What If Your Body Was Never the Problem?

What If Your Body Was Never the Problem?

How often do we look in the mirror and immediately start criticizing ourselves? The arms, not toned enough. The stomach, too much here, not enough there. A voice that judges, no matter how we look.

I meet so many incredibly beautiful, wonderful women. And so many of them carry so much criticism toward their own bodies, feel uncomfortable in their own skin, simply don’t see how beautiful they actually are.

The beauty ideal itself? It keeps changing. Sometimes very slim, sometimes with more curves. But at its core, it stays the same: something almost nobody actually fits into. Something that’s never fully met.

Does the Criticism Actually Do Anything for Us?

Ask yourself honestly: has this inner criticism ever changed you? Has it ever made you happier, healthier, freer? Or does it really only do one thing, make you smaller, more tired, and further away from the life you actually want to live?

Some things about our bodies we can change, through movement, through food, through discipline. That’s a real choice, and you get to make it if it feels right for you. But some things simply come with living, with getting older. Certain lines. Certain changes in the skin. That’s just how it is.

How sad would it be to spend your whole life feeling like your body was never good enough, instead of simply enjoying it?

What if we set that criticism down? And ask instead: what actually feels good to me? Which food, which movement, which rhythm feels right for my body? Not out of pressure. Out of friendship with myself.

And this criticism doesn’t stop over time. If anything, it just puts on a new face: getting older.

“You Don’t Look Sixty at All.”

It’s meant as a compliment. And most of us take it that way, sometimes even with a little pride.

But pause for a second. Why is “not looking your age” a compliment in the first place? What does that actually say about how we think about getting older?

We live in a time that constantly tells us: stay young, stay smooth, stay like you’re twenty. Wrinkles gone, gray hair dyed, ideally so seamlessly that you can’t even tell time has passed at all.

But do you actually want that? To be sixteen again? Early twenties again, with all the uncertainty that came with it back then?

Every Stage Had Its Time

Every stage of your life had its own time, with everything it brought along. Beginnings and arrivals. Maybe also goodbyes you never chose. Losses, fresh starts, paths that turned out very differently than you once imagined. None of it was wasted. All of it made you into the person sitting here reading this right now. And that exact person, with everything she carries, has her time now too.

Maybe you feel your body differently these days than you used to. It’s not quite the same as it was at twenty, and that’s simply how it is, and that’s okay. The real question is what that does to you. Whether every small ache makes you think it’s all downhill from here, or whether you remember that this body has carried you through your entire life. Through everything that’s happened. This isn’t about pretending pain away. It’s about letting yourself notice, sometimes, what this body has done for you, not only what isn’t running smoothly right now.

Respect, Not Pity

In some German villages, there’s still a quiet, unspoken rule: whoever is older offers the younger person the informal “you”, never the other way around. Age simply carries a different weight there. Respect, not pity.

What if aging isn’t the opposite of beauty? What if it’s its own kind of beauty, with its own strength, its own charisma, one you only earn by actually living through it?

What Now?

Maybe the first step isn’t changing the body at all. Maybe the first step is questioning the voice that keeps showing up to criticize. Asking: is this actually giving me anything right now? And if the honest answer is no, setting it down, even just for a moment.

Not out of pressure. Out of friendship with myself.
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If you’d like to go deeper into this topic: the “Body Image Superpowers Sneak Peek” call breaks down the four layers of body image, what you believe, feel, perceive, and do when it comes to your body. And the “Sensual Self” series accompanies you in meeting your body with kindness instead of criticism.

Both, and quite a bit more, can be found in my shop. https://www.suzygodsey.com/shop