"Let's Call Out the Beauty in Each Other" with Jennifer Moore
“Let's Call Out the Beauty in Each Other” with Jennifer Moore
Jennifer Moore comes alongside women in crisis at Tandem in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tandem is an organization that provides a community of hope and practical help for women undergoing a variety of struggles. The work Jennifer does is so important, coming alongside women during some of the most vulnerable seasons of their lives. What's even more amazing is how Jennifer does her work, the heart she has for the women she works with and the steadfast hope she carries for them, and with them.
Join me in learning from Jennifer. Her words are dynamic, and she speaks from a place of raw authenticity. She knows about brokenness. Interestingly enough, that has also resulted in her knowing all about true beauty and real hope too.
The Interview
Audio engineering by McGinty Media
Interview Transcript
Melissa: The first thing I like to do is just get people a kind of sense of the work that you do, and just a little context about who you are and the work you do here at Tandem.
Jennifer: Okay. I work at Tandem Women's Resource Center. What I get to do every day is love on women that are in crisis or are struggling financially, dealing with tough stuff in their life. What we offer is material assistance and education classes. I'm also a life coach. We have counseling available. We have all different things to support and walk with women in crisis or in hard times. That's a little bit of what we do, and I get to sit with them and cozy down in my office, and love on them and get to the deep core of what's going on because there's financial things that block us, but there's also heart things that block us within that. That's kind of what happens here.
Melissa: Yeah, it's like a holistic approach to coming alongside these women.
Jennifer: Yep, yep we're dealing with the entirety of the woman, not just the checkbook of the woman.
Melissa: I know the one thing in particular that really drew me to really wanting to interview you is your heart for the women that you serve, and just the way you speak about them is so honoring, and beautiful, and holistic.
Jennifer: Thank you.
Melissa: Yeah, so thank you for that work. I think it's cool how you guys honor the whole person, and I know that the women can't help but feel that.
Jennifer: Oh, we love them. I love every woman that comes in here. I believe that every time someone walks in that it's a holy appointment. They wouldn't have to walk in here. There's a lot of places to go to get things, or to get assistance. And there's things that we absolutely cannot provide, and so if you do walk in these doors it's a holy appointment. You're meant to walk here. I have a job to do. I have a work to do, and I'm excited to walk with them. That's how we all feel.
We love them. They're resilient. They're strong. They're beautiful. They have gone through some really tough things and they have a story.
What I always say is the harder the story, the sadder the story, the worse you've been, it means that immeasurably the better you can be, and usually the better person you end up.
I'm always excited when people tell me horrible things. I'm like, "Girl, do you know that that means that you are going to be even more amazing of a woman because that's what you've gone through." Beauty from ashes, you know?
Melissa: Yeah, and how powerful, for someone like you, to meet them with hope like that. That's beautiful.
Jennifer: I believe it wholeheartedly. I do think because of things that I have been through and things that I have seen, that I say that with... God allowed me to go through some things so that I can say that with authenticity not with cliché. People know when you're well-meaning speaking and when you've been there speaking. There's a difference.
I think because I can look at someone and say, "Girl, you're going to be okay," you really are, hey believe me in a different way, and so every ugly thing that I've gone through I'm thankful for in this place. Sometimes I cry with them about it, because it's one of those things you don't think you're going to be happy for that thing that happened, and now you're like, "Oh, I can speak to this. Thank you God so that I can speak to this with boldness, and authority, and love in a new way that I couldn't have even though that I've wanted to 20 years ago." I would have intention to say all the same things, but it would have come a hopeful place versus a knowing place. That's different.
Melissa: That makes sense.
Jennifer: That's different, yeah.
Melissa: Given all of that, given your context here at Tandem, and your life experience, how do you define beauty?
Jennifer: That's a good question. When I was thinking about that, I think that beauty comes from deep places. Beautiful, everyone has beautiful in them. Everyone has beauty in them. When I have lashes on and I'm doing certain things, I might feel gorgeous, but that doesn't mean that I feel beautiful.
