I stopped working out.
Not because I wanted to. Not because I got lazy or lost motivation or any of the stories we tell ourselves when we quietly give up on something.
I stopped because my joints started hurting in a way that I couldn’t ignore anymore. The kind of pain that shows up uninvited and just stays, like an unwanted houseguest who doesn’t read the room.
I’m currently figuring out what’s going on with the help of my doctor. Which is its own kind of humbling experience sitting in a waiting room at 54, filling out forms, admitting that your body has decided to have a conversation you weren’t ready for.
But here’s the thing that surprised me.
When I stopped, something else happened that I wasn’t expecting.
I had to just… look at myself. Without the doing. Without the earning.
And I realized something I’m a little embarrassed it took me this long to see.
I have spent years decades, honestly absorbing a message I never consciously agreed to receive.
That my body needed to look a certain way before I was allowed to take up space. Before I deserved the seat at the table. Before I was worthy of the things I wanted.
Size zero images. The same ten body types held up as the standard. Subtle and not so subtle reminders that if you don’t look like that, you should at least be working toward looking like that.
And somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I started apologizing.
Not out loud. Just in the way I moved through rooms. The way I qualified things. The way I made myself smaller in spaces where I had every right to be large.
Fifty fuckin four years on this earth and I am just now done with that.
I’ve stopped apologizing to other people for how I look.
And I’ve started apologizing to my body instead.
For the things I put it through trying to make it into something it was never meant to be. For the years of not listening when it was clearly talking. For measuring its worth in the wrong units for way too long.
My body is dealing with some things right now. It needs patience and medical attention and a lot more kindness than I’ve historically given it.
The least I can do is finally give it that.
You deserve a seat at the table too. Not when you’ve earned it. Not when you’ve shrunk yourself enough to fit.
Right now. As you are.
It took me 54 years to really believe that.
I’m telling you now so maybe it takes you a little less.