Grieving My Younger Body
This morning, as I sat down to my morning coffee, my Sweetheart began asking me questions about style choices for my website, which he is revising for me. After I managed to take a sip of the divine brew, we discussed various font and color ideas. Once that was done, and after a few more sips from the same cup of coffee, he asked me if I had photographs of myself doing yoga – he needed one for another website that he works on. I told him that I would look for a picture – I knew I hadn’t had any yoga photos in quite a while.
My quest took me to Facebook. Certainly, I have photos stored in Google, and I have some on an external drive somewhere, but I figured if I’d had a picture I thought was decent, I’d have shared it on Facebook.
I wasn’t disappointed. I found what we were looking for. Mission accomplished.
Triangle at the Witte Museum
That wasn’t the end of it. Something else happened during my morning photo search.
I encountered images of my 10-years-younger body– dancing, being held overhead by one partner or another, standing on my head or my hands or my forearms, wildly spinning in a hoop, and suspended by silks 20 feet off the ground. The body in those pictures was a very different body from the one that is writing to you today.
My physical body was at its strongest between the ages of 40 and 52. I was a yogi and a hoop-dancer, I took up tap, modern, and contact improvisational dance, and I practiced aerial acrobatics and acroyoga. I was moving all the time. I was limber, strong, and balanced.
All of those things were visible in the pictures stored on Facebook.
As I sat there – coffee finished – looking at a picture of myself in one of many upside down shots, I felt the sadness of loss. Where did that body go?
Upside down in Costa Rica
Notice, please, that I didn’t ask, “Where did that woman go?” I am still that woman – older, maybe wiser, slightly less anxious, and far more content – but still the same woman.
My body though…my body is not the same. I am heavier, stiffer, less toned, physically weaker, and less stable.
There’s a part of me that wants to scold, “So what! It’s just your body! You’ve aged. Get on with it!”
Surely, there’s truth there. Still, there’s grief, and I believe that it’s necessary to acknowledge that grief without shame. If I don’t… If I fail to look at the truth – my grief – in the eye, then I will push it down and just put on a happy face. I won’t be any closer to acceptance, and without real acceptance – the ability to truly allow and let be – I won’t be able to move into the years I have left in my life with true health and real grace.
You see, to age well – to really move into these post-menopausal years full of honest joy and true wisdom – I have to center myself in the reality of the present moment. I cannot do that until I have fully allowed what is past to be past, and I cannot do THAT until I have allowed whatever feelings I have about that past – including sadness, anger, and fear – to rise, be seen, be heard, and pass on.
To fully embody the yogi, dancer, and artist I am NOW, I must see, love, and bid farewell to the way I embodied those things in the past. So today (and tomorrow, and however many days beyond that) I will allow my feelings to rise, to speak, and to pass on. At the same time, I will honor this body as it is NOW, in this moment. I will feed my body. I will give it yoga and movement. I will encourage my body to create and express. I will love my body even as I grieve what is no longer.