06/03/2026
I’m not writing this because I have it all figured out. I’m writing it to share honestly, in case someone else out there needs to hear it too. Sometimes it even feels like there’s pressure now to fully love ourselves at every stage, to always feel body positive and completely accepting of what we see in the mirror. And while I understand the intention behind that, I think it’s okay if healing looks a little more complicated than that. We can work toward acceptance, peace, and self-compassion without being fully in love with our reflection every single day.
I see so many women now posting about body acceptance, aging naturally, loving themselves exactly as they are. And I think it’s beautiful. Truly.
I want to be one of those women.
But maybe this full acceptance is too much pressure on women too, isn’t it?
I want to stop apologizing for the weight gain.
Stop mourning the younger version of me that handled or hid stress better.
But if I’m being truthful, I’m not fully there yet.
Right now, the most healing thing I can do is create peaceful moments, a peaceful home, a regulated nervous system. A life where I no longer feel like something bad is about to happen.
I am 43 years old, and I spent almost all 43 years living in fight or flight. I grew up in an alcoholic home with unpredictable tempers, tension you could feel in the walls, and the constant need to monitor everyone’s energy just to stay emotionally safe. When I visited my dad, it was much of the same. A stale feeling that something could go wrong at any moment.
And I carried that with me.
Into my teens, into adulthood, into relationships that mirrored what felt familiar. Then in my 30s, I lost both of my parents. I fought like hell in family court to keep custody of the child I had already fully parented since birth. The same little girl I birthed in our farmhouse and breastfed until she was two. I survived witnessing a su***de. I carried grief, fear, survival, hypervigilance, heartbreak , all while trying to still show up as a mother. I’m walking through a phase of losing my home and farm. All great losses that leave marks.
So no.
I can’t sit here and tell you I look in the mirror and love everything I see, what I see are the effects of stress.
The aging, the exhaustion.
The scars of battles many people will never fully understand.
But I do love who I am becoming.
A softer woman, calmer woman, woman finally learning that survival mode was never supposed to be her permanent home.
And maybe for now, that is enough. No pressure from me to be anything. Come as you are babe 🩷
