Body Image: Appreciation Sold Separately

TW: This episode includes discussion of body image, weight, eating disorder recovery, sexual abuse, medical procedures, and women's experiences with body-based judgment and objectification. Listener discretion is advised.

Women are taught early that our bodies are projects.

Something to improve.
Something to shrink.
Something to manage.
Something to earn approval through.

In this deeply personal episode, we unpack the complicated relationship women have with their bodies and the messages that shaped it from childhood comments and beauty standards to workplace expectations, intimacy, confidence, and self-worth. We share our own experiences with body image, weight, health, trauma, and the realization that so much of life can be spent waiting to become "acceptable."

This isn't a conversation about loving every part of yourself every second of every day.

It's a conversation about what changes when you stop treating your body like a problem to solve.

Thank you for listening to NDA!

If this episode made you think, challenged a perspective, or helped you recognize a pattern in yourself, consider sharing it with someone else who might need the conversation.

You can connect with us on Instagram at @nda_pod, where we continue the discussion between episodes.

Until next time, notice the pattern. Then decide what happens next.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today's episode, Amanda, is one that is really deeply personal for me. Me too. And yeah, it's not the easiest one to talk about. Nope. And yet at the same time, it's one that needs to be talked about because I think just about every woman listening and a member of our Rise community can relate. No matter what age we are. We have been spending several months building this business that we absolutely love. I mean, we started working on this business. When was it? Would it have been? I've been starting it since years and years ago. But yes, to really start working together on building it, what month would that have been? It was like September. Yeah, it was like September of last year. I'm just gonna speak for myself here because I spent and that timing tracks because with all these months I've been working on it, somewhere in the middle of that, I did completely stop making myself a priority. And it wasn't anything that was a big dramatic shift. It certainly wasn't anything that was intentional and it wasn't an overnight change. It was just like a slow drip. So what happened? Because don't forget for our listeners, we were also working a lot of hours, a lot of hours carrying a very heavy workload at our previous place of employment because we wanted to give 110% while we were there. So really, in a lot of ways, I was working two full plus time jobs and running a home and taking care of my family and just trying to be a good friend and all the things. And it was like one skipped workout or a drive-through snack or lunch or a late night work session or not getting enough sleep. And it was like just one more week of me saying, Oh, I'll get back to me later. And then one day it really hit me about three weeks ago. And I literally looked in the mirror and realized I didn't even recognize myself anymore. And what I'm talking about is the relationship that we have with our bodies. I mean, I personally avoid trying on clothes in a dressing room because sidebar, who the fuck designed those mirrors? They're like funhouse mirrors in the dressing rooms. If you're smart, it's gonna make people look amazing instead of highlighting every little piece of cellulite or whatever. You know, I'll spend 45 minutes at home trying on these clothes that I picked out that I didn't want to try on in the dressing room at the store, and I'll be criticizing myself and then wonder why I'm exhausted. So can you relate to that?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So much. Sadists, by the way, is who does who designed dressing rooms. Yes. Um, universally. There's just I'm convinced there's a team of them somewhere that are the universal dressing room designers, and they're all terrible. They all have bad lighting and bad mirrors, and they're always too hot and they're never big enough. I know it's true. Forget the dressing room. I have a very, very long history of body image issues going back to when I was a preteen and as I started going into puberty and started filling out through my hips and my breasts. I frequently was comparing myself to the bodies that I saw around me and the bodies that I saw in magazines. I mean, women can relate to that, right? It's like a rite of passage, a really sad, sad one, but it's reality that we go through. And then there's when I was that age, when you were that age, social media wasn't a thing. So right now, for women who are growing up in that environment, there's that added pressure of what you see on social media. And we're talking not just about the shrinking behavior around dieting and trying to take up less space, but I think also the emotional and social shrinking that happens as a result. We're taught from an early age that your body is your resume before you speak. Your appearance dictates how seriously you'll be taken. Absolutely. Is always conditional and always tied in some way to how you show up physically. Yes. And that your body is in constant need of improvement. It's never ever going to be good enough. So these are the messages that we receive consciously, subconsciously. We're basically inundated with them from every possible angle from a very young age. And so it's no wonder that then results in behaviors and self-talk that's like, oh, I'll wear that when I lose weight. I need to get myself together. I don't want people looking at me. I look disgusting in that photo. Yes. I need to be prettier, I need to look younger, all of the things. So that's what we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Most NDAs keep people quiet. Ours does the opposite. Around here, NDA means no dicks allowed.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Not men, the behaviors that keep women small.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