I think that beauty is in, it's deep, it's a woman who has rose to the top when she has been through the darkest places. It is a mama who thinks small of herself, and someone looks at her and her eyes start to twinkle, and she's beautiful in that moment and she recognizes it for the first time.
I think that everyone has beautiful in them, has beauty. I think we too often get worried about pretty, and gorgeous, and sexy, and hot. I think those are cultural, those are a lot of different things.
But beauty is deep. Beauty is accessible to all of us. It lives in us deep. I think a lot of people don't call out beauty very often. That makes me sad. So when you can see it in someone and you give voice to it, when you can speak to it, something in someone's eyes change when you speak to their beauty. It's deep. It comes from a limitless place.
It's sweet. It's a twinkle in someone's eye. It's rough skin because of a rough time, and they smile and you know they've been places.
It is going through and coming out with hope.
It's being an addict for most of your life and then coming through and being excited for life, and speaking in ways you'd never thought you'd speak, right? It's beautiful. Everybody has it, but not everybody speaks to it. Not everybody sees it. I love beautiful. I love beauty.
It's in flowers. It's also that. It's in the sky. It's how clouds billow. It's how the grass smells. There are so many things. It in artwork. It's in photography. It's in music. Beautiful is not just in a person, right? So it's massive, it's awe-inspiring.
Melissa: When you were talking about the women that you work with, or how you see beauty emerging in the women, it's almost like- I don't know if this how you'd describe it, but almost like this sacred essence or like the core of who they are.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melissa: They might not know it. We forget that we have that, but then when someone can call that out in you, you're like, no that's in you. We have this deep, deep value.
Jennifer: Yes. That is very much it. I love that word, "sacred essence". It is. It is absolutely.
Melissa: You kind of spoke to the second part of this question, but the next question is where do you see beauty in the world? You talked about flowers and clouds, and people. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to say on that.
Jennifer: My intention is to see beauty in unexpected places. I do see it everywhere. I'm an artist, so I do recognize it kind of everywhere.
But, I love to recognize it in places that nobody else is recognizing it whether that be with people, or whether it be outside, or just to take note of it, to pause and take note of it.
That's part of a gratefulness thing. It's part of an honoring of God thing. It's part of me just being a creative, and just being kind of enraptured with the sacred essence of things. Of people and of things.
Melissa: Do you think, this is just my own curiosity, but do you think that's just kind of a part of who you are, that noticing of the beauty around you? I think that can be an art that we cultivate, or a practice that we cultivate. Has there been anything do you think that has kind of nudged you to start noticing that more in life? Or has that just always kind of been how you're wired?
Jennifer: I would say that I saw a lot of great positive examples of affirmations and recognition. That moved me. So, that taught me how to be more comfortable with that. Some people never hear that kind of stuff, and so they don't really give voice to it. I heard that. My mom, my dad… I heard those kinds of things. I recognized also when people would recognize beauty in me, that meant a lot to me.
Ultimately, I believe in speaking life into people and over people, and talking about beauty because it is sacred, because it is deep, because it is core level stuff. It's a part of that to me. I want to give voice to that.
Very few people give voice to affirming messages to people period. That's why sometimes you can just say one statement that you aren't even thinking is that big of a statement, and people will weep because no one's ever said that. No one has ever told them that they are resilient and they're proud…you're proud of that. That's a beautiful quality.
So, words have power. They are things. As God's woman, I am called to speak life. If I don't, I rob people and myself.
So, I definitely was blessed to be in a family and in an environment where I did hear a lot of positives. We are kind of an artsy family, but also there was a comfortableness in affirmation and that kind of stuff. I think part of that is in there too.
Then, I just know how I responded, and I know what God called me to do and to be. I am intentional. I am intentional with it. I can also struggle with depression, and so I am intentional about being grateful, and I'm intentional about giving voice to good things to both myself and to others. That probably is really true as well.
