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The Unglamorous Truth of Going Back to Fitness
Why My Journey Restarted with Workouts for Seniors When we talk about women reclaiming their health, the modern world loves to sell us an inspiring image of transformation. Join a gym. Buy new workout clothes. Commit to a challenge. Push harder. Push through the pain. Become the best version of yourself. But for a body that has spent nearly two decades occupied by pregnancies, interrupted sleep, caregiving, chronic conditions, and motherhood, that narrative feels strangely disconnected from reality. After years of carrying everyone else, you cannot always return to fitness in the same way you left it. You begin exactly where your body allows you to begin. And for me,…
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The Inner Thoughts of a Perimenopausal Woman
On Household Management, Overgiving, and Running Out of Bandwidth There should probably be an official translator for the inner thoughts of a perimenopausal woman. Not because we are irrational. Not because we are angry all the time. But because there seems to come a point in midlife where the part of us that spent decades smoothing things over quietly packs up its bags and leaves. For years, our default response to everything was simple: It’s okay. It’s not a big deal. I’ll just do it. I’ll just clean it. I’ll just buy it. I’ll just absorb it. And then one day, somewhere between fluctuating hormones, interrupted sleep, chronic fatigue, decades…
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The Forty Days Postpartum Rest We Forgot
We spend nine months preparing the nursery, but we spend zero minutes preparing our souls for the “void” that comes after the storm of birth. In Java, where my roots are, we don’t “prepare” for postpartum with a shopping list; we prepare with a shift in tempo. There is a quiet, deeply practiced understanding that a mother must be held for forty days. Traditionally, her body is considered “open” and her energy fragile. She is surrounded by her mother or her mother-in-law—whoever brings her the most peace. There are helpers, traditional masseuses, the warming heat of Jamu tonics, and specific foods designed to “seal” the body back together. But for…
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