This is the podcast for women who are done shrinking and ready to rise. I'm Amanda Kachurka. And I'm Elizabeth Cipola. Welcome to NDA.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

We as women spend enormous amounts of energy, money, time, etc., managing how we are perceived physically. And it's not because we're shallow, not to say that there aren't shallow people out there. Sure, there are. But generally speaking, that's not the reason. It's because we've been conditioned to understand appearance as social currency and social safety.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

I I can relate to what you were saying at the beginning of the episode. Uh, my weight has been a struggle for me pretty much my entire life. I went as a teenager, I was and even preteen, I was always tall. You know, I was one of the tallest kids in my class in fifth and sixth grade. I shot up to my current height of five, seven when I was 11, 12. And I had very, very long legs. And so I was sort of gangly at that age. But then when puberty hit, I filled out. And a lot of the filling out happened in my hips and in my bust and my butt. So I was always, I've been hourglass or pair, it's fluctuated through my life for the majority of my life. My dance costumes were always among the largest sizes in the class. And my mom was always very encouraging of diets and losing weight. And so that was like a constant message that I've received through the majority of my teenage and into early adulthood years. Right. And only recently, after some very extensive therapy work around my body image, have I started to view my body differently. The thing that makes me so sad is that I've overlooked for so many years all of the amazing things that my body has done for me. I had, I think I've talked about it before on an episode, I had an elective mastectomy when I was in my mid-20s because I have a genetic mutation. I had a total hysterectomy just a couple of years ago because of this genetic mutation. And there were, I mean, between the mastectomy and reconstruction, that was three surgeries. The hysterectomy was another surgery. I will be having some additional surgeries in the future because I have implants. So those will need to be swapped out at some point. And my body has gotten me through all of those surgeries flawlessly. I've recovered really well. I haven't had any major issues, thankfully. And I was so focused on putting my body down and what I looked like that I failed to recognize everything that it has done for me. We get so caught up in what we see in the mirror and what other people think that we forget how amazing our bodies really are.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

We do. And you said it earlier in the episode. Women, we we spend our whole lives being taught that our body determines our value. And what the journey we want to take our listeners on today, we're interested in sharing glimpses into our stories that we're still even learning in many ways that it doesn't. And I would venture to say that probably most of us are still honing in on that learning throughout our entire lives, right? And like you said, when people hear body image, what does our mind go to first? Our weight. And yeah, that can be a part of it, but for me, it's never been just about weight because when I was younger and similar to what you shared, I went through puberty first. I was also the tallest in my grade. And and I was very, very large, busted. So large, in fact, that I ultimately decided, and it was even approved by insurance at 19 years old to have a breast reduction. And a lot of times people assume that decision was purely physical. And I won't lie to you, some of it was. My back hurt, my shoulders hurt. Shopping for clothes was a nightmare. But what I remember the most, and those are the elements that got it approved through insurance, right? But what I remember the most, it actually had nothing to do with the physical discomfort. It was the attention and it was the comments by men and women, by the way. And it was the assumptions and it was the judgment. And there were literally women, so many women, who assumed things about my character and would call me things like slut and whore just because I had very large breasts. Like I was asking to have these large breasts. I wasn't, and believe me, I always tried to dress modestly. And then there were men who felt entitled to comment on my body or stare at my body or literally grab my body way too many times and I can count. And it was scary. And all of this started when I was 11, 12 years old, right? And all of that made it really difficult, not only for an 11 or 12-year-old girl, but also for something that nobody knew at the time. And that is that I was carrying the experience of being a sexual abuse survivor from a very young age. So, like having my body constantly treated like public property hit so much more deeply and so much differently than anybody else could have dreamed or realized. When you've experienced those violations, it really does become difficult to separate our body from feelings of safety.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

