Gwyneth Paltrow is celebrating 50 years of living as she reflects on the past and looks toward the future. The Iron Man actress took to Instagram Thursday to share a photo of herself playfully jumping in a bikini as she prepares to celebrate her 50th birthday later this month. Paltrow captioned the photo simply, “Musings on a milestone,” but went more into depth with those musings on her Goop blog.
Looking back on her mother’s 50th birthday, Paltrow wrote, “I remember uproarious laughter, happy tears. I remember my mother full of life and joy at the convergence of the love on display, the deliciousness, and wonderful/heartfelt/brilliant/messy poems.” Celebrating her father’s 50th soon after was much different. “My father was gripped by something I could not articulate but I could feel,” she wrote. “…He could not embrace the milestone, this marking of the passage of time. Perhaps on some level he knew it would be his last decade.”
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As she nears that same milestone herself, the Oscar winner said she’s accepting the fact that she is getting older as life is getting sweeter. “I understand on some level that life is linear, that I have lived x number of days thus far and I have more in the basket under my arm than I do in the field before me,” Paltrow continued. “But there is something about the sweetness of life that exists deep within me that is unchanged, that will not change. It is the essence of the essence. It seems to be getting sweeter.”
And while she does everything she can to “strive for good health and longevity,” Paltrow said she’s letting go of the need to be perfect. “My body, a map of the evidence of all the days, is less timeless. A collection of marks and irregularities that dog-ear the chapters. Scarred from oven burns, a finger smashed in a window long ago, the birth of a child. Silver hair and fine lines. The sun has left her celestial fingerprints all over me, as if she soaked a brush in dark-taupe watercolor, flecking it over my skin,” Paltrow wrote of her body.
She continued. “And while I do what I can to strive for good health and longevity, to stave off weakening muscles and receding bone, I have a mantra I insert into those reckless thoughts that try to derail me: I accept. I accept the marks and the loosening skin, the wrinkles. I accept my body and let go of the need to be perfect, look perfect, defy gravity, defy logic, defy humanity. I accept my humanity.”
In the future, Paltrow would like to “slow down” more and embrace what’s around her, and she’s starting by acknowledging her flaws and sending apologies to anyone who has ever had a “negative experience” with her. “I would like to fully acknowledge myself,” she wrote in part. “I am imperfect, I can shut down and turn to ice, I have no patience, I swear at other drivers, I don’t close my closet doors, I lie when I don’t want to hurt feelings. I am also generous and funny. I am smart and brave. I am a searcher, and I can bring you along on my quest for meaning. When I love you, you will feel it encompass you through time and space and till the end of the earth. I am all of it.”
Looking back on her parents’ 50th birthday, Paltrow said she hopes her own children, 18-year-old Apple and 16-year-old Moses, whom she shares with ex Chris Martin, will look back on her milestone year and see that she was feeling “all the things” and looking to the future.
