Are you a hot mama or have you surrendered your womanly power to the diaper bin?  I have decided to reclaim my whole self and here's how.

I reached the technical linear date of mid-life a couple of years ago (now 42) and at that moment I realized the value of bucket lists.  In the first half of life, it's easy to feel like there is alot of time.  Because, in some ways, there is.  The average lifespan is 75-80 years if you're healthy.  So, in the 20s, 30s, it feels like there is plenty of time to consider what might have escaped noticed up until that point.

When I turned 40, I had four children under 12.  I was uprooted and soul searching.  We were thinking about our values as a family, mostly.  What did we (as parents) want for our children?  What did we each want to do with our creative energies?  But I hadn't spent much time thinking about me.  Just me.  Not wearing any particular hat or consumed by any particular role.  The big ole elephant (pick a color) in the room was "who am I...now"?

I was dabbling gleefully in writing and photography.  Forcing myself out of my comfort zone into the public blogging sphere to document our "Life On Purpose."  I was athletic, as usual, committed to yoga, surfing, skiing, horses and whatever else I might have time for outside of chasing my children around. I was a wife, a mother, a friend.  But there was a part of me so long neglected that I forgot who she was or that she had ever existed.

Our sexual energies sometimes go into deep hibernation when we become parents.  I know it's not just me because it seems to be true for many of my friends, too.  Despite the fact that some pretty racy and exciting nocturnal or diurnal engagements resulted in brand new hybrids of our genetical material, parents start to lose their sexual identity once those same progeny arrive in our homes.  It's a slow, insidious creep.  Pregnancy weight, stretch marks, stretched parts, touched out and bone tired exhaustion pretty much destroy what ever meager libido clings to our depleted frames.  Two healthy human specimens are sucked dry by nature's march to ensure the next generation's survival.  While I have met some annoyingly well adjusted parents who glow with the bliss of new parenthood and sleepless nights, most of us really cannot remember those first few years let alone wax poetic about them.

I must confess that for the past year or more I have been feeling rather depressed about losing my youthful verve.  I could see the frown lines and smile crevices etching ever more profoundly into my once fair visage.  I was very aware that I was no longer, ever a Miss, but forever more a Ma'am.  Okay.  I can accept that.

Er.  Um.  Not really.

In my mind I feel 30.  Really.  But during that decade I was pregnant or nursing.  So, I need to set a new bar.  A new year of feeling and being a real woman.  A healthy, sexy, vivacious, intelligent woman.  No more mommy sweats.  No more frumpy days.  I need to draw the line somewhere.  Since when do we have children and hang up our libidos?  I'm not talking cougar vamping.  I'm just talking about feeling whole and alive.  Yes, sexy, but really just WOMANLY.  Remember when the swagger of the hips and the keen mind were a killer knock out blow to any mere mortal?

So, I recently resolved to find ways to feel womanly again.  My method?  I only buy sexy, silky underwear.  I will never again buy those blase, boring nude practical panties again.  I strut around in them with little braless tank tops (a luxury of the smaller breasted woman, perhaps but one that I relish) and vamp it up like no bodies business.  Somehow the cellulite and past few years of inconsistent glut workouts is easily overlooked in a pink laced bikini!

A friend of mine recently confided that she sleeps in the nude.  As a lifetime pajama sleeper I decided to pair down and sleep in my new sexy underwear to start.  I may work my way up to sleeping naked.  This may be too much information (TMI) but I would like to suggest to all my mommy friends out there, that it's time to reclaim our full womanly powers.  Yes, we create LIFE.  Yes, we nurture and raise those little cherubs with great devotion and love.  But we are WOMEN!  We have our own needs!  We are still sexual and sexy.  It's not too late to embrace it and own it.  I hear that the next 40 years can be MORE fulfilling and exciting than the first...and I intend to find out.

PS:  I draw the line at thongs.  To each her own.

How about you?  What do you do to feel sexy after 40?  Please share your tips.  I want to know!

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day.  I hope your day is filled with more (much more) than flowers!

 

you can find me at www.lisalabon.com