Loving an Aging Body
This is my August 2023 newsletter.
As I write this, we are in the last few days of August, leading up to a super blue moon (on August 30th/31st). I can already see some of the trees changing color here in Treaty 6 Territory/Edmonton as the days fluctuate between blisteringly hot and cool, inviting sweater weather. I dreamt all last night about hunting mosquitos, which are rampant this year. I’m not sure if I’m exactly looking forward to the long, harsh winter in this part of the world, but I love a hot water bottle in bed on a cold winter night.
My birthday lands in late September, and while I love the season, I don’t always love my birthday. I tend to get really melancholy around it, always comparing my reality against what I thought my life was supposed to look like at whatever the age is. Then I do that thing where it’s never enough—you know that thing?
Well, this year is a big one—I’m turning 40. I have plenty to be proud of at this point in my life, but I have some things to grieve, too. It feels like the threshold of middle age, the waning moon of my life expectancy (though who knows how long that will be, these days). It’s giving me plenty of existential thoughts about aging. Here I am, I suppose, at that proverbial hill.
This is one of the things I’m super proud of—my brand new book! It’s all about the full moons of the year and it’s gorgeous and will be released in November. Please preorder it wherever you get books. #shamelessplug
My body has been through some really difficult things over the last couple of years, and while my intention is always to look at myself with love and appreciation, it can be hard to see the wrinkles, lumps, and scars of my aging body without some sadness, fear, and even anger. As I get older, I learn a hard lesson (from a naive, privileged place, certainly): that you don’t always get what you want. I’m one of those people that likes having control over things, and when I meet something I don’t have any say over (death, fertility, the incessant march of time), it can be…challenging.
Part of me is susceptible to the ads on Instagram that cheerfully announce, “You’re not too old to be fit!” (Thanks a lot, algorithm!). I’m aware that I could head off to the medical cosmetic clinic beside Grant’s daycare and inject myself with a bunch of things (which, if you do, no shade, it’s your body and up to you how you want to feel good in it). I do want to feel good about myself at this stage in my life. But I also don’t want to deny what I’ve been through. I don’t really have any interest in looking like I’m 20—I’m not. I started getting gray hairs at 26 when I decided to buy Ocean and Crow Yoga Studio, then called East Side Yoga, and try running a business with absolutely no experience. I am proud of those grays and never try to cover them up. The cellulite, though? The belly shape caused not by a joyful pregnancy but by several losses in a row? The frown tugging at the corners of my mouth from all the tears? These feel less like proud trophies of hard-won battles and more like the scars of having lost.
And yet it’s my body. The only one I have. And I do love and appreciate it. Of course, it’s showing what it’s been through. Our bodies tell the truth about our lives in a way that our minds may try to forget. I don’t want to erase my body’s stories, even the really sad ones. I want to be proud of this body, this face and all it expresses. So what am I doing about it? Having a lot of parties and mini vacations for the full season of my 40th birthday. What else should one do but celebrate having survived another year around the sun?