You mentioned about not making negative comments about other people's bodies. And I actually am of the mindset, and this is something that I've developed over time, where I don't make comments about anybody's body ever, period, positive or negative. And my husband actually saw this. I forget if it was an Instagram reel or something. Unless it's something that can be addressed in 30 seconds, don't comment on it.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Oh, I love that. Meaning, like if I've got to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

If somebody's got something in their teeth, yeah, if somebody's got something on their in their teeth or like a speck of fuzz on their face or something, like, okay, that's easy. That can be fixed very quickly. Or if your flies down. Sure. Those are things that can be fixed easily, no problem. If it takes longer than 30 seconds to address, and I say address, not fix, because this goes either way, positive or negative, you don't comment on it. We have such a culture of praising thinness and praising the way someone's skin looks, or praising the way that somebody's makeup looks or their hair or whatever. And you have no idea what's going on with that person behind the scenes, right? That led to that state. Right. So, as a general practice, I'm very much an advocate for just not commenting on people's bodies or appearance. Because beauty standards are changing constantly, we're trapped in this world of impossible contradictions. You want to be thin but not too thin. It's that it's the monologue from the Barbie movie. It's like you want to be thin but not too thin. You're supposed to look youthful but not wear too much makeup. And if you like wearing a lot of makeup, that's bad too. And it's impossible to achieve state that we're chasing. And then you layer it in with the family and the social messaging, with comments about your weight as children, or watching your mother or other maternal or female figures in your lives criticizing their bodies, the before and after culture of posting before and after photos. And I think with social media and workplace pressures, with credibility and likability, it's just all of these layers piling on top of each other. And we internalize all of this. The bottom line is women didn't wake up one day and decide to hate their bodies.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

What does this impact? There's so much impact because it didn't affects your confidence, it affects your visibility, your joy, your self-expression. You avoid photos, you avoid events, you don't speak up, you hide. It just kind of snowballs into this really sad state of affairs because you're not living as your full authentic self. There's another layer here that I want to bring up that I have a hard time believing that I'm the only person who has ever felt this way. Consistently through my adulthood, being in a larger body, part of the reason I strived toward overachievement was because I felt like my body size made me more susceptible to being viewed as lazy.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Oh, that hits. Can I just quickly give a gut reaction to that? Yes, please. I won't say who, but this is real. There is somebody we both know in the business world. This individual happens to be a man. And this individual, on more than one occasion, I've witnessed them making very matter-of-fact statements and comments that their favorite people to hire are people who were college athletes and or be who aren't overweight. And the reason why is because then they know that they're not lazy, and then they know they really know how to work, and then they know they really know how to commit to something. I wanted to just so problematic this person. And I'm not saying they say that to other people, right? This is just something this individual felt comfortable sharing, right? With privately, and it's like, wow. So this is just one of, I'm sure, millions of people who feel that way, men and women, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, a lot of assumptions there. There are for sure. I think when you are larger bodied, there is a tendency to feel like you have to fulfill the roles of being really funny or working extra hard because the appearance that people are seeing outwardly makes you more susceptible to extreme judgment right out of the gate. And so you try to head those off at the past by being like really funny or self-deprecating. And the damage that that does to how you view yourself authentically is frankly goes really deep. And it took me a long time to actually do the work on getting to the root of where that was coming from. And it's funny. I had a conversation about this with my therapist a couple of weeks ago, but I was saying to her, now that you and I have our own venture and we can structure our days how we want to, I've really been prioritizing working out in the morning and making a breakfast that I that makes me feel good and energized and ready for my day. And I said to her, and as it was coming out of my mouth, I was like, Jesus, Amanda, I said to her, taking care of yourself like you should, the amount of time it takes, it's like a part-time job, like the equivalent hours-wise in a day of a part-time job. I think about how much time it takes me to do my workout and to do my meditation if I decide that I want to do meditation that day, or to make my breakfast, make my lunch, make sure that I'm like getting up and walking around and not just sitting at my desk all day. It takes so much concentrated effort. And at that point, I realized how much I had been depriving myself. Yes. And what the hell was I waiting for? There's definitely some mental stuff that needed to get out of the way first, as far as I had some really negative cognition around working out and I hated it and like actively would rebel against it. And any recommended changes to my diet, I was like, nope, don't want to hear it. Right. And so I had to get through a lot of that stuff first before I was willing to embrace a different lifestyle. And it really clicked for me that day. And I was like, How many years? I'm I'm gonna be 39 soon. And how many years have I deprived myself of treating my body with the respect and honor and joy that it deserves because of my work, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Oh my gosh, yes, wild, wild. I had the same epiphany today because this is something I never have done before ever. But well, I didn't really have the need to be honest. But I said, I think in the other episode, a few episodes ago, I've been suffering from real significant pain and mobility issues from plantar fasciitis, right? And so I one treatment I found that works is to get a very targeted massage just to kind of loosen up those muscles and the area around and to break up the fascia and all that. Well, I had an appointment today before the podcast record episode recording, and I was laying there thinking, God, this is taking so much time. I don't have this much time, I shouldn't be doing this and feeling guilty. And I'm like, this is like a full-time job taking care of myself because, like you, I've been doing other things to try to schedule in time to actually take care of myself properly and appropriately. And it doesn't sound like you're experiencing guilt, which is cool because I want to get there. I'm experiencing guilt, but less and less each week. And yeah, I had the same epiphany.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

