Has life gotten better or worse as you’ve gotten older?

Both. There has been more pain, more loss, more disillusionment and disappointment, more fear and anxiety. All of that has brought more gratitude, more awareness of who I am and what really matters to me, more compassion and empathy, more strength and confidence in my resilience, more acceptance and less fruitless expectation. Some of us really do need the dark to see the light.