When the Body Betrays You, It's Not Just Aging
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Just do this, the ads promise, and you’ll have the perfect body….
Have you ever felt betrayed by your body? We trust that it will work as expected, and then it doesn’t? Were you angry or shocked or hurt to have that implicit and explicit trust broken? Understandable. Lots of folks blame it on age. I beg to differ. It likely has more to do with our unreasonable expectations, our belief in our invulnerability, the ridiculous belief that nothing could possibly go wrong. Let’s talk.
Did the above photo offend you? Does it feel too close to the bone? Did you have a ewwwww response? If so, why?
Ancient civilizations worshiped such a body, according to some researchers. While there’s plenty of discussion, depending on who’s leading them, there are plenty who see this figure as a goddess:
Why is it so hard to see a goddess in the top photo? I’ll leave that for us all to ponder. But that sets the stage for this discussion.
We are constantly bombarded with messaging that all we have to do is follow this diet, take this supplement, do this that this that, and we’ll be young forever, live forever, have the perfect skin, blah blah blah.
Do we feel betrayed by our body when, after producing a life, our bodies show the work it did to bring a child into the world? Why is this a betrayal? Why isn’t it glorious proof of our agency and goddesshood instead?
We all too often attack our bodies for their imperfections with products that can do terrible damage. To that:
Plenty of us -especially women- are now experiencing liver failure from supplements for weight loss, and for men, muscle-building products. Because the industry is unregulated, greasy doctors looking for an easy buck will put their M.D. on a bottle and sell something as “natural.” The next thing we know we’re on a liver transplant list or dead.
Is that betrayal? Nope. The way I see it, and I have done it to my poor body, we have betrayed our body, which is trying to survive what we do to it.
As for the insults that Mother Nature slaps us with as we age?
Why do we consider the natural aging part insulting? Who are we to believe that we should be young forever when all living things die? How is that a betrayal?
We will shrivel, wrinkle, and die eventually. Nature promises that, like it or not. But that gift is only for those fortunate enough to be granted the gift of aging. Stay with me here, I’m going somewhere with that thought.
And perhaps that’s one of the hardest lessons. But it’s also not a betrayal, per se.
Generally, generally, if you eat well, move a lot, develop a healthy social community and have a purpose, you’ve got a far better shot at a good life at any age. We will vastly improve the experience of living as we inevitably move towards death.
With that there are all kinds of provisos attached to that promise like a rear-view mirror hung with a hundred dingleberries. It depends.
Like many on Substack, I write about aging. I’m living it; at 71 my face sports wrinkles that in my sixties I knew were coming because of my lifestyle. I am out in the weather, the world; the sun and wind and storms have carved stories on my face.
Bad habits like eating disorders over a lifetime and lousy choices have carved stretch marks on my skin, cost me my teeth and likely done damage I’m not yet aware of, but will probably experience at some point. Maybe not.
Inside my body, my organs have suffered the effects of horrific stress. Some organs don’t work as well as they could. Like many of us, incest and sexual assault have also carved their effects into my psyche, and as a result, my body.
Lest you doubt please read this book.
Bet you can relate.
I work hard at being healthy. That doesn’t prevent the occasional kidney stone, of which I was reminded last week with a trip to the ER. That’s not solely a function of age, however. Many factors go into such things, just like lots of factors affect diabetes and obesity and migraines and colon cancer and all the other ailments we juggle.
Some, a lot, are lifestyle. Some are just shite bad luck.
So many of us blame age for so much of what’s up or down with our physical body. But age isn’t the bad guy here. When we believe the implicit or explicit promise of “just do this, eat this, exercise that” and your body will never betray you, we set ourselves up for grief.
The body can betray us at any time.
But wait, let’s discuss this. “Betrayal?” What on earth do we mean?
Betrayal means "an act of deliberate disloyalty”
Why should we assume our body should owe us loyalty? That if we just did this or took that we would never age or never get ill?
There is no lotion, potion, supplement or any diet which can magically make aging go away, nor is there anything we can use to stave off some of life’s worst.
Sometimes, the body just skews sideways. It fails, it flails, and causes us terrible pain, embarrassment and quality of life.