I would say I felt more guilt initially. I've moved through that pretty quickly because the thing that I keep reminding myself of is when I am hopefully 100 years old and on my deathbed, I am not gonna wish that I'd worked more or worked harder. I'm gonna wish that I took better care of myself, that I spent more time with the people I love. So it's just a matter of keeping sight of what's truly important in my life. And that has really helped with alleviating the guilt because at the end of the day, and it's so funny, I I saw a video about this on Facebook or Instagram recently, where there was someone talking about likening different body types to different breeds of dog. Stick with me here. I'm a dog person, love dogs, never met a dog I didn't like, love them all, will always ask to pet them. They made the comment of how weird would it be if all of the dogs in the world looked exactly the same? Oh, okay. Yeah. So weird, right? There are multiple types. I love be a pit bull, I love golden retrievers. Like I there's huskies, there's so many different breeds of dog that I love exactly because of the characteristics that make them unique. You know, the the body sizes, the head sizes, the structure of their ears, their fur. Why is it so hard to view humans that way? How boring would the world be if we all looked exactly the same, if we all had the exact same body type, the exact same hair, the exact same facial structure. So boring. Yeah, so boring. So boring. And so that really it sounded ridiculous when I first I was like, what is this person talking about? And then I actually thought sat and thought about it, and I was like, you know what? There's something to that. And it has really stuck with me around appreciating the differences and appreciating the body that I have because I was given this body for a specific purpose to do what I need to do to live my life. And I was not appreciating that in the way that I should, right? I'm definitely not at full acceptance of my body image and feeling confident about it every single day. Some days I wake up and I feel great, and some days I'm looking in the mirror, like, ugh. But at the end of the day, I have to kind of center myself back on your body is different for a reason. Look at all of the things it's accomplished and being grateful for that.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Okay. I love it. And I'm gonna go there to our listeners or for with our listeners, but I also want to keep it rated PG. So I'll be careful of my working. Well, PG 13. Do we really want to though? Do you say this? Let's talk about intimacy. All right. The story you just shared and the fact that, yeah, how boring would it be? And you know, there's more than one definition of beauty. Girl, how many of us really struggle with intimacy issues as well? Because I don't care if you are in a same-sex relationship, heterosexual relationship, it doesn't really matter. Those of us who struggle with body image, and I think women especially do, when and if our partner is like, hey, let's keep the lights on, and we're like, no, thanks, let's uh turn the lights off, right? Or keep the lights off, or I only want to do it at night because then it can be dark. Why? Because we're not comfortable on our own skin. Who are we to take away our partner's definition of beauty? They find us desirable and beautiful, and we're like literally debating with them and arguing with them about it. Yes, it turns into like literally a debate, and nothing really ruins the mood and a debate and an argument about lights on or off, right? Or if I look pretty enough or not.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

