Borrow Someone Else’s Body for a Minute: A Different Way to Think About Body Image

If you woke up tomorrow in the body of someone you love — your daughter, your best friend, your sister, and had to give it back in a year — how would you treat it? How much rest would you give it? Would you stand in front of the mirror and pick it apart the way you do your own?

Most women don’t hesitate. They’d take care of it. They’d be kind to it. They’d feed it enough, move it in ways that felt good, and let it rest without guilt.

So why is it so hard to do that for yourself?

The honest answer is that most of us were never taught to think of our own bodies as something worth that kind of care. We were taught to manage them, improve them, shrink them, discipline them. Care was conditional — something you earned by getting it right, not something your body was entitled to just by existing.

But here’s what over 25 years of working with women has shown me: the relationship you have with your body isn’t a reflection of your character or your worth. It’s a reflection of what you were taught, what you survived, and what you’ve been told about yourself for a very long time. None of that is fixed. None of it is who you are.

Your body deserves the same care you’d give without hesitation to someone you love. It always did.

You were never broken. You were doing the best you could with what you had — in a body you were never taught to trust, in a culture that profits from you believing the problem is you. It isn’t. It never was.

If this resonates, this is exactly the work I do with clients. You can learn more about working together here.