Melissa: That makes sense.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melissa: Thank you.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Melissa: The next question you can go whatever direction you feel resonates most with you, but if you could just talk about an experience of brokenness that you've had, and then, it could be currently or in the past, and then second part you can talk about immediately or wait. Even in the midst of that brokenness you saw beauty breaking through.
Jennifer: Well, I think there's a ton of brokenness. I think we are all broken in so many different ways. I think that I've experienced a ton of brokenness in so many different ways. I kind of feel like we're all... Have you ever seen a picture of concrete with the little one flower pushing through that little crack in concrete?
Melissa: Yeah.
Jennifer: I sort of feel like that is true of all of us. I'll just talk about this, this is personal. This also then speaks to what I do here. If I cry, I cry.
Melissa: Sure.
Jennifer: But I'm going to try not to. I went through a really, probably the most broken that I've ever been…broken over divorce, broken over my own self esteem issues, broken over everything, where I experienced the betrayal of both friends and church, I'll just say that, in a way that I would never have expected and really can't really speak of right now. However, those details are irrelevant in just that it broke me on every level that I could have been broken.
Usually when you get broken, if you're a believer, you can go back to your church home, your people, and get support and healing, and find your core, your identity of stuff, and be reaffirmed and encouraged and whatever. And that was no longer the case.
For me, I didn't know how to then handle that. It broke my whole... It made me question everything. Every single thing. Whenever you're in betrayal, if you've experienced betrayal or lies, it reminded me of a Judas moment.
I learned a lot of things about myself. I also ended up being very, very stuck financially. I wasn't going to do ever again what I had done all my years prior, out of just self protection. So I was in the welfare line. I was re-establishing myself in a non-ministry career of doing hair. No badness to that, but I just was like, "I'm never going to work in this kind of deal again. Ever. You will never see me in a church. You will never see me. It's too risky. People aren't really-" because I deal with crisis stuff. I deal with sexual abuse. I deal with physical abuse. I deal with verbal and mental abuse.
In those places, that's grimy. You've got to be able to get dirty. If you can't feel safe to get dirty, or if you don't feel like other people are safe to get dirty you're surrounding, it's too messy. It's just too messy. So, I didn't want to risk some of those things anymore.
In the process of all that brokenness, and then experiencing all these things: having to take the bus to work as a single mom, having to have food stamps for my baby for this EBT card, standing in lines over and over again to get things like food and help, and assistance with all these different stuff, the frustration of always having very little…So, one little thing could set you off. It might look stupid to somebody who's not, but it's very real having to have health insurance because I have epilepsy, and having to battle with that back and forth.
So many things, because of that betrayal, because of that shakeup were then leveled and I just struggled, and struggled, and struggled. I could never sit in this job had all of that not been leveled, and love it, and be honored by it, and be excited for these women, and look at them in the eyes with tears running down my face and say, "Baby, you are going to be okay. You are amazing. God is in this. He is going to find a way out. I'm not saying now. I'm not saying in a year. But it will happen."
For that, I am so thankful for all those horrible things, and all that pain, because if I hadn't, if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't know this position. I wouldn't be able to sink into cozy chairs with these women and ask deep questions, and be excited for their future, more excited than they are.
I can see the beauty in all of those things now. I can give name to it. I can speak it. I speak those things to certain women. Different things, I can speak. Not all of it. Not parts that are sacred just to me, but I can speak to different things, to different women. There's a connect because I get certain stuff.
I wouldn't take those ugly things back for the fact that I get to make that connect, and someone gets to see a hope and a future.
It was straight brokenness for me. It still is a certain brokenness from me. It still is, because there's a lot of loss. But it's so beautiful to sit with people and to be like, "Honey, I struggle with you."
I'm not saying this as if I've got it all together and I'm going back to everything's cush and everything's great place. I am in the food shelf line with you sometimes andt hat's an honor to be able to do that. If nothing would have come good out of that, if I wouldn't have been able to sit in a spot with somebody and give voice to all that pain, and be able to speak with hope about something better, then it wouldn't have been. Then I'd be pissed about it. But I'd be really salty and mad about it, and I'd feel some kind of way, but because I get to sit here with amazing women and speak real with them, it makes it all fine. It makes it worth all of that.