There's a scene in the movie Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts where they're sitting in a restaurant in Italy and there's big slices of pizza in front of them. I mean, they're in Italy eating pizza, like that's the dream, right? And the woman she's with is not touching her pizza. She's like, I just can't do it. And Julia Roberts is going on and on about how, like, I'm gonna have a relationship with this pizza. This is amazing. What are you doing sitting there not eating it? And right, she is talking about I forget what exactly what she says, but basically alludes to the fact that her jeans are already feeling tight and she's been eating so much on this trip, and she's just berating herself about how she looks. And Julia Roberts says something to the effect of let me ask you this in all of the years that you have undressed in front of a man, has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever gotten up and walked out and left? No. Why? Because He doesn't care, he's in a room with a naked woman, he's just happy to be there. I forgot about that scene, but you're so right, ladies.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

We all need to remember that scene. Go back, yeah, watch it. Yes, he's just happy to be there.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

So when you say no and you wake up in the morning and you're just going through, like, oh, I ate all this yesterday, so I have to take it easy today and and not eat so much, you're missing out on so much life by thinking that way. And she said, So she ends it with something like, We're gonna eat this pizza and then tomorrow we're gonna go out and we're gonna buy ourselves some bigger pants. Oh, I love that. Because you know what? Sometimes you just need to buy yourself bigger pants. And it's okay. I want to make sure that we're advocating for being healthy, whatever that looks like for you. Right, that's important. Being healthy, being able to live your life is important, but striving for a body standard that is literally not feasible for every single body, you will drive yourself to madness pursuing those standards.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Yes, definitely. One thing that I've learned through just life, right? Living long enough in my own body, also through even just the many years of coaching work that I've done is it's not even about body image. If you think about it, it's what our bodies really represent. And what do our bodies represent? They represent what it is that every human being is seeking. We're seeking safety, we're seeking a sense of belonging, we're seeking acceptance, we want to be seen, we want to be loved, and we want to feel a sense of control. That's part of what eventually led me into an eating disorder recovery program, a pretty intensive program in my late 20s. And one of the most important lessons I learned there was that healing isn't, oh, you graduated, so now you're healed. Healing is maintenance, right? So it's not like any of us will ever reach some magical point where we're never affected by any of this again. No. What are we doing? We're learning awareness, and we try to bring that too through this podcast. We want to share our stories, we want to talk through different situations, we want to get you guys inspired enough to share your stories with other women. And we gain awareness, we learn tools and we learn how to recognize old stories when they're knocking at the door again. And then we get to choose and we get to decide if we're going to invite them in.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, absolutely. Body neutrality is more sustainable than forced body positivity. Getting to a point where you're waking up every day and saying, I love every part of myself, every second of every day. It's just not realistic. However, shifting the mindset to my body is not the enemy, my body does amazing things. I'm grateful for my body. That's great progress. That's a much easier mentally, easier place to live. There's a lot of messaging around that out there now, too. You should accept your body and love you for who you are. And yes, you should, but it's just not feasible in the environment that we live in to be in that place every minute of every day. It's just not feasible. Don't strive for perfection, strive for a little bit better than yesterday. Yeah, even just one percent better. We hold ourselves to these unrealistic standards, we hold each other to these unrealistic standards, and it just snowballed over time. Yeah. And so now here we are. Ultimately, we always like to share, you know, ways you can shift the dynamic around you. And so I think we talked about a couple of ways already with unless you can fix it in 30 seconds, just don't comment on it. Stopping the bonding that happens through self-criticism. There's literally a scene in Mean Girls about it where they're talking about, like, oh, my pores are so huge, and I have man shoulders or whatever she says. Right. That's it's bonding, it's a ritual that we like stand around and criticize our bodies together. Let's maybe pick something else to bond over. I don't know. Crazy idea. Yeah, there are other topics you could bond over. That does not need to be one of them. Notice how often conversations center around appearance and especially in complimenting other women, pick something other than appearance to compliment them on. That was a really great idea you shared in this meeting. I really loved your perspective. I'd love to hear more. Things like that. Focus on the things that are non-appearance related because A, that's just going to help shift the conversation, but B, it also makes for way more interesting discussions.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

