Actress and author Mariel Hemingway has quite the legacy. Her grandfather was the famed Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize–winning author Ernest Hemingway. In fact, her family is full of writers, actors, painters, and opera singers. Like her grandfather, she came by her own talents at a cost. Many of those gifts in acting and writing came with deep mental anguish. While Hemingway continues a successful career onscreen—she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as a teen for her role in Manhattan—she is also a writer. In exploring her complicated family struggles, she never seems to shy away from stripping away any semblance of ego. This is reflected in her work, where she bares vulnerable parts of life: mental health, depression, and most recently, aging. View this post on Instagram Her prose poem resonated with women everywhere In a recent Instagram post, she shared a close-up photo of her face—no smile and perhaps just a dash of makeup. With Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” underscoring the photo, she wrote: “I have been talking about aging lately. But today it is not aging. It is wrinkles. The lines around my mouth I swore I would never have.The soft crepe skin at my neck that seems to appear overnight.The mirror catching me in light I did not ask for. Some days I do not care. Other days it feels like a punishment. I eat well.I move my body.I take care of myself.I do the things we are told will protect us. And still… time touches my face. There is a voice that whispers,Why this? Why me? Why now? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mariel Hemingway (@marielhemingway) I know it is fashionable to say we earned our wrinkles.That this is graceful.That this is beautiful. And yes… part of me knows that is true. But another part feels something deeper. What I realized is this. The ache is not about the wrinkles. It is about identity. Somewhere along the way we start to believe the mirror is telling us who we are. That youth equals value.That smooth skin equals worth.That beauty equals belonging. And that is the lie. Because there is a woman inside of me who has not aged one day. She is calm.She is radiant.She is grounded.She is sovereign. She does not disappear because my skin changes. She was never my skin. She is my rhythm.My breath.My voice when I stop performing. Time changes the body. But it does not touch the throne. When I remember that, something softens. I stop fighting the season.I stop punishing myself for nature.I stop confusing appearance with identity. This is not about pretending you love every wrinkle. It is about remembering you are not the wrinkle. It is not what you add. It is what you remove. Remove the belief that beauty is youth.Remove the fear that aging equals invisibility.Remove the story that your value lives in your face. When there is nothing left to remove, the Queen remains.” Fans respond Her prose has clearly resonated with fans. More than 92,000 people liked the post, and over 5,000 have commented so far. Famous and non-famous Instagrammers alike chimed in to share how touched they were. Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin exclaimed, “Yes! Exactly what you said. We are not allowed to age, at the same time men are elevated as they age, for their sage wisdom.” Comedian Chelsea Handler simply wrote, “Beautifully said.” Another woman shared a personal anecdote: “Last Sunday was my 70th birthday. I looked into the mirror and cried tears of joy. Lines and dark spots? No! They were tears of joy, gratitude, and for my life. If you make it this far, it’s for a reason. Life is so worth living. Who cares what I look like? I’m covered in paint every day anyway!” View this post on Instagram It’s beautiful to age Hemingway is far from the first woman to openly discuss the beauty standards seemingly placed on women in society. In a recent appearance on the podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, actress Kate Winslet didn’t hold back. “We’re so conditioned, women in our 40s, to think, ‘Okay, well, I’m creeping closer to the end,’” she said. “You know, you think you go into menopause and you’re going to stop having sex, and your boobs are going to sag, and your skin’s going to go crepey, and all these things.” She continued, “First of all, so what? And secondly, it’s just conditioning. You know, I think women, as they get older, become juicier and sexier and more embedded in their truth and who they are. More powerful and more able to walk through the world and care less.” It can seem easier said than felt. Luckily, many women are feeling more empowered to get raw thanks to celebrities using their voices. The post Mariel Hemingway’s emotionally raw poem about aging is hauntingly beautiful appeared first on Upworthy.