Paulina Porizkova shares a message about her 'rollercoaster' life: 'Pain is my teacher and joy is my reward'

Paulina Porizkova is reflecting on her “rollercoaster” of a life.

The model, 57, took to Instagram to share a video of herself on the Seaglass Carousel in New York’s Battery Park. She used the video to reflect on how her life has changed over the years. She began her caption, “My life has always been a roller coaster. With an interlude of a carousel ride while married and raising children. Then back to rollercoaster. Some plunges have taken me below the earth’s surface, crushing my bones and boiling my blood, others have shot me up into the sky where my hair gets tangled with stars.”

The former America’s Next Top Model judge was previously married to The Cars frontman Ric Ocasek. The couple was estranged when he died in their shared home in September 2019. They share sons Jonathan, 28, and Oliver, 24.

Porizkova continued, “Right now, this is where I am, up high, sprinkled with stardust. And I now know to embrace every moment, every second. Nothing lasts. Not the pain — nor the joy. That’s why I embrace them both, pain is my teacher and joy is my reward. And they are both parts of what makes a life well lived.”

She added her famous caption #BetweenJLoandBettyWhite, a reference to how women are often made invisible once they reach the age gap between those two women.

In an interview with Yahoo Life in 2021, Porizkova shared the complicated nature of grieving Ocasek, who had cut her out of his will months before he died.

“There's a certain amount of grieving that you're supposed to do, where people say, ‘Oh, you poor thing, you're grieving. We totally get it.’ And then at some point people get bored,” she said at the time. “This is just human nature. It's not like there's anything mean about it or anything like that. It's just that everybody will get sick of you talking about the same thing forever. So when they get sick of you talking about it, then it is just you and your thoughts. And so I've found it really helpful to communicate with people online that were in similar positions where we can say, ‘I'm not alone, and you're not alone.’”

In a July Instagram post, Porizkova spoke about the next chapter in her life. She revealed she still sleeps only on one side of her bed, explaining, “ After almost an entire lifetime of sharing my space with someone else, I'm still keeping it open — for someone else.”

"I think there is more strength in sharing," she added. "In acknowledging and embracing our vulnerabilities and needs. Even the lonesome cowboy riding off into the sunset isn’t wholly alone. He's on his horse."

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