My grandmothers are all gone now. They died when I was very young, so I never got to see how they grew older, how they aged. I do have my mother, but she is decidedly young–under 60–and she’s showing me the ropes.

• Use Oil of Olay every day after 30.
• Don’t forget to put cream on the backs of your hands and your neck–spots the young forget.
• Enjoy your figure while you can, because in ten years, you’ll look back on old photos and wonder what your problem was.

It’s funny how none of us know how to do this getting older thing. We remain these awkward adolescents, in a way, trying to figure out how to dress, how to do our hair, how to keep our weight under control as our bodies mature and change.

The women around me probably don’t know it, but I look to them to see how they do it. The women in my church who sit next to their husbands, or sit alone, the backs of their heads holding my attention. They’re hitting these milestones before me, and I don’t even know what they are! But these women have experience–invaluable experience–that I wish I could learn from.

And while I sit with my husband in the pew, there are probably younger women looking at the back of my head, wondering the same things about me. Except that we’re all very self-sufficient, and we don’t ask. But we watch. Yes, we most definitely watch! Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t… like if they knew about my scrutiny, they’d say something about little pitchers and big ears and hush right up.

But how else are little pitchers supposed to figure all of this out?

Instinctively we know that the answers don’t come from a solitary experience, but from a community. I’m still growing my own community of women–many of whom are online–but I know what I need to do, and that is to reach out. We are in this together. And little pitchers have a lot to learn.