I got this comment from
(used here with permission). It struck me deeply because of its truth, and because of how Beth has used her body’s journey to heal herself in other ways:I am a breast cancer survivor, who despite being a gym rat, got the disease in my 30s. The chemotherapy caused premature menopause, and radiation caused damage to my lungs, which has manifested itself as asthma. But my oncologist, who is a stellar person, and luck gave me the gift of life and the chance to age. I have reminded myself time and time again that aging has been a gift.
Now I also add arthritis to my spine. I am aging, but I still work out at the gym and attest to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Whether cancer stays away is really out of my control, but if I try to be healthy, it's good for my body and psyche. Menopause makes weight gain a thing for me, so I'm struggling to maintain a healthier weight. The key is never to give up.
Since cancer, I have become an artist. I oil paint and discuss self-care in my blog. Art is a high form of self-care for me, as is exercise. I am working on an art series of tasteful nudes called Breast Cancer, Female and Young. Although I am no longer young, I want to speak to the breast cancer experience from young women's perspectives. Meanwhile each day is a gift to me because I am one of the lucky ones that gets to age thus far. (author bolded)
This is terribly brave.
Contrast this with: years ago I had a Denver-based chiropractor who, like me, was a gym rat. He was huge, muscular, very proud of his bodybuilder’s agency and his talented hands.
Somehow he came down with some kind of wasting disease. Within months, his extraordinary body withered. He retreated from all his clients and his relationships. I have no clue what happened to him. He felt horribly betrayed; the hard work he’d put into that body gone. Now he was what he used to deride as a “pencil neck.”
He was so identified with being one of these guys that when his body said NO, he couldn’t function any more:
He felt deeply betrayed. Unlike Beth, though, he wasn’t able to turn that into something different, even more powerful.
Being a bodybuilder for 51 years, the last six years of undergoing major surgeries, gaining a few pounds and losing hard-won muscle have been a challenge. I live with constant pain from the metal in my feet and right hand. Parts of me don’t work like they used to.
I can choose to feel betrayed by my body, or I can choose, like Beth, to ride the horse I’ve been given. I can still do many, many things. I’ve had to ratchet back on many others. But by god, I’m still in the race. Beth is still in the race.
We have been given the gift of aging, which so many consider a betrayal, like it’s a disease. Disease was what nearly cost Beth the gift of aging. We have it so backwards.
The body’s journey is driven so much by our choices. We betray our precious bodies if we keep making poor ones.
The body’s journey is also driven by Nature, nurture and pure luck or lack thereof, depending on our perspective. Ask Stephen Hawking (okay we can’t but still) about luck, then look at what he did for science.
When we have unrealistic expectations of our bodies, which we too often see as ourselves, we are guaranteed to feel betrayed with illness or accident.
When we understand that the true journey, which Beth personifies, is what inhabits that body, then we soar. Of course it’s much harder.
Beth appreciates just being alive. The chemo took plenty, but it gave her life.
Beth’s body gave her the journey to discover who she could be. So it can be for us all when we release unreasonable and unfair expectations. When we stop resenting our poor beleaguered bodies for not being young, perfect and ageless, that opens us up to so much more joy.
Let’s play.
Thanks so much for joining me on this journey. These are sometimes tough topics, but brave people abound and I am honored to share their stories. I hope this article gave you food for thought. If so please consider
If someone you know might value a reminder of how precious life is even if we don’t stay young forever, please also consider
Thank you so much.
As an addict in recovery who has had more than her fair share of bad decisions and bullets barely dodged, I’m very aware that at 67, this is all gravy. The gall bladder attack & surgery, neuropathy, Osteonecrosis, floaters, beginning of hearing loss and the list goes on. If life was fair I’d have died over 40 years ago. Nothing but gratitude for the opportunity to get old and curmudgeonly.
Julia, I continue to love what you have to say. And I want to add a point: at 78, I’ve had four vertebral fractures in the last four months. I’m finally beginning to do strength building again, but that’s a lot of setbacks! And now I’m in a body I’ve never had before. All I can say is aging can also feel terribly bewildering. I watched this with my dad as he aged, and now I’m experiencing it myself: whose body is this? It’s not the one I’m used to?… I don’t think of the bewilderment as betrayal, but it’s not hard to see how people get there.