Marnie Beauchamp

I’VE BEEN A LITTLE QUIET ON HERE…

Mainly because I’ve spent the last week snow skiing.

Which, given my eyesight, is obviously a very sensible recreational choice. 🤣⛷️

Lucky I have some amazing people in my life who I can follow down the mountain.

But it did get me thinking about how I choose to live …

I’m getting older.
I just have absolutely no intention of getting old.

There’s a difference.

Getting older is the birthdays, the wrinkles, the occasional creak when you stand up and probably needing longer to recover from things you once did without thinking. 😂

Getting old, though?

I think some of that happens in our thinking.

When we start telling ourselves:

I’m too old for that.
I couldn’t do that anymore.
That part of my life has passed.
Maybe I should start slowing down.

Why??

One of the things I’m learning in this chapter of my life is that our circumstances might change — our bodies change, our abilities change and sometimes life throws us things we absolutely didn’t order.

But that doesn’t mean we stop living.

If anything, it has made me want to squeeze more out of it.

Try things.
Go places.
Learn things.
Move your body.
Stay curious.
Laugh at yourself.
Do things that scare you a little.

And occasionally strap two planks to your feet and hurtle down a mountain when you can barely see where you’re going. 🤣

I’m not interested in pretending I’m 25.

God no. I was far more confused then. 😂

I want to be this age — with everything I’ve learnt, everything I’ve survived and hopefully a little more wisdom — while still being ridiculously excited about what might come next.

Because maybe ageing well isn’t about desperately trying to stay young.

Maybe it’s about refusing to stop being alive.

So I’m collecting birthdays.

I’m collecting wrinkles.

But I’m also collecting adventures, stories, belly laughs, ridiculous decisions and hopefully a few more chapters I haven’t even imagined yet.

Getting older is inevitable.

Getting old?

I’m not putting that on my vision board. 🤣

I almost didn’t post this today.

Not because I don’t believe every word of it.

But because today, I’m struggling to practise it.

The doubt has started creeping in.

And if I’m completely truthful, I’m feeling overwhelmed and a little scared about what lies ahead.

I’ve spent most of my life being the person who finds another way.

Fix it. Work it out. Keep moving.

And I still believe I will.

But apparently being resilient doesn’t mean you get to skip the sh*tty days. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Today is one of them.

My mind keeps wanting answers to questions I simply don’t have answers to yet.

And I can feel myself trying to solve a future that hasn’t happened.

So maybe I needed to write these words for myself today more than anyone else.

Because this is the bit we don’t always show on social media.

The bit between the inspiring posts.

When the positive mindset wobbles.

When doubt gets louder.

When you’re doing your bloody best to believe everything will be okay… while a little voice in the background keeps whispering, “But what if it isn’t?”

I don’t have some profound answer today.

I’m just choosing not to let that voice make my decisions for me.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel stronger.

Maybe I won’t.

But today, I’ll just keep going.

And perhaps that’s what courage actually looks like sometimes. ❤️

🤔

Things I really wish I’d given fewer sh*ts about at 30. 😂

Whether everyone liked me.

Whether someone was annoyed with me.

Looking like I had everything under control when I absolutely did not.

Saying yes because saying no might disappoint someone.

Trying to explain myself to people who had already decided what they thought of me.

Being embarrassed about getting something wrong.

Comparing where I was in life to where somebody else was.

And perhaps the biggest one…

What other people thought I should do with my own bloody life.

I wish I could tell you I woke up at 50 and magically stopped caring about all of it.

I didn’t. 😂

I still overthink things.

I still occasionally say yes when every cell in my body is screaming NOOOOO.

I still care what people think more than I probably should.

The difference is, I catch myself much faster now.

Because somewhere along the way I realised something:

You can spend an enormous amount of your life managing everybody else’s opinion of you.

And there is absolutely no prize at the end for doing it well.

No trophy.

No certificate.

Not even a bloody participation ribbon. 🤷🏻‍♀️

So these days I’m trying to spend a little less time asking:

“What will people think?”

And a lot more time asking:

“What do I think?”

Turns out that question is considerably more useful.

And perhaps one of the nicest things about getting older is finally realising that your life doesn’t need unanimous approval.

Thank God for that. 😂

Apparently, I’ve been accidentally giving life advice for years. 🤣 which I have loved hearing about, by the way. 🙏

People have asked me what I do when I feel stuck, overwhelmed, completely off track or when life throws another one of its sh*tty little curveballs.

The truth is, I don’t have some magical formula.

But I do have things I’ve used over the years that help me stop, reset my thinking and work out what the hell I actually want to do next.

People have asked me what I do. I’ve put some of it together. Here it is. ❤️

This little carousel is probably the simplest place to start.

Because sometimes I don’t think we’re actually stuck.

Sometimes we’ve just changed.

We’ve outgrown things.

We’re still living according to decisions we made years ago, when we were a completely different version of ourselves.

And because nothing is technically “wrong”, we keep going.

Same routines.

Same expectations.

Same life.

Meanwhile, there’s a little voice somewhere inside us saying…

“I don’t think I want this anymore.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to blow your whole life up. 🤣

Sometimes it just means it’s time to stop long enough to ask yourself some better questions.

So swipe through these ones and see what comes up.

And over the next little while, I’m going to start sharing more of the exercises, questions, habits and tools I’ve collected and used myself over the years.

I’ve also started putting some of them into little Chapter Guides inside Turn the Page with Marnie so they’re there for anyone who wants to go a little deeper.

No preaching.

No pretending I’ve cracked the secret to life.

God knows I’m still working half of it out myself. 🤣

Just sharing what has helped me…

in case something in there helps you turn your own page.

Join here
https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY8y5Q5oYQwvZkn/

Hell yes. 👏

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One of the questions I’ve been asked the most since sharing my macular dystrophy journey is…

“if you’re legally blind, how are you still doing everything you’re doing?”

Fair question!

Most people imagine someone who is “legally blind” is actually blind and sees absolutely nothing. That’s actually not what legally blind means.

Being declared legally blind doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t see.

It simply means your vision has fallen below the legal level needed for things like driving and other visual tasks, even with glasses or contact lenses.

For me, I can still see people, colours and most of what’s around me. I can still work, read with technology, use voice commands (although Siri and I are currently in a very complicated relationship!) and generally get on with life.

What I can’t do is rely on my eyesight the way most people can. Faces become difficult to recognise, unless I’m up close. Fine detail disappears. Contrast is harder. Bright sunlight is extremely challenging. And driving is no longer safe or legal.

Think of it like looking through a camera that’s permanently out of focus. Some days it’s clearer than others, but the missing detail never comes back.

So yes… I’m legally blind.

No… I don’t spend my day walking into walls!

I’ve simply had to learn different ways of doing the things I love.