This is so fucking fierce that I have to come back again and read it later. I can’t take it all in right now. The writing is just beyond, Felicia. This really is superb. I want to respond to this in a way that you deserve but with one caveat: the “best by” date. Here’s my take, for what it’s worth. I didn’t even begin to reach my best by date until I hit 55–57. I didn’t even begin to start writing with real power and impact, deliver potent speeches, or become a damned good athlete until I hit 58–60. While I still get lost, stumble, bumble fuck up (and on rare occasion, fuck) what I have learned is that we evolve when we’re damned good and ready. I didn’t even begin to genuinely live inside this magnificent, badly used body until I began training for Kili at 60. I had no effing CLUE what to do with myself, and I most certainly didn’t have the side gigs of wife, mother and and and to use as my excuses. I was simply building skills. While at 66, there are parts of me that bark and complain, and bits have to get scraped off my skin because, well, I was a dumb shit in Florida, I am absolutely unstoppable at this point. I am rootless and the last Hubbel of my kind. My family line ends with me. To that I say, let me go out with one massive bang, burnt out and used up and screaming at the top of my lungs all the way out. It took me a lot of decades to figure out that life wasn’t a dress rehearsal, and that somehow tomorrow would be X. It never was. We all fear aging at some deep, secret level, but my entire being is dedicated to ensuring that as I continue to gather the days, months and years, I intend to live them as fiercely as possible. Dear god don’t let me be the woman who dies with the remote in her hand, melting into the couch, with nothing more to do than watch I Love Lucy reruns and firing ugly comments at oldies who live more vibrantly than I do. That said, I just jogged 2700 steps out at Red Rocks. I’m training to die on the side of a mountain. Not a bathtub. At least that way I can fertilize the soil, and continue to be useful.