It's like a moment where you're like, "Okay, God sees me. He sees me too."
I say that to women all that time, "God sees you in this. He sees you."
That is what beauty is. That is what is beautiful, is in your brokenness, when all of a sudden you can see God seeing you.
It could be with a little thing. It can be with a huge thing. But that moment when God sees you specifically, whatever it is, and a lot of times we just don't feel seen by God. It could literally be something as silly as, "God, I'm just praying for five more dollars on my EBT card. I just need five more dollars," and you got to the store and there's exactly five more dollars on your EBT card.
Now, nobody that's doing really well is thrilled about just five dollars on EBT. EBT is food stamps, okay?
Melissa: Yeah.
Jennifer: But if you're asking for that, if that's what you asked for from God, and that's what you get, it's a "I see you" moment. It is a precious moment of being seen by God and having relationship like that.
Brokenness is where flowers break through, where life breaks through. Extra happens that you didn't know was available. I guess that's a personal one.
Melissa: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. The word that keeps coming to mind is "brave" to step back into the crap that is part of your story, it sounds like, and being brave enough to stand next to women and call forth the hope that you know. I think that hope can be, from whatever we're going through, it can be a hard thing sometimes to remember is real, and that God does see you. So the fact that you're standing with them and reminding them, it just strikes me as really brave.
Jennifer: Thank you. It's an honor. I feel honored to sit with them, because they're telling stuff that they don't trust many people with, and I know that feeling of telling things that, "Mm, this person shouldn't know this."
I do feel honored every single time I sit down with these mamas. They are brave, because they hardly know me. It's a precious spot. It's a precious spot, and I do not take it for granted.
Now, I would have done it 20 years ago and loved it, but it's a different feeling today than it would have been 20 years ago. I wouldn't have experienced the brokenness, you know?
Melissa: Yeah, oh yeah. That makes sense.
Jennifer: I can't explain it. I maybe wouldn't feel so honored by them. I maybe would have taken that more cheaply. I don't know, but I'm thankful for it. It's precious. Every day is precious.
Melissa: I bet they feel that too.
Jennifer: I hope so, that's my prayer that they do feel that.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah. Most people cry in this room. But most people cried with me when I was doing hair too. All of my people would be like, "I don't ever cry, and I always cry with you." Yeah.
Melissa: You were one of those people, that people liked you.
Jennifer: Well I do ask deep questions. I go deep. I affirm people.
Really, truly most people don't ask deep questions anymore, and most people don't affirm deeply either. When you do that, and you call something, people are craving that.
It causes people to cry. But I also believe, and I think people... Crying is not a weak thing. Crying is the strongest thing you can do. So when a woman cries and then she apologizes, which usually happens, I'm always like, "What are you apologizing for? That is the most courageous thing you can do. It's the strongest thing you can do." Then they cry more because now they feel safe to cry.
Melissa: Exactly, yeah.
Jennifer: Exactly. Yeah, so.
Melissa: Thank you for sharing all that.
Jennifer: Yep.
Melissa: The next question is, I don't know if you'd say it's a shift, but [I’m] just curious about what lies about beauty you've experienced. It could be just in your life or just within culturally, or really any…It's a pretty open question, but lies about beauty have you experienced?
Jennifer: I don't think you can grow up in America as a woman and not experience lies every single day, lies that you're told, lies that you rehearse.
I think for me personally, and I feel like for a lot of women, it is the enemy's greatest tool to stop us from fulfilling his best, from living in the glory and the wonder of what he's created us for.
I would say personally I think it's probably the biggest tool for me that has caused me to pause or stop, or hold back, or not reply to that, or not follow through with that. I spend entirely too much time being concerned with what I look like, what I weigh, how that fits me, if she's cuter than I am.
