total strangers are always telling me what I should say, think and do, and every time that happens, I look inward and get a bit stronger and clearer.

Someone lectured me on Facebook the other day because she didn’t like a reply I made to someone  telling me what to think. This did not offend me or irritate me in the least, I wrote back that she misunderstood my writing and my way of thinking.

I just was not interested in what she thought about how I reply to people on Facebook comments, she was welcome to comment on my post or move on somewhere else. It feels cleansing to to that, and healing.

She shut up and stayed. The self is strong, given the chance.

This liberation has been slow and arduous and gradual for me, the intrusion of so many other voices into my work and head – something new in our time — has challenged me to embrace and accept myself. So has growing older. If I don’t like myself, who will like me, and if I don’t love myself, who will love me?

And how can I love anyone else?

I think the work of the Army of Good this year has also helped me to embrace myself. I had this idea that I wasn’t good enough to do good, but Mother Teresa was right, I might not be great, but I can commit acts of great love, you don’t have to be great, or even good.

In my granddaughter Robin, I see signs of radical acceptance, I see in video after video and photo after photo an embrace of self, she seems very happy with who she is and with the live she lives. Her smile and love of life is evident. I hope she keeps it.

I credit my daughter Emma with this remarkable parenting achievement. She did not embrace herself at Robin’s age, and neither did I. There are very few photo of either of us smiling all the time.

Yet she seemed to know how to give this gift to her daughter.

We all can change, at any time, and we can all embrace ourselves, I think. It is never wise to label yourself or to ever let anyone else tell you what to think, for any reason. It is lethal, it just kills the mind and the spirit.