Countdown to Pub Day!
10 Weeks Until Unapologetic Aging: A Sneak Peek Series
In just ten weeks, Unapologetic Aging: How to Mend and Nourish Your Relationship with Your Body will be out in the world.
I can hardly believe I am finally writing those words.
This book has been years in the making, born from decades of listening to body stories, from my own experience of having a body and navigating menopause and beyond, and from a deep desire to offer another way to live with our aging bodies. One rooted in body respect, nourishment, satisfaction, and pleasure rather than fear, grasping for control, or body shame.
Over the next ten weeks, I’ll be sharing an excerpt from each chapter here on Substack, little glimpses into the heart of the book. Think of it as a countdown, a behind-the-scenes walk through the ideas that shaped Unapologetic Aging.
Before we begin, I want to share a bit about the structure of my book. It’s divided into three sections:
UNTANGLING: Your body is not your life’s project
MENDING: Your body is your life partner
THRIVING: Aging as Emergence
Each section includes client stories, along with accessible practices and journal prompts designed to help you process the content and integrate the concepts into your daily life, with encouragement to be gentle with this tender territory.
Each week, I’ll share a passage and a journal prompt or practice you can bring into your own life. I hope that these pieces remind you that your aging body isn’t a problem to solve; it’s a gateway into deepening your relationship with yourself.
Let’s begin the countdown together.
Chapter One: Where Ageism and Your Body Story Meet
(This passage appears just before the section where we explore how entering midlife and beyond weaves a new layer into your body story.)
Your Body Story
“You carry a story about your body that you’ve inherited throughout your lifetime. The experiences contributing to your body story may be obvious, subtle, or completely outside your awareness.
Before birth, your parents’ environments and life stressors affected your body and mind. Even your birth experience impacted your nervous system and, therefore, your ability to feel safe in your body and the world. The genetics you inherited, such as neurodiversity, and the bigger picture epigenetics, such as generational trauma, both affect how you relate to eating and your body. These circumstances, along with your environment, including your caregiver’s nervous system and how you were nourished and cared for, influence your body’s nervous system and neurological development.
I’m painting this picture to say your ability to connect with your body and notice your appetite was underway well before you were aware of your body and eating.
Were you nourished and cared for in your childhood in a way that noticed, respected, and honored your expression of hunger and satisfaction? Did you have access to food, did your caregiver have enough time to prepare it, and did you have someone attending to your hunger? You may or may not have inherited a sense that your body could be trusted, that you could feel safe and secure in your body, and feel secure in the fact that you would be fed. Certainly, those entrusted with your care had their own stories about food and their bodies, which may have altered how you were fed and what you learned about what it means to have a body and to eat.
I’ve heard thousands of stories in my career from clients who carried hurtful memories for years or their entire lives. One client received SlimFast for her seventh birthday from a beloved uncle. Another client received facial reconstruction at the hands of her own surgeon father before she left for college. Yet another client received breast augmentation for her eighteenth birthday. Countless clients have stories about being bribed to meet weight loss goals as children, being weighed publicly in elementary school, and being fat-shamed in doctors’ offices.
Growing up, you entered school systems and had relationships with friends, teachers, and maybe coaches or dance instructors. The people you engaged with all had relationships with their own bodies and had opinions about bodies, food, eating, and movement. Over time, you likely experienced comments from others, and, depending on how sensitive and intuitive you are, you internalized these judgments and values to some extent. You probably also received comments about your eating, your body’s abilities, and your precious body. Over your lifetime, you’ve been building a story about your body from all of these sources and experiences.
We can’t ignore the fact that we are living in a cultural body hierarchy that values the white, thin, young, neuronormative, fit, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, Judeo-Christian, and male body above others. In her powerful book, The Body Is Not an Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor calls this “the default body.” When you identify as other than the default body, you are pushed to the margins. Chapter 2 will tell you more about the default body and our culture’s body hierarchy. For now, consider that being born with or developing an identity that does or does not fit into your culture’s default body contributes to your body story, too.
You have been breathing in messages about your body from (or even before) your first breath. You are living in a body that is traveling in and out of social systems based on your race, body size, age, ability, family, marital status, social status, religion, gender identity, mental well-being, citizenship, physical well-being, financial well-being, and sexuality. This mish-mash of parts of your identity leave subtle and clear imprints on your relationship with your body.
Collecting and carrying around these stories can feel terribly heavy. If you are ready to let go of these burdens, you are in the right place.”
In Unapologetic Aging, I write:
“Your body is not a problem to fix. It’s a lifelong relationship asking for attention, kindness, and respect. Midlife is the moment when the noise gets loud — but it’s also when your body’s wisdom becomes harder to ignore.”
This invitation to listen, to soften, to stay with yourself, is where the journey begins.
Practice for the week:
When you notice a critical thought about your body, pause and ask:
What if this is an invitation to care for myself, not control myself?
Then, take a small action that feels nourishing — stretch, rest, eat something satisfying, take a deep breath, step outside.
These small gestures of body respect are where your body liberation begins.
Closing Note:
If you’d like to journey with me through the full unfolding of Unapologetic Aging, you can pre-order now and know that every order helps this message reach more people who need it.
Thank you for being here, for reading, and for being part of this conversation about aging, nourishment, and unapologetic embodiment.
Woot! Congratulations!