Therese (Mom)

If I could sit down with my 20-year-old self for just a few minutes, I wouldn’t tell her to worry more about her weight or spend more time trying to look a certain way. I wouldn’t tell her to chase a smaller size or obsess over every calorie. I would tell her something much simpler: Take care of this body. You’re going to need it for a very long time.

But more than anything, I think I would tell her to love herself more.

I look back now and realize how much time I wasted picking myself apart. Like so many women, I could always find something I didn’t like. I wasn’t thin enough. My stomach wasn’t flat enough. My hair wasn’t right. I compared myself to other women and focused on the things I thought needed fixing instead of appreciating the young, healthy woman looking back at me in the mirror.

That’s one of my regrets.

I wish I had looked at her with kinder eyes. I wish I had understood that she didn’t need to earn the right to feel beautiful, confident or worthy. And most importantly, I wish I had understood that I didn’t need someone else to validate my worth.

I spent too much time allowing how I felt about myself to be influenced by how I thought other people saw me. Was I pretty enough? Thin enough? Successful enough? Did people like me? Did they approve of me? Somewhere along the way, it became too easy to look outside myself for reassurance instead of learning to believe in my own value.

If I could go back, I would tell that young woman, Your worth isn’t something another person gets to give you. And if they can’t give it to you, they can’t take it away either.

You don’t become more valuable because someone loves you, chooses you, compliments you or approves of you. And you don’t become less valuable because someone doesn’t.

I wish I had known that then.

And let’s be honest—I wish I had slept more and partied less.

I had fun. I made memories. I stayed out too late, survived on too little sleep and somehow still managed to get up the next morning and function. When you’re young, you think you’re invincible. You don’t think about what years of running on empty might eventually mean. You assume there will always be time later to slow down, eat better, exercise, sleep more and take care of yourself.

Would I erase all those nights and become a completely different person? Absolutely not. Some of those memories are part of my story, and I wouldn’t want to trade a life fully lived for one spent worrying about doing everything perfectly.

But I might tell that younger woman, Honey, go home. The party will still be there next weekend. Get some sleep.

The strange thing about getting older is that you can look back at photographs of the woman you once criticized and think, What on earth was I so unhappy about? I look at younger versions of myself now and see someone completely differently than I did at the time. I see strength. I see youth. I see a woman who had no idea how much life was ahead of her or how much her body would eventually carry her through.

And I wish I could tell her…

Stop being so hard on yourself. You’re beautiful. You’re enough. Enjoy being you.

The difficult part is admitting that I don’t always know how to say those same things to the woman I see in the mirror today.

Because at 56, I’m fighting a whole new animal.

Today it’s alopecia. It’s inflammation. It’s a post-menopausal body that sometimes feels completely foreign to me. It’s visceral fat that seems determined to settle in places it never used to be. It’s looking in the mirror and noticing changes in my hair, my skin, my shape and my body that I can’t simply fix by eating less for a week or exercising a little harder.

And some days, that’s hard.

I’d love to say I’ve reached an age where none of it bothers me anymore. It does. Losing my hair bothers me. Changes in my body bother me. There are moments when I look in the mirror and struggle to recognize the woman looking back at me. I still have days when I focus on what I wish were different instead of appreciating everything that is still right.

Maybe that’s one of the cruel little ironies of aging. At 56, I can finally look at my 20-year-old self and see how beautiful she was, yet sometimes I still struggle to offer that same kindness to the woman I am today.

I don’t want to wait another 20 years to figure that out.

Because underneath every complaint about my hair, my belly, my wrinkles, my aching joints, inflammation or menopause is a much bigger truth:

I am alive.

And I am so incredibly grateful for that.

This body may not look the way it once did, but it has carried me through things my 20-year-old self could never have imagined. It has been tested, changed, scarred and challenged, and somehow it has continued to carry me forward.

When I remind myself of that, suddenly the things I criticize don’t seem quite as important.

I am here. I get another morning. Another birthday. Another dinner with the people I love. Another opportunity to laugh, travel, create, work, hug my family and experience this beautiful, messy life.

I am blessed.

That doesn’t mean I can’t want to feel better. Gratitude doesn’t mean giving up on myself. I can work on reducing inflammation. I can build muscle, protect my bones, improve my nutrition, prioritize sleep and work toward reducing visceral fat for my health. I can look for answers about my hair loss and continue learning how to care for this post-menopausal body.

I can want to change some things and still love the woman who exists right now.

Maybe that’s the part I’m finally beginning to understand.

Self-love isn’t pretending I love every change aging has brought. It isn’t standing in front of the mirror and convincing myself that nothing bothers me. And it certainly isn’t waiting for someone else to tell me I’m beautiful, worthy or enough.

I have to know that for myself.

When you’re 20, the future feels impossibly far away. Fifty sounds old. Sixty sounds ancient. You don’t think much about bone density, inflammation, muscle loss, hormones, mobility or whether you’ll still be able to get yourself off the floor someday. You assume your body will always cooperate because, for the most part, it always has.

I know I can’t go back and change the way I treated my body—or the way I thought about my body—when I was younger. And I’m certainly not interested in spending the second half of my life regretting the first half.

But I can take what I’ve learned and use it now.

Today, at 56, my body isn’t perfect. Neither is my relationship with it. I’m still learning to love the woman in the mirror without asking anyone else to tell me she’s worthy. But I’m here. I’m alive. I’m grateful. I’m blessed. And perhaps that’s finally teaching me what my 20-year-old self needed to know all along: my worth was always mine.