23/12/2025
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I have watched women fight their own bodies like it was a war they could win. I saw it in my motherβs generation and my grandmotherβs too. Women who raised families through ration lines, recessions, wars, sickness, and loss. Women whose hands told stories long before their mouths did.
My grandmother used to rub cream into her arms every night, not to hide the wrinkles, but to thank them. Those arms held babies through sleepless nights. They worked factory shifts when the men went to war. They carried groceries home when money was tight and pride was tighter. She never called them old. She called them honest.
Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught to turn against our own skin. To treat gray hair like failure. To see softness as weakness. To believe our bodies existed for approval instead of survival. That lie has caused more quiet suffering than we will ever admit.
History tells a different truth. Look at the women who lived through the Great Depression. Their bodies changed because life demanded it. Look at the women who marched for civil rights, who buried sons, who stood in voting lines so long their feet swelled. Their bodies were not decorations. They were vessels of courage.
Here is the hard truth that can make your blood boil if you let it. Time always wins. Biology does not negotiate. Nature never apologizes. Fighting your body is a battle you were never meant to win.
And yet, surrender is not weakness. It is freedom.
When you stop punishing your body, something shifts. You start to care for it, not to fix it, but to honor it. You stop measuring your worth in mirrors and start feeling it in your spirit. You realize your bodyβs real job was never to impress. It was to carry you through this life safely, with all its storms and miracles.
That moment, the one where you finally accept yourself, feels like laying down a heavy weapon you were never meant to carry. Peace shows up quietly. Confidence follows without asking permission. Life begins to feel lighter.
Wave the white flag. Not because you lost, but because you finally understood the truth.
Your body has already done something extraordinary. It got you here.
Β© Donna Ashworth
Credits Goes to the respective Author βοΈ