I think the lies of comparison are really detrimental to us as women. I think it stops us from embracing each other, and it divides us.
It is lies that we believe other women believe about us too. So we will actually project lies that we feel onto other women, that they are not even thinking about that.
We have cultural lies between women about beauty because of just dividedness. We create dividedness about beauty, whether that person thinks she has better hair than me, or that person's body is too skinny, or she's too fat, or she shouldn't be wearing that.
There are so many different things. Sometimes, we create them in our own head. Sometimes they are so obvious because we hear them all the time. I'm older, I'm 46, so when I grew up, there was not a single brown eyed, brown haired, muscular model out there. It was all blonde, blue eyed, super emaciated skinny women, girls. Those were all the models.
So, I grew up thinking I was so ugly. I was so not ugly, but looking back... And I was always tan, or darker than all the other girls that around me as well. So, I tried to foil my hair. I wanted blue contacts. I was doing every diet pill, anorexia. Every single thing to be not what I thought the world was telling me I needed to be so that I would be pretty, so that I would be pretty for girls, so that boys would want to date me. All of that stuff messed me up so stupid bad.
I can't even speak to what it would be like to be a woman of color during that time. There was nothing during that time. Now, we're just so immersed in social media and pictures, and Instagram, and people all trying to... and all the different plastic surgery. I didn't think of beauty as internal in the same way when I was younger. The truth was, I didn't even care about that.
I knew I was beautiful inside, but what I wanted to be was pretty, and gorgeous, and sexy. That's what I cared about. I think that's probably the truth for a lot of young women, and older women still to this minute.
I'm thankful that my faith reminds me that I have a purpose, and that I am not limited because of what I look like, because of my weight, because of my struggles, because of any of that kind of stuff.
But sometimes that is the very thing that gets me close to the person who needs to hear what I have to say.
I don't think there is not a bazillion different lies that we are told about beauty. I mean, minute by minute, we might wrestle for some of us. Did I answer all that?
Melissa: Yeah, you definitely answered it.
Jennifer: I'm passionate about that. It frustrates me.
Melissa: Yes, well rightfully. That's crazy. I didn't know that about the models and stuff, that that's shifting that-
Jennifer: Oh yeah, that wasn't. Ask anybody in that era, when you meet somebody in that era, ask anybody... For mixed girls too, during that time, I have some friends who are mixed. Most of my friends are sisters, are black women. There's all different types of beauty within that, that I won't speak to because I'm not. But I definitely know the only thing to be was blue eyed and blonde haired, and super skinny. Like unattainable kind of skinny.
Melissa: Sure, yeah.
Jennifer: That's when anorexia and all that stuff was really, really popular and hype, and everyone wanted to... There was talk about that in the industry. Anyways, you just didn't see it and therefore you expected that it wasn't beautiful. You just tried to do anything opposite of that to the detriment of a lot of other things.
Melissa: Right, yeah.
Jennifer: Then you look back and you're like, "What was I talking about? I was so cute." It's lies. It gets your mind off of what's important.
Melissa: Right, yeah. Yes. That lie of beauty is external period.
Jennifer: Right, period.
Melissa: And that it looks like this very tiny list of things, that actually those people even... Something they don't think is right with them, the people who fit the right categories or whatever.
Jennifer: Yeah, because no one ever thinks they're right.
Melissa: Right, right.
Jennifer: When I did hair, there's a myth that white women think that their hair is great, and that they love their hair, and everyone wants white woman hair. No white woman ever sits in my chair and loves their hair. That is not true. It is not.
But if we're divided, we can't speak to those truths.
The truth is, more white women want wigs and hair that sisters wear. But we don't communicate. There's not a community, there's not a closeness. There's division because of comparison. We don't have that. I think that's absolutely the same thing as with body size, as with clothing, as with eye color. I mean all of that.
