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At 30, I finally feel beautiful.
I sometimes think of my body as a garden. One that for most of my childhood and early adult years, I absolutely hated. No matter how many times I attempted to cultivate and celebrate its beauty, I saw only its weeds: arms too big, legs too slow. A body that didn’t look or move the way I wanted it to.
In high school and college, I tried to counteract the resentment I felt by “getting healthy.” I wanted to be smaller, thinner, leaner…to look like the happy bodies I saw projected all around me. But a misguided focus on losing weight turned into disordered eating and unhealthy exercise patterns—and general misery. Trying to squeeze my not size zero body into a size zero dress was a regular occurrence. Skipping pool parties to avoid being in a bathing suit around classmates happened a lot. All the while, I tried and tried to conform to beauty standards—and in doing so, I became a master at fanning the flames of my own self-doubt and shame.
After graduation, anyone would think I was flourishing: I was climbing the corporate ladder in the tech world; my Instagram was full of photos of me having all the fun with my friends. But my relationship with my body still sucked. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw an impostor. My thoughts were a constant stream of negative self talk. Yes, I went to therapy. But sleeping, eating well, and working out—read: anything that was supposed to provide physical or emotional nourishment—just felt like one more task lingering at the bottom of my to-do list.
Then came the breaking point, the summer of 2020. I was only 29, but I started experiencing constant chest pain and deep fatigue. After years of hiding inside my head to avoid living inside my body, I couldn’t begin to decipher the signals. I’d disconnected to the point where I wasn’t able to tell if I was just stressed out or truly sick. And so I kept going, through a pneumonia diagnosis and recovery, a string of negative COVID-19 tests, and eight weeks of back-and-forth with doctors trying to figure out what the hell was going on. By the end, my chest pain was unbearable. I couldn’t move, laugh, or cry. When I arrived at the hospital emergency room, the doctors were still stumped. Until they weren’t. It was lymphoma. Cancer.
After years of hiding inside my head to avoid living inside my body, I couldn’t decipher the signals
What comes after a cancer diagnosis? Shock? Fear? Devastation? Yes, but that wasn’t all. When I got the news, clarity consumed me. Thinking about death gave me an unexpected sense of freedom. I was finally able to release the feelings of unworthiness and my own harsh criticism that had held me back from loving myself for years, because I realized that my body—the very thing I rejected, the very thing that was also rejecting me—was also going to be the thing that got me through this.
Don’t get me wrong, my cancer was traumatic. I went through six rounds of chemo, lost all of my hair, and spent three weeks in the hospital without visitors in the middle of a pandemic. Some days, I couldn’t move. I had to just sit with my pain, a new and different version of the feeling I’d been avoiding for years. But this time, there was a silver lining: Being forced to stop fighting my body and start listening to it made me realize that if I wanted to survive cancer—and to live my life with real purpose—I needed to recognize that without my body, whatever it may look like, there is no life at all. I dug up that garden and started replanting.
Now that I’m in remission, taking care of both my mind and body fills my cup. Consulting with a nutritionist has helped me rewire beliefs I learned through toxic diet culture. Food is energy that fuels my growth, not a reward or punishment. Working out is a privilege, not a chore. I’m grateful for opportunities to move, dance, and build strength. Practicing breath work and meditation keeps my mind-body connection strong, helping me water these new seeds of self-love and acceptance.
I know it sounds strange, but as horrible as getting cancer was, it brought me the opportunity I needed. When I lookin the mirror, I’m proud of what I see. And it’s not because of how my body looks, but how it feels to live inside it.