Discovering I Have a Body in Midlife
Like many, I am a person who tends to live mostly in my head. I remember several years ago, telling my therapist that I knew at some point that I would need to focus more on my body (which, in my mind, meant become “more active” and “eat better”) but that I just wasn’t there yet. Of course, as someone who was comfortably straight sized (yet, who also came of age in the 80s and thus perpetually felt that I could stand to loose 5-10 pounds) it was easier to feel that I had the option to “not worry about my body.”
I felt I needed to first focus on understanding my feelings/emotions and those definitely felt very removed from my body. With time I have come to realize that this was a coping mechanism—it felt much safer to think about my feelings rather than to allow myself to feel them (how I finally realized that “thinking” does not equate to “feeling” is a subject I want to explore more in a later post.)
My first foray into addressing that I had a body that needed care was when I started acupuncture treatments in 2019, I hit a point in therapy where I felt I had a good understanding of the wheres and whys of my anxiety. And yet it seemed as if my body insisted on holding onto the anxiety and stress resulting in anxiety responses even when there did not appear to be a “reason” for feeling that way. In many ways, acupuncture is my ideal therapy. It works directly with my body—opening blocks, re-balancing energy, settling my nervous system—and I do not have to consciously “do” anything.
Then came the pandemic. While my anxiety shot sky-high, I also discovered that the work that I had done in changing my relationship with anxiety over the previous decade had given me tools that I was able to successfully fall back on. What I did not fully appreciate at the time was how big of an effect the pandemic was having on my body.
Truth is that I have never considered myself to be an overly “active” person. I did not regularly work out so during the pandemic it did not seem as if much had changed. What I failed to consider was that pre-pandemic I tended to be very much “on the go”—running errands, grocery shopping, taking kids to activities, meeting up with friends. All the incidental activity that completely went away during the initial year of the pandemic. During the pandemic, the only activities I regularly engaged with were very slow walks with my elderly dog and the occasional brisk nighttime walks when I needed to burn off my anxiety before bed. I truly became a “couch potato.”
In 2021, I started having digestive issues which I worried were signs of IBS. I started working virtually with a local intuitive eating nutritionist and we began untangling my issues around eating and food. Back in 2016, I had used alternate day fasting (ADF) to lose 30lbs gained while on anti-anxiety meds which refused to come off even when I was able to stop taking the meds. With ADF, the weight came off fairly easily over the course of a year and then I was able to use it to maintain my weight for the next 4 years. Even while it “worked” and I found it easy to adhere to, I often joked that the reason it felt so easy to do was because it worked with my eating issues (basically it meant that I did not have to really think much about what I was eating, only when.) I personally found it a relief to disconnect from my body. Until, of course, my body started letting me know that it was not happy.
Around that time, I also ended up with a frozen shoulder which led me to a wonderful physical therapist. What began with my shoulder led to a more honest reckoning with how much discomfort/pain in my body I had been ignoring (not to mention how unsure I am about where the line between discomfort and pain is). What I had been oblivious to was how constricted my body felt (partly due to a decade long TMJ issue, partly due to the previously mentioned inactivity, partly due to age and perimenopause changes) and here we are, a couple of years in, still working on unraveling my body and figuring out how to get it functioning with less discomfort/pain .
As part of getting caught up on the increasing number of preventative check-ups you get in middle age. I found that my cholesterol, which had always been on the higher side of normal, had shot up to 429. Yikes. I had known that there were heart issues in my family (my Dad survived a stroke when he was 57 and my paternal grandfather had died of heart failure in his 60s). I chalked their heart related issues up to the fact that my Dad had smoked since he was a young teenager (though he had quit many years before the stroke which most likely saved him) and my Grandfather smoked a pipe his whole life. Given that my experience with smoking consisted of a very ill-advised and luckily short-lived exploration of menthol cigarettes my freshman year in college, It had not crossed my mind that this was something I needed to be concerned with. Until it was. Luckily, I had already been working with a nutritionist and I am responding well to the statin I am now on.
Then, of course, there are the peri/menopausal body changes that I abstractly knew about but was completely unprepared for the actual experience when they finally manifested (not to mention how many there are and how unrelated they can be!) The previously mentioned frozen shoulder and increased cholesterol. My thick-but-poker-straight-for-my-entire-life hair turning curly (though inexplicably not gray yet) which necessitated having to completely relearn how to work with it. The weight gain (due to actually eating and, you know, not starving myself any more). Having to figure out what clothes feel/look good on my changing body. Hot flashes (which felt not-so-bad in the beginning but started feeling out of control during my move). The poor sleep. The mood shifts. The realization that “good support” is now a primary criteria when buying shoes. My body taking much longer to “bounce back”.
I started HRT along with a few supplements about a year ago and that has helped immensely with the hot flashes and sleep. But still, I really wish I had fully appreciated that going through menopause would feel akin to going through puberty again where everything you thought you knew about your body gets completely upended and you have to learn how to understand it again.
And then there is the mental shift that has hit hard recently. The acknowledgement that I am older and that my age is no longer a “protective” factor (first driven home during COVID where being in my 50s meant that, while not “high” risk, I was still in a “higher” risk age group.) That my body is not going to just naturally bounce back. That physical activity is not something that is “nice” to do if I can fit it in, but rather something that is vital if I want to be able to continue functioning as I get older. Same thing goes with giving my body the food it needs to be healthy.
The good news is that I am making progress. I am working on adding in more daily physical activity. In addition to my weekly physical therapy, I also have a weekly pilates private session (which allows my instructor to meet me where my body is that week) and a weekly MELT class which is giving me tools for helping my body feel better. Since moving to Del Ray, I am naturally walking more places. I also enjoy going on walks here much more than at my old place. So many different potential routes with much more enjoyable scenery along the way.
But I’m not going to lie. When I told my therapist that I knew I would have to “get around” to my body at some point, I had an unconscious expectation that once I did, it might take a year or so to get everything “back to normal”. It is obvious now that this is going to be a long-term effort and that my expectation for “normal” at 55 is very different than what I previously thought it would be. But I’m also motivated by the awareness that if I want to be in decent physical shape in my 70s, I have to actively work on taking better care of my body now.
So I am now someone who walks regularly. Does pilates. Has learned that there are some vegetables that I enjoy (just not the ones I was made to eat as a kid.) Uses curl cream. Is rethinking her relationship with food and her body. Wakes up regularly with back/hip pain. Wears an appliance for TMJ. Has two weekly meditation groups (one virtual and one in person) and a regular meditation practice. Not to mention has regular appointments with my acupuncturist, cardiologist, physical therapist, TMJ specialist, and menopause doctor. Whew.
I realize that this post has been long, but I feel like I wanted to lay the ground work for some of what I want to write about in the future. Plus, I personally appreciate folks who are writing about their experiences with menopause and aging. Taken individually, a lot of what I am experiencing does not feel like that big of a deal. But taken altogether I will admit that it can feel overwhelming and really frustrating at times. Mostly because while I think I’m doing what I need to do to help my body feel better, it is becoming more apparent that there is actually no guarantee that it will.
Of course, as the pandemic so clearly highlighted, there has never actually been a guarantee. It only felt that way.
Related Links
Oldster Magazine - wonderful writing featuring first-person essays and interviews related to mid-life aging. As someone who loves memoirs, this hits the spot.
Midlife Feast Podcast - been hooked since Season 1 which felt like a Midlife 101 class I did not know I needed. Support for intuitive eating, body acceptance, and better understanding peri/menopause.
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