There is a misunderstanding. I don't even like to say misunderstanding. It's a lie. It's a comparison that ruins us, that gets us off track. You're very right about that. The people who actually are everyone's thinking are beautiful, they don't feel beautiful either. They didn't feel that way either once you really talk on that level.
But that media, and our visuals and what we see undergirds that, so that okay fine you don't think you're beautiful but you are what everybody else is watching as beautiful. So what am I supposed to be that? It plays with your mind.
Melissa: Oh yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melissa: It's an effective way to divide us.
Jennifer: Exactly.
Melissa: Thank you for that. It's frustrating. The next question I have is, have you had any experiences that have transformed your ideas around beauty?
Jennifer: Oh yeah.
Melissa: Do any in particular come to mind?
Jennifer: I will say that if we go back to what I'm talking about when I was younger, I was this brown eyed, brown haired girl. I was muscular. I had a shape. I'm just going to say this, and I don't know if it's appropriate, but I had boobs when I was in seventh grade. I was tall. I had hit puberty early. I looked like a full-grown woman when I went to seventh grade. The first day of school, I was in a new school and the kids thought I was a student teacher.
Melissa: Oh wow.
Jennifer: Okay? So I was mortified because I'm clearly... I looked different than everybody else. I started going to a church in the city, and I started being around other people besides just white people.
I started being around other cultures, where they're entered in then a different standard of beauty, a different standard of what kind of body shape is pretty, a different standard of what was healthy and what wasn't healthy. That was the first time I felt like, "I am pretty in just the way I am."
It was life changing for me because it wasn't just my dad was saying, "Honey, you're beautiful," or just some girls like, "Oh, that's cute on you." It was like a whole group of people started being like, "What? That's crazy. You are gorgeous. Your frame is perfect. What are you being so weird about?"
It was never in my conscious to consider myself great just the way I was until I was surrounded by people who affirmed that, and visuals that affirmed that. There were women that I was seeing then who looked more like me, and that was really important. It was really important. I hate to say that that was so important, but it really was. It's important to see other people who look like you.
That's why I always say if you adopt outside of your race, you better get those babies somewhere where they see people that look like them. You better have friends that look like them. It's important. It is not something to take lightly. It's not the most important, but in this day and age you can find people of quality that are of all colors, that you can be friends with.
That was life changing for me, to gain some confidence and some self-esteem about my outside because it did have a reflect on then what I was able to believe about myself in my entirety.
Melissa: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And some of the cultural limitations of your context from growing up, you saw that "Oh, this is actually just a culture."
Jennifer: Right.
Melissa: There are other ways of seeing beauty.
Jennifer: Right, and that still stands today. I hear that still to this day. You go into other countries, things that we would never even think... So not even in our subcultures in America, but just outside of that, internationally, what do people respond to in different countries.
That's kind of dope though. I kind of like that because that means that beyond our experience here, that in other places their definition completely changes.
That's cool to me, because that gives it a broader context. That's sweet for people to hear and see, and know about that. It's bigger than just this, sweetheart.
Melissa: Yeah, right.
Jennifer: Right? I like that.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melissa: I agree.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Melissa: Thanks.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melissa: The last question I have is does anything come to mind, anything you wish people knew about beauty?
Jennifer: Beauty is the combination of all your experiences lived out. Everyone has access to it. God created it in you.
No one walks around ugly unless you behave ugly. Beauty is a core thing. Ugly is a behavior thing. You can have the most gorgeous girl in the room, and she comes in and does something really foul, she becomes very ugly not because of what she's got on her outside, but because of how she's behaving to people. If you want to be simple about it, you can be simple about it, and beat people down and pick on different things, and compare and whatever.
To me, beauty is a combination of all your things. It's like a gumbo. It is just a mixture of a bunch of stuff, and then how you act and how you are grateful, and how you speak, and the rhythm of all those things. That's what beautiful is and that’s why we all have access to it.
More of us are way more beautiful than we think, or than we're told. That's the sadness. More women need to hear, "You are beautiful."
And we'd be a different place if we heard that more often with sincerity, not with a filter.
