Cissy Brady-Rogers is an embodied woman who changed my life.  If you’ve read A Beautiful Mess, then you know her impact is amazing.  Her job title would read marriage and family therapist, eating disorder specialist, spiritual director, yoga instructor, and adjunct psychology faculty at Azusa Pacific Univ. However, she would say, “Personally, I am a woman with a genuine story of growing through my own food and body related challenges. My overweight childhood and puberty, a date rape in my young adult years, and a mastectomy for breast cancer at age thirty have been among my greatest teachers on the journey to loving my body. I have mined the treasures of the dark places in my story and gleaned much wisdom. I look forward to an opportunity to share these riches with you.” (from her website, which you should check out) This story is a precious one full of wisdom once again and I’m honored to share it with you today.

I celebrated my fiftieth birthday in March.  Twenty years of healing my own disrupted relationship with my body and accompanying others on similar paths has taught me that wisdom is born amidst both expected and unexpected changes. It comes through accidents, like the one that inspired this post. It comes through diseases, like the cancer that took my right breast twenty years ago. Yet most bodily changes are part of nature’s rhythm.

Our female bodies go through necessary bio-psycho-spiritual cycles that birth and sustain life. Our younger bodies abound in hormonally-driven changes that add fullness to our physiques, draw us to relationships, enable us to bear children and activate our nurturing capacities.  The reduction of those same hormones in our midlife bodies turns our energies to guarding and guiding the future generations in ways we could not if we were busy with our own children.

The world tells me to fear these changes and employ fat-fighting or anti-aging methods to stave off anything that doesn’t conform to current beauty ideals.  I am even told in a thousand different ads to be afraid of my body.  But my midlife wisdom tells me that no matter how much I work out, eat well, and do all the things Dr. Oz says will keep me young and healthy, my body is not what it was ten or twenty years ago.

I’m not the same woman I was in those years, thank God.  At thirty I was busy trying to save the world, or at least some of you, through my good works as a therapist and church worker–and in therapy twice a week trying to heal my inner turmoil.  At forty I was busy writing a book, leading workshops, building a successful private practice–and blaming and resenting my husband for not being the man I wanted him to be.  My body was more toned in those seasons and the skin on my neck didn’t droop, but if decreased muscle mass and sagging skin are the price of compassion, wisdom and joy, so be it.

My latest opportunity for listening to my body came on New Year’s Eve.  I didn’t plan to celebrate in the emergency room after dislocating my shoulder in a favorite yoga pose.  Arthroscopic surgery in early February and months of limited mobility sleep challenges, and dependence on others weren’t on my calendar either. But that is the nature of life. It happens while we are busy making other plans.

I could react to this with fear of my aging muscular-skeletal system that gave way on that fateful Saturday morning.  I could work harder and longer and fight my way back to practicing advanced inversions and backbends. Other fifty year old women do it–why not me?

Yet at this point in my life, working my way back to where I once was doesn’t feel loving or wise. Yes, it might look valiant and noble.  And it would surely satisfy my ego need to be admired for my high level of fitness and flexibility.  But that would be more about returning to my thirty or forty year old self than maturing into my midlife self.

I want to respond to this change with the soulful discernment of a wizened fifty year old, not ego driven reactivity.  My “good choices” to eat well and exercise regularly during my first thirty years were more about controlling my weight than good health.  My breast cancer diagnosis at thirty, along with clinical work with eating disorder patients, shifted the focus of my fear from fat to disease, but I was still more motivated by fear than love.

Over time, my relationship with my body became more compassionate as I walked alongside girls and women who had adopted the fear of fat messages and harsh body control offered by the health, diet and fitness industries and whose lives were being destroyed.  I learned from my clients that fear of fat or disease is never a good motivation for self-care.  It may make our bodies stronger, leaner and even healthier, but it sucks the life out of our souls.

We need to respond to changes in our bodies, whatever their source, with compassionate attention. The monthly upheaval of menses, the challenges of pregnancy, motherhood, (or non-motherhood when others are mothering) and menopause, invite us to reflect on our lives. Along with nature’s cyclical changes, injuries and illnesses also become opportunities to pause and listen more intently than we do during ordinary seasons.

• What wants to be born in me through this change?
• What needs to die in order to make more space for the new?
• What is the hidden treasure in this dark place?
• What do I sense, feel, need and want?

Part of my current self- conversation with is about honoring the limits of my body.  My midlife body isn’t the same as my young adult body.  My weight and general fitness level have remained steady throughout my adulthood, but hormonal changes, wear and tear from years of an active lifestyle and natural aging processes need to be respected as I consider my mid-life pursuits.  Athletic yoga poses, like the handstand dropback to backbend that injured my shoulder, were safe when I began a serious yoga practice fifteen years ago.  They might not be most advantageous now.  Perhaps the risk of injury outweighs the benefits.

So I choose to take time to see where my yoga practice will go from here. Each day, I choose compassion and curiosity as I recover mobility and strength in my shoulder.  Last week I experimented with downward facing dog at the wall.  It felt good. I tried happy baby pose and decided I wasn’t yet ready.

I choose to be present, vulnerable, and open to what each day, each moment brings on the path of healing. I choose to receive the fullness of life that comes in ways I didn’t ask for and wouldn’t expect. I choose life in my good midlife body, with my good shoulder, just as I am.