She Carries Me

Belize May 2025. Feeling strong. My body has changed so much since then.

I’ve struggled with my weight and body image for as long as I can remember.

When I was a teenager, my dad once said,

“You’d be a real fox if you lost weight.”

He meant it as a compliment.

But words like that — especially in a Japanese family where all the women were small and delicate —

became tiny seeds of shame that took root deep inside me.

I learned early that my worth and my body were somehow tied together,

and it took decades to start untangling them.

Now, at 47, I’m the smallest and lightest I’ve been since I was twelve years old.

It’s a strange thing to look in the mirror and see a body that’s finally “small”

but also to know that small doesn’t mean well.

That numbers don’t tell the story of strength,

and thin can coexist with unhealthy.

This year has been brutal on my body.

Grief hollowed my appetite.

Stress sealed it.

Even the thought of exercise felt like too much.

And somewhere in the fog of it all, I embraced my cigarette habit —

a toxic souvenir from a relationship that cost me more than I realized at the time.

I see now that I was trying to breathe through what was suffocating me.

But here’s the thing:

our bodies are magic.

They bend and break and heal.

They remember, forgive, and rebuild.

They keep showing up for us,

even when we stop showing up for them.

I’ve herniated four disks in my lower back.

I had to relearn how to walk properly, how to lift, how to move.

And yet — just last year — I hiked over a hundred miles

with a thirty-pound pack pressing into those same scars.

My muscles adapted.

My lungs expanded.

My heart found rhythm again.

My body whispered, “If this is what we’re doing, I’ve got you.”

Now, at the tail end of the hardest year of my life,

I find myself weaker than I’ve been in years.

So last week, I walked up the steps to my personal trainer’s studio —

half determined, half dreading it.

But, I LOVE him, so I showed up.

We worked my body until it didn’t quite know what was happening.

My heart and lungs protested,

and if they could talk, they would’ve asked when we could go outside for a smoke.

But I made it through —

over an hour of full-body metabolic conditioning.

It hurt.

It humbled me.

And it felt so good.

The next three days, I shuffled down the stairs like a baby giraffe,

sore in places I forgot existed.

But then — three days later — I went back.

And this time, my body remembered.

My legs steadied.

My breath deepened.

My heart said