Melissa: Right.
Jennifer: Right?
Melissa: Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer: But that other women recognized it, people recognized it.
I'm going to challenge you all today. I'm going to challenge anybody who listens. Once a day, look at somebody who you wouldn't normally say something to, and just affirm their beauty in them.
It doesn't need to be creepy, like "Oh, you're so beautiful." You can say, "Your strength is so beautiful. Your ability to wake up this morning and put a smile on when all these things are falling around you is so beautiful. I love to see that in you. It encourages me." Challenge yourself to do that, to speak that. That, in and of itself is beauty. That in and of itself is beautiful.
To spend the time, to dig in, to lift somebody else is beautiful. By that act alone, you become a beautiful woman.
Melissa: Thank you.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm (affirmative), absolutely. This has been an honor. This was cool. Thank you.
Melissa: Well thank you so much, and thank you for the work that you do here. It really is amazing.
Jennifer: It's truly an honor as a gift from God. It's a kiss on my forehead.
Melissa: I like that. I haven't heard that.
Jennifer: Yeah, it's a kiss on my forehead girl. I say it all the time.
Melissa: I guess I didn't even ask you, was there anything else that as you were thinking about beauty today, or the interview, is there anything else that came to mind that I haven't asked you about that you had wanted to share?
Jennifer: No, I feel like we covered a whole bunch of stuff.
Melissa: We did, okay.
Jennifer: We could talk longer. This is a subject that I have 46 years of wrestling with. Oh, I can say this.
Melissa: Okay, yeah.
Jennifer: As you get older, embrace your beauty more because the world will lean in to tell you you're less beautiful that you were.
This is my other challenge. As you get older, tell your age. Do not withhold that from younger women, because younger women need to hear older women saying their age and talking about the richness of who they are at that age, so that we aren't ushering in women to being older telling them to fear it, that they're going to be less, all that kind of stuff.
Tell your age, doggonit. Tell your doggone age, and let women be excited for what changes for their life as you get older. Because some things do change that kind of suck that you're like, "Oh, man I really wish that my skin would pop back quicker," or whatever. But you will never be wiser and richer than you are at 46 than you were at 26.
I have more stories to tell. I have more patience to give because I get it. You give perspective in a different way.
Do not rob young women of being ushered in with hope for their future, with what lies ahead of them, instead of reaching back to try to be younger than you are. Be who you are.
And that's my biggest thing that I'm always telling older women. Stop saying you're not going to tell people how old you are. Tell us.
I need to hear a 65-year-old woman say, "I am 65 years old, and I made it." There are things that she knows, that I need to know. I need to hear from her and her perspective. She's lived it longer. I'm thankful for that.
There's a thing. Yep, didn't expect to say that one.
Melissa: No, I like that. I think going back to your analogy, which I thought was really cool, the gumbo. The analogy of just like, and I don't know if this was what you were getting it, but almost like beauty being God shaping us in the midst of all of our life experiences. Not that he causes them, but just that he uses them to shape us and maybe refine our true essence and beauty within us. We need that wisdom, like you said, and the authenticity of women who are ahead of us and have more experiences, and perhaps are a bit more refined as they're further on the journey.
Jennifer: Right, or they're different experiences have marinated. There's a taste, there's a flavor there that you can't get if it just sits in real quick. That things got to sit.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jennifer: Those spices have to sit and take on new things, and that meat has to... Everything's got to sit and you've got way better tasting stuff when you're 65 than when you're 46. But if you sell it like, "Oh, this old 65," well come on. That's not doing anybody any favors.
Melissa: No, no.
Jennifer: Yeah, our life is a gumbo.
Melissa: Great metaphor. I love it.
Jennifer: Spicy, marinated, all different flavors, all different tastes. Beautiful.
Melissa: Thank you.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Melissa: That is great. I'm glad that came out again.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melissa: It was good. Thank you so much.
Jennifer: You're welcome, honey. Thank you.
Photo credit: Rebecca Wynia
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