Becoming the person we needed when we were young:

Sweat wisdom from Peloton

Photo by Alex wong on Unsplash

“I am trying to become the person my younger self needed.” – Robyn Arzon, Peloton

I heard this line near the end of a sweaty Pink-themed ride with my favorite instructor Robyn, and my head fell. I thought, This is all I’m ever really trying to do.

My younger self needed to write and got stymied by what other people thought. I write for her. She needed a friend to listen and understand. I try to be that kind of friend. My younger self needed gentleness too, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about gentleness lately. Starting with the way I treat my body.    

A lot has been written about women’s relationships with our bodies and the rest of the world’s opinions on them. So much in this space is depressingly difficult to tackle and outside our control. What’s in our control, but still difficult, is the way we treat our own bodies.  

I’ve spent many years trying to unwind deeply unkind body-habits that led, in my teenage years, to perpetual illness and seven stress-fractures in a row while running cross country. These injuries and illnesses weren’t coincidence. Back then, there was “me” and there was “this body I need to manage.” This body was always doing perplexing things like having a night of insomnia or getting sick when I most needed to get some sleep or be healthy. When my body “betrayed me,” I was punishing to it. This is still the trickiest relationship in my life.

Changes on the margins matter. Recently, I’ve started paying attention to how I wash my face. Seriously. I’ve always washed my face aggressively, like it was one more thing I didn’t have time for. Since my slow-down and no-for-reals-this-time essays after New Years, it occurred to me that washing my face is one place I could really use this lesson. So I’ve been working at it. Some days, this small dose of “I’m taking care of you” feels so different I could cry.

The mean voice in my head is telling me now that trying to become the person my younger self needed—starting with how I treat my body—is selfish and small. No, I tell her gently, but firmly. Your body is not the inflexible, limited, slow-to-change antagonist in your story. She is you. Without her, there’s no doing your law job. Without her, there’s no making things. Without her, there’s no connecting with anyone.  

Ram Dass wrote, “We’re all just walking each other home.” Each time I call a friend who is struggling, each time I stop to sit with my daughter and listen, I am not only putting a quiet, gentle hand in theirs. I am reaching out to my teenage self and her broken-down body with that same hand.

I wait for her, as long as she needs. And then we walk.