It does. There is actually one of my good, good friends, Julie, and shout out to Julie and Chris, her husband. They have a daughter named Ellen. Shout out to Ellen. And one of the things I love about Ellen, and everyone needs a friend like Ellen. So I'm encouraging you ladies to be like Ellen. She calls everybody queen, all of her girlfriends, all even me. And she's, I'm substantially, I could be her mother, right? But hype ourselves up, hype ourselves up the way that we hype our friends up. And instead of looking for evidence to see if you're worthy of accepting it or holding back on making a compliment or feeding into the self-criticism that our girlfriends are doing, just be like, Yeah, Queen, look at you. Let's just compliment women for who they are, not just what they look like. I don't know. A lot of us are badass and we're courageous, we're resilient, we're kind, we're creative, we're wise. How about we start complimenting those things?

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Yeah, exactly. I think we talk a lot about the power of the pause. This is another moment where the power of a pause is so, so important. If you are about to make a comment about someone's body, because here's the thing, and I want to get a little more specific for a second about comments around weight loss, because I have been through so many cycles of my weight where like I'll lose 30 pounds and then gain 40 and lose 50 and gain 30. It's been a constant up and down throughout my entire life. And the thing that I always noticed was that when I would lose the weight, people would always comment on, oh, you lost weight, you look so great. And then as soon as I gained it back, all the comments stopped. And so it's this cycle because what that does is it's treating people to connect the fact that people recognize when I'm smaller and they compliment that. But as soon as I get bigger, they stop complimenting and stop commenting. So it just creates this really destructive pattern of I'm not worthy of positivity and compliments when I am in a larger body than what I used to be. So that's why compliments around weight loss are so harmful. And I understand that they come from most of the time, people are making those comments from a place of genuine happiness and being really thrilled for the person who lost the weight. But should the day ever come where they gain the weight back, they're gonna feel bad about themselves because the comments stopped. So it again, I go back to if it can't be addressed in 30 seconds, just don't say it. I like that. And that's positive and negative comments. It goes on.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Absolutely, absolutely. And then some other practical advice for those of our listeners who have children, especially daughters, don't make any comments on your body or their body. And I think if we're honest, all of us have done that before in front of our daughters, to our daughters. Let's not shame or judge ourselves, let's just choose differently next time.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

For sure. Transitioning to the shrink this segment for this week. Mine actually has to do with this. I treat myself to regular pedicures, it's just something I love to do for myself.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

This is my ADHD brain, but real quick, what did you do during the pandemic? Did it have to do it for you?

SPEAKER_00 29:41

No, I had to do it and it was awful. It was so bad. All right. I was walking around with nails that look like they were painted by a six-year-old. And I didn't even have a niece that age at that point where I could be like, Oh, yeah, they she did that. Nope, that was me. Me and my unsteady hands and lack of patience. Oh, yeah. But nobody was seeing my toes at that point, other than my husband. So it didn't really matter. I was getting a pedicure the other day, and I was sitting next to this woman, did not know her at all. She came in and she sat down at the station next to me and took her shoes off, and she immediately started apologizing to the nail technician. She was like, This is my first pedicure since last winter. I'm so sorry if my feet are gross, the polish is all chipped, and she was just going on and on about how gross her feet were. Then I started thinking about all the times that I've done this. Like I remember very distinctly last year I went in for a pedicure and I forgot that I had a pedicure that afternoon and I forgot to shave my legs. So I had like probably four or five day hairy legs going into this pedicure. And I was sitting in the chair, like apologizing. And the woman that I was going to for my pedicures at the time, I've been going to her for years. She was like, Amanda, I've seen all kinds of feet, all kinds of legs. She was like, A little hair does not bother me at all. She said, and in fact, you really shouldn't shave your legs right before a pedicure appointment because it can be very irritating to shave and then have like exfoliator and all sorts of stuff put on your legs after that. So it can actually cause you more irritation on your skin than if you go in not having freshly shaved. Right. But I just this woman's sitting next to me apologizing to the nail technician. And I'm thinking, why do we do this? They're they're human feet. We're standing on them, we're walking, they carry us around. Why do we do this?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Yeah, what is happening? But it's true, we do. And I know a lot of people listening to this episode hearing your shrinking moment probably are laughing because they've said or thought the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

We all have our again, our bodies all look different. We do not need to apologize for that because our bodies are our bodies, and that's that. Love that.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

So for me, this week's shrinking moment, it happened a couple days ago. And what happened is uh my business card was drawn out of a contest that I had entered at a women's entrepreneurial networking event in Buffalo. And we won a photo shoot with a photography studio called Short Street Photographers in Williamsville, New York. Shout out to Joan. She is the owner. Amanda and I met with her this past Wednesday to do our consultation in preparation for making sure that we could make a good use of our time when we go in for the photo shoot. And she was giving us advice and just wanting to know about what to wear and different poses, wanting to know what we were interested in and the look we were going for. And I found myself every minute that passed in that conversation, I was literally like, oh my God, I don't know. Do I have enough time to lose some weight? I don't have any clothes that I feel really comfortable in. And what do I do? Maybe we should wait and do this at the end of summer because maybe I'll feel more confident then. And I found myself turning what should be a really enjoyable, lovely moment, this opportunity that is a startup business. We were putting it on the back burner because we couldn't afford it right away, right? And here it is, we can do this. And I realized that I was in my brain, right? All this inner dialogue, I was giving myself advice. I would never allow a coaching client to follow. For a really long time, I thought that healing meant reaching a place where these sorts of thoughts would never show up again. And what I am learning and reminding myself of, I should say, really, instead, is that healing is recognizing when those old stories are trying to grab the microphone and choosing not to hand it to them. Yep. My body has been judged, my body has been sexualized as a child, as an adult, my body has been criticized, my body has been altered, my body has survived abuse, my body has survived a stroke, my body has carried two children, my body has carried a lot of grief and stress and joy and love and growth, and every single version of me that has existed along the way. So I guess what I'd say is this shrinking example of me this week, as I've been thinking a lot about it. I'm really trying to lean into spending less time asking whether my body is acceptable for you, our listeners, or for you, our clients, for our other venture. And I want to spend more time appreciating everything that she has done for me because it is not an apology, and neither is your body. None of us have to earn the right to participate in our own life. We deserve to be here exactly as we are right now.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

That's exactly right. Very well said. And we always tell you that we want to hear your shrinking behaviors because these are opportunities for us to learn and grow together. So if you have a shrinking behavior that you'd like to submit for our shrink this segment or even as an idea for a full episode, please send us a note on Instagram. We are at Nda underscore pod. We would love to hear from you. And I think just to wrap up some thoughts around today's episode is the question of, and you actually raised it an episode or two ago in your shrink this when you were talking about your shorts, which as I was editing that episode, I was laughing so hard because it was such a relatable image that I could picture so clearly of like becoming a Hashish negotiator with the button on your pants. We've all been there. Yes, we have. True. Poor Maggie. She's just trying to live life and gets blinded by a button. But something you said in that episode really stuck with me. You said you wanted to stop treating your body like a problem to solve. I would love, as a closing thought for today, for us to think about as women what would change if we stopped treating our bodies like problems to solve, and we were more fully present in our lives and in our bodies because there's so much more power in that than in spending all your time and energy and money into trying to become acceptable as a condition of receiving love or success or whatever the case may be.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Yes. Amen to that.