My Body and Me

I ran without a shirt today. That might not sound like much to write an essay about, but for me, it was an accomplishment.

I’d just finished a water gun fight outside with my family. I stripped down to my shorts and sports bra, kissed my husband goodbye and took off across the lawn. Forty minutes later, I came home, dripping with sweat and grinning.

It the first time in 10 years my midriff has seen the sun (the only bikini I ever owned went to Goodwill after my first baby). It was the first time I’ve ever exposed my stomach during exercise. It took a pandemic and some cold hard truth to get me here.

I know many people have struggled to maintain mental and physical health during the last year. I also know I’m lucky to have a job and personal life that let me create balance when so many haven’t had that luxury, so I make this statement fully aware of my privilege. But the truth is, I feel liberated, from the expectations I placed on myself to look a certain way, and from the ugly belief that my body should be… better.

For most of my life, I’ve tied my self worth to my appearance, and what others might think of it. Nearly forty years of little moments, traumas and observations snowballed into one massive character flaw: I’m obsessive about the way I look.

As a kid, the biggest female role model in my life was always on a diet. My mom’s quest for the perfect body never ended - she spent hours of my childhood mixing low calorie shakes, joining weight loss programs, cutting carbs, or constantly committing to losing “a few pounds.” She’s an amazing woman, my mom: smart and funny and tough as nails, but she never fails to see her flaws first. It’s a dangerous, contagious habit, and I picked it up quickly.

At school and at the babysitter’s house, a childhood bully didn’t just call me fat; her squeals and snorts when I walked by and occasional physical abuse when the sitter wasn’t looking inspired both a deep sense of shame and my first diet. I’ll never forget the feeling of my back against a brick wall as she slapped my face and told me I was a disgusting pig. I was 10 years old, about the age my son is now.

Above all, I was (and still am) a people pleaser. I have a desperate desire to be liked by everyone. This, added to my insecurities, taught me a terrible lesson: that I lacked value if I wasn’t attractive. If looks were currency, then I felt bankrupt. I couldn’t shake this knowledge even as I went college, started a career, married a good man and had three beautiful children.

Sometimes you need an intervention to disrupt the lies you’ve held onto your whole life. When the pandemic began, like many people I found myself at home all day, every day, with no one to see me but my husband and kids. There was no one to impress who didn’t already love me, just because. No one at work, it seemed, really cared at all what I looked like; web cameras were ignored, Zoom meetings remained faceless.

This led to an epiphany, at least for me. That oh-so-precious approval I so desperately needed? That affirmation that I was pretty and therefore precious?

It didn’t matter. It NEVER mattered.

That blew my mind. I slowly started seeing everything in my life differently, from my clothes to my nutrition and exercise habits to the way I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. In my new world view, the things I considered necessary before were now suddenly things I did because I wanted to. I put on makeup, or didn’t, because I felt like it. I ate dessert if it sounded good, or didn’t if I was full. I bought clothes that fit, instead of clothes in the size I thought I should be. Lately, I exercise and take care of myself, but not because I feel compelled to be skinny; rather, these things make my body feel good, and healthy, and like it’ll be around and reliable for another 40 years.

I don’t want my kids to remember diet shakes and my dissatisfaction with who I am. I want them to remember water fights and a mom who treated her body with respect. At the end, I want to look at my life and say, “I did some amazing things,” not “I wish I’d been a size smaller.”

So today, I ran without a shirt on. I felt more comfortable without it, and do you know what?

No one noticed.