My Changing Body
On the day this drops, I will be turning a vibrant 41 years old. Forty-one rotations around this beautiful sun. Forty-one years full of beautiful and ugly and magical human experiences 🎉
I had a mantra that I would set 40 on fire, and I believe I absolutely did this to my best abilities. I grew in so many ways – a year full of expansive evolution that has changed how I see myself and how I relate to the world.
Among all the personal development work I’ve been doing, one of the largest challenges I’ve adopted this year was to disengage from treating my appearance as a primary source of my identity. I have long-seeded body image issues, as do many of us, but this past year, I took on a mission that really tested those: I quit smoking.
Most of you are probably very aware of the ways this can change your body. The big payoff (of course) is all the improved health (yeah!), but your physical appearance can go through the ringer. You gain weight. And as ashamed as I am to express this openly on the interwebs, one reason I put off quitting smoking so long was because I was scared of getting fat. Can you believe that? I have been overweight at different times in my life, and I was scared of returning to that dark mental and emotional space, and I was scared of how people would look at me, and I was scared of not feeling at home in my own body, and I was scared that people would no longer like me. I was fucking scared.
‼️ Read that again: I kept choosing a habit that could kill me faster because I was so (pardon the pun) deathly afraid of the physical changes to a part of my identity - all of those things I attributed to my appearance - specifically how heavy I am and what I’m shaped like.
Sounds ridiculous to the logical brain, but also absolutely understandable given our cultural environment. We are taught that how we are shaped and what the number is on the scale somehow defines who we are AND how valuable we are.
That is fucked. But I digress 👀
Despite being scared of those things, I knew it was the right time for me to quit the cigs. I had a new motivation - I wanted freedom. I wanted to feel liberated from a habit that took up time and money and made me ashamed. I wanted out.
So I did it. And I gained weight. But it was different this time. I really feel like I manifested a different experience because I turned this into an opportunity for the whole year to work on divorcing myself from my own expectations of how I should look. Not to mention loosening the grip of allowing others’ potential perceptions of me to control how I treat and express myself in my own body.
When I think back, I have looked relatively the same way for a long time, and I don’t think that’s uncommon. We find our niche, so to speak, and we hover there. Then we perceive that it’s how people expect us to show up. That’s who we are and how we are. But I thought new this year and got curious: what happens if I don’t look like that?
So I made some changes along the way. I started incorporating purposeful strength training in my daily practice, I channeled my energy into attempting to change my body in ways I wanted to experience, I learned how to razor cut my hair, I changed how I eat, and I started to work toward changing how I experienced looking at myself in the mirror. This last one was the hardest of them and is something I still contend with.
I always leave myself little love notes on post its all around my house, and two of my favorites from this past year read:
“She stopped looking at herself in the mirror and started looking at herself in the moment.” - source unknown
“You are not body parts. You are a whole divinity.” - Jaiya John from Daughter Drink this Water
These are how I’ve been trying to show up for myself when I let the gray cloud dictate my mirror gazing experience. When my pants don’t fit the same. When I find that a favorite shirt isn’t comfy any more. When I get down on myself because the shape of my body is so different.
And guess what.
It’s working ⭐
I have improved my relationship with my body because I’m shifting to a more curious mindset rather than my previous default of judgy pants. And my body LOOOOVES it. I feel physically and spiritually nourished through these new practices, and they’ve given me such rich experiences so far.
And guess what else. No one treated me any different. No one loved me any less than they did. In fact, I’d say that more authentic people showed up in my life in a loving way. They mirror back to me what I am experiencing inside and projecting out to the world. And isn’t that a source of the beautiful?
AND! I feel so much different. I feel real. Real in some way I don’t think I’ve ever felt before and that I didn’t know existed for me. I take up space. And I mean it. And I show up with a more vibrant, tangible energy that I felt eluded me for the prior 39 years.
And yes, I’m still working through my inner shadows about how I think about food and clothing sizes and how my skin squishes. But I’m also celebrating the experience of strength and softness cohabitating in my body. My body is strong AND soft. Both of these things are true 💜
And that’s the reality I’m bringing with me as I shift into a 41-year-old earthly body with a new mantra: I’m bringing big magic ✨
