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 I first wrote this piece for my Facebook friends in 2010 and it showed up in my “Memories” today, right on the heels of a conversation I had with a colleague yesterday about the increase in numbers of young women we see in our psychotherapy practices who are suffering from weight, food, and body image issues. I’ve decided it’s time to share it on my blog:

Like so many women, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with my body all of my life and until fairly recently, it’s been weighted pretty heavily on the hate side, no pun intended. Even as a pre-teen I especially despised my legs. Why did I have these lumpy, cellulite laden thighs when it seemed that all the other girls had smooth, shapely limbs that looked great in the requisite cut offs of the seventies? You wouldn’t catch me dead in a pair of shorts.

I was always a pretty girl and most of the positive attention I received, even as a little girl, was centered on my looks. I learned early on how to work that angle, becoming an expert flirt and using it to my every advantage. But like so many women, in order to maintain what I perceived to be my primary value, I also had to learn a whole series of disordered eating patterns as well as the habit of obsessive exercise. Thin was in and what I assumed was most desirable, but it took considerable effort to make a body that naturally wanted to be a ripe pear look more like a string bean.

Unfortunately, no amount of exercise or dieting could change my skin. Genetics dictated that I seem to be sadly lacking in whatever it is that makes one’s skin elastic. Where some folks’ insides seem to be housed in fabulous new spandex, my epidermis more resembles cotton; soft to the touch but easily stretched and little ability to snap back into its original shape.

After carrying and nursing two beautiful babies, even after I twice fought my way back to my pre-pregnant weight, the skin on my belly was left hanging like a cowl necked sweater. If I lay on my back, my once perky and swollen breasts completely disappeared into my arm pits. The stretch marks on my abdomen that once resembled a quickly drawn local map transformed into a full blown, detailed atlas. No matter how taut I kept the muscle underneath, the battered skin that had housed and fed my children just continued to fall, making the southward journey with increased speed as every year passed.

I spent my forties wrestling with the question of how I might move into the inevitable aging process in a graceful way given our youth, beauty, and thin obsessed world. Dr. Kubler-Ross wrote a famous book about the 5 stages of grief that people go through when they learn that they have a terminal illness. The stages are:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

Well, life is terminal and aging can make one face that truth and as I approached and turned 50, I watched myself cycling through these stages.

  1. Denial: I bought a push-up bra and always dressed in ways that covered the worst bits of skin.
  2. Bargaining: I continued to obsess over every morsel of food that passed my lips in order to fight against those extra pounds that would result from the slowing metabolism of aging and menopause.
  3. Anger: I raged against this culture that so values thinness and youth and smooth young skin, constantly furious at myself for continuing to buy into it even with all my awareness of the issues.
  4. Depression: yes.
  5. Acceptance: Over time, thankfully I find I’m having more and more. (and as I’m now pushing 60 I’ve finally, gratefully, landed in acceptance!)

All I have to do is think about my two amazing children, now adults and both living vibrant, full lives of their own, to know that my sagging skin is a small price to pay for bringing them into the world. They are the greatest source of the joy and meaning my life holds. And my heart breaks when I witness them, each in their own struggle to love and accept their bodies given our sad and deeply damaging cultural expectations. I want to be a power of example of a woman who can accept and love herself just as she is.

So I want to set an intention and share it with you all right now. I ask you to join with me in any part of this intention that fits for you.
Today, I will embrace and love my body JUST AS IT IS. I’ll remember with pride that my breasts and belly sag because I chose to nourish my beloved children. I’ll eat what I enjoy and focus on being healthy as opposed to thin. I’ll see the increasing wrinkles on my face as signs of wisdom and lines of laughter and joy. I’ll wear what I like and what’s comfortable, even if it’s not particularly flattering. I’ll continue to age with panache and grace!

Yes, I’ll wear my bikini with pride but it’s still pretty unlikely you’ll ever see me in a pair of shorts!

 

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