Tracee Ellis Ross can’t wait to turn 50: 'I have always loved getting older'

Tracee Ellis Ross is stepping into her 50s with joy.

The Black-ish star, 49, is approaching her 50th birthday on Oct. 29 and couldn't help but share her excitement about the milestone in a Tuesday appearance on Today.

"I'm very excited about it,” the actress said. "I have always loved getting older. Like, I really have. There's certain things that are really strange. I am in perimenopause and hot flashes come up like a personal summer just entered from the inside ... But I feel like I am wiser, I'm more comfortable in my skin.

"If you had told me in my twenties, in my teens, that I was going to be somebody that actually could do scary things, that I could be comfortable even when I was uncomfortable, that I could live life on life's terms, that I could intuitively handle situations which used to baffle me, that I had an unbreakable, unshakeable foundation for life underneath me, I would have said there's no way because I was scared and I was uncomfortable in my skin, and all of these things,” she continued. "And so it just took me so long. It’s been like, sometimes like chewing on ground glass, trying to sort of, one step at a time make my way through."

These days, however, Ellis is embracing age with gratitude.

"I wake up now, and, yes, I have built a beautiful life around me, but the most important part for me is how I feel on the inside," she said. "That even on days when I'm uncomfortable, I have a tribe of friends around me that can love me when I can't love myself. It's really a gratifying place and time in my life."

The actress has always used her platform to speak on the joys of aging and embracing her 50s. In April, she opened up to InStyle about the joys of aging as a single woman.

"I'm really proud of who I've become as a woman that, at 49 years old, I can hold both the grief for what hasn't happened and also the joy for what is happening," she told the magazine. "I'm present in my experience with a sense of wholeness I really could not have imagined when I was growing up because I had a lot of discomfort in my skin."

Part of her journey, she explained, is coming to terms with the realization that joy and contentment starts and ends on her terms.

"Culturally, young girls are taught to dream of their wedding and not the life they want to be living or the people they want to become," Ross, who is happily single, noted. "I was not spared that messaging as a child — not from my mom or my dad, but from the world that we lived in. I spent a lot of time dreaming of my wedding. I can only imagine how much more I would've dreamt of — or how much sooner I would've got to some of my dreams — had we been in the conversation that we're in now, had I had people like myself and others to hear from as different examples of how to cultivate happiness and joy and a life that matches you."

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