Rachel V

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Autumn 2023

The last ten years have been a tumultuous time for me, and in turn, for my body. I moved countries.

I was hospitalised briefly for what was thought to be cancer (it wasn’t). I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism. I cycled through multiple psychiatric medications. I gained about sixty pounds, then lost it again.

I transitioned from my thirties to my forties, and the waves of perimenopause began lapping at my feet.

Through it all, my relationship with my body, always somewhat tenuous, went through many shifts. I was the fat kid throughout childhood, awkward, clumsy, unathletic. Transitioning in adolescence to pudgy-but-conventionally-attractive womanhood.

And unhealthy though it was, the fact it was considered conventionally attractive was my only tenuous positive feeling towards my body.

As my forties hit, hormones and weight fluctuated, and it all took its toll. Wrinkles, sagging, new lumps and bumps. Physically, I was healthier, fitter, and more active than I had ever been, but I looked at my reflection with a new despair.

How could I rebuild my relationship with myself when those things I had been taught gave my body value had now gone?

I’m still learning more about my body, about what it craves and what it can do. I’m learning that it’s a good body.  It’s strong, and healthy. It’s enjoying getting fitter, finding new limits, being outside and trying new activities.

It still enjoyed and desired sex. And yet, I was repaying it with revulsion, and increasing difficulty seeing it as sexual.

So, this is part of my work. Say hello to my body, see its value and its strength, its glory, and yes, even its sexuality.

Walk the woods with it, among the old and the new, the dead and the dying, break a granola bar in offering to whoever might be watching.

To look at it and see, not sags and lumps and loose skin… not as good and bad or even as ugly and beautiful… but just itself.

Just my body.

Just me.  Hello, me.

It’s nice to see you again.

Applecross Peninsula, Scottish Highlands April 2024

Rachel shared some photos taken by her husband Jack of Rachel braving the sea in Scotland in April that we decided to add to her page.

July 2024

[It has been such a joy working with Rachel, so I was delighted when she said yes to a request I made to people to work with again. We made some great photos and I love what she has written].

The work continues. Time goes by, we all grow older, and the body continues to change.

It seems like just as I come to terms with myself in a particular state my anatomy has already begun to shift. At times it feels like I’m walking on a treadmill, or pushing a Sisyphean boulder up a mountain. The goal is always in sight, but never reachable. Maybe one day it will be.

I keep reading testimonies from older women about how they stopped giving a fuck –

– about other how other people perceive them, about how they learned to “embrace their crone-dom”. It’s something that I deeply long for, and yet I’d be lying if I didn’t say part of me quails with horror at the thought.  

But you keep walking. You keep pushing.  Not because there’s no other choice…there’s always another choice…but because you decide to.

You make a conscious, deliberate choice that you want to keep pushing, whether you reach the top of the mountain or not. Maybe that is the goal, to just keep pushing and learn to enjoy the sights along the way.

So today I continue the work here under the trees. There’s something uniquely liberating about being naked out in the woods, particularly on such a warm day. Stripping off my clothes and lounging about in the shade, I was deliciously comfortable. Watching Phil scramble about sweating while I laid cool and relaxed on the moss made me wonder why our ancestors developed clothes.

It’s still hard sometimes to accept my body as it is, especially as time continues to march on, skin continues to wrinkle, breasts continue to droop. It’s easy for me to look at these photos and spot every single feature society has taught me is a flaw.

Every ripple, roll, spot, and sag that I have been told should be “corrected” through the use of creams, cosmetics, weight loss, support garments, paints, and potions.

The hair that should be shaved or burned away, the lips that should be injected, the breasts that should be carved and sculpted, the fat that should be starved off. And if I cannot do those things? Cover up, society says. No one wants to see that.

Maybe. But maybe that’s what not giving a fuck means. Here I am, out in the woods, resplendent in my nudity and every wobble, crack, and lump that goes with it.

Maybe nobody wants to see it.  But this is my boulder, and I shall push it where I like. And I shall enjoy the view along the way.

And maybe, as I push, I will not give a fuck.

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