When Michelle reached out and asked if Id do an EXPOSED! update I couldn’t believe it had been four years.
Not so much in the “Good gosh time flies! Can you believe it has been four years already?!” sense, but in the “That feels like a lifetime ago. I feel like a different person.” way.
I went back and reread my initial post.
I recognized much of that woman.
I remembered the moment the picture was taken (crack of dawn, rushing around, thrust husband’s phone at him and instructed SNAP ONE! FAST!!).
I still owned the bathing suit (something which amazed me. Im a swim-in-running-shorts-and-sports-bra misfit, hadnt worn it since the photo, and we’d moved).
I still immediately flashed back to college-aged women Id worked with & how they’d had no concept what their bodies looked like because they weren’t living fully *inside* them. (something which made me want to gather new Oakland girlfriends and do the butcher paper experiment).
And yet–at the same time–the post read as though it were an entirely different individual.
I look much the same.
I feel worlds different (partial photo credit above a VERY PROUD seven year old. Left side four years ago. Right side last week.).
Gone is the prideful:
I am thankful for my health, my strength & for making it to 40 without any major aches, pains or injuries.
Replaced at 44 with:
I am thankful Ive learned sitting IS the new smoking. My piriformis seizes when I sit too much. Im grateful Ive learned to move more.
Gone is the simplistic:
What Ive learned is when I give my body what it seeks it repays me ten-fold by being able to do pretty much anything I ask of it in return.
Replaced at 44 with:
At times my body hesitates before doing what I ask (hello back bend on command!) but it flat out refuses to comply when bombarded with old talk/thoughts.
Revisiting the EXPOSED! movement has been a painful experience for me.
As I blather about ad nauseam:
Healthy living and fitness for me is *not* about the vessel. It’s about striving to live a longer more vibrant life.
I may not appear all that different from four years ago (insert awkward yet candid joke about wrinkles on my countenance) —yet I feel utterly changed.
Ive learned more.
Ive lost more.
Im wiser.
Im older in every sense of the word.
In the initial post I expressed gratitude for my eyes/ability to see. Four years (& aging eyesight) later Ive learned seeing is much more than viewing whats before us.
As I created the wonky side-by-side photo above I pondered the definition of the word EXPOSED.
It occurred to me, at 44, I feel less EXPOSED “displayed for viewing” when posting a bathing suit picture than when I ‘display’ things more sacred than my vessel.
For me being EXPOSED! is sharing my words.
Sharing Im feeling off.
Sharing Im stepping back, re-evaluating & trying to recover the joy Ive shed since that photo was taken four years ago.
For me EXPOSE!-ing through my words is far more revealing than a photo could ever be.
Did you participate in the EXPOSED! project? How do you feel four years later?Are words & thoughts more EXPOSE’ing for you than the physical?
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