As a woman, my body is always there. Whether I like it or not, it defines me. It determines my worth, sadly. Not just as a sexual being, but as a fertile one. It comforts, nurtures, feeds. And for a lot of my life, it was in the background, causing pain and insecurity.
I don’t think a day has gone by since puberty where I haven’t been preoccupied with how I looked, how I felt in a dress. Summers were tricky because I hated exposing my arms. I even had a boyfriend once ask me why I never wore tank tops.
I learned to suck things in really early. Only now, I’m a hearing how bad that is for you.
I’m also learning about perimenopause, how our inner labia shrivel and disappear as we age. At the same time, I worry that my libido, healthy now, might also shrink and vanish. I hear from older friends the pain of testerosterone pellets, how finding the right hormone treatment is a months-long crapshoot, and yet, they feel guilt about aging, about the lack of sex-drive for their patient husbands, about their mood swings and their affect on their children and work.
We are guided by our bodies – the way they look, the way they are judged, the way they make us feel. But I think that instead of investigating why, we place thoughts on the body on a very short spectrum, from objectification to self-righteous avoidance.
After my first child, I went through what many post-partum women go through: utter devastation and disillusionment with my body. I did a round and a half of Shaun T’s Insanity. This health kick lasted about six months (of course, my knees will be suffering for the rest of my life). Pushing into my 30s, I swept into another blur of unhealthy habits and a damaging, decade-long cycle of overworking and getting burnt out.
Then, I had my son, and it was as if gravity got some special memo. Everything started to droop and sag, and not just physically. Mentally, I was becoming more foggy-headed. It’s harder now to concentrate and focus. The energy I once had, the motivation to achieve? Well, that’s all been replaced by a desire to simply not do anything at all.
Now, solidly into mid-life, I’m left wondering if I’ve taken my body for granted.
I think that the best years of my body are behind me and I never got to enjoy them.
Do we REALLY know our bodies?
I don’t know any woman, and this is purely anecdotal, but I don’t personally know any women who haven’t been dealt a bad hand, in some way, physically. I know women who have cancer, who are in remission, who have had hysterectomies, and who deal with weeks-long periods. I know those who now have chronic pelvic pain, even years after giving birth. Others struggling with infertility, enduring the challenge and expense of IVF or slowly coming to terms with the reality that their bodies have failed them.
I can go to the gym and get stronger. I can follow a program, push one day and pull the next. I can wait 48 hours between glute days for maximum growth. Add weight, count reps, change the tempo. All of this is backed by science to ensure my body can get better.
But there is no gym for my uterus. The programs for PCOS, fibroids, and endometriosis all lead to daily birth control pills or total hysterectomies. Dealing with women’s issues, even as a woman myself, can often times feel like a fringe issue.
Many of us were mystified at our first periods – shamed even. Losing our virginity came with a whole mess of emotional and religious baggage. At one time, we had Sex and the City, but now it’s being rebooted and its once empowering ethos is being neutered into a bland message of: be rich, have no problems.
How did I get here?
I spent my 20s running around with insecurity, lust, and a carefree attitude. Munching on water pills and Hydroxycut in between bouts of dangerous binge drinking and fad dieting. Of course, I never thought about getting older. And I didn’t appreciate the way I looked and felt either: youthful, invincible.
I look back on photos (so few of them sadly because I was so insecure) and think: damn, that’s a good-looking girl! I try to tell myself to feel that way about my 40-year old body and face. It ain’t getting any younger!
My 30s were devoted to work and kids. Climbing the corporate ladder (whatever that means), buying a house, discovering the dizzying anxiety of what it might be like if, suddenly, all I’d worked for was washed away by medical bills, or quite literally, inadequate flood insurance.
In my late 30s, I started to experience panic attacks. I’m not exactly sure what the trigger was, but I think COVID had something to do with it. I was worried that I could lose my job at any moment, while at the same time working 10-12 hour days to protect said job. I would find myself waking up at 3am with a pounding heart and sneaking suspicion that everyone I knew secretly hated me, even my kids.
The carefree whimsy that protected me in my younger years was gone and in its place: panic, worry, and fear.
So, I started seeing a therapist and we discovered very quickly that I’ve been holding all this tension, grief, shame, and anxiety in my body for so long that this physical angst was using any means necessary to manifest itself externally.
I’ve put a lot of work into how I feel. I’ve also been able to connect with so many other woman who have felt, or feel currently, all the things that have been causing me so much distress and disappointment.
Why The Somatic Diary?
When I was a little girl, I was a fast reader. I really took pride in my love of books. So much so, that from the age of five I was determined to become a writer.
Well, 35 years later, I finally want to make that dream come true. But at the same time, I want to advocate for the voices of others who like me, have a story to tell. Most of them, far more important than my own.
The Somatic Diary is a collection of work that exposes the mind-body connection, dissects it, explains it, and fosters it so that we can all feel good within the skin we live in.
It’s been a life-long journey for me to even begin considering acceptance. This is my exercise in pursuing the kind of freedom that only comes when you truly feel at one with your body.
I hope you will enjoy these stories as much as I have. I hope that bringing awareness to these issues by fostering a community of honesty and revelation removes the stigma of what it feels like to experience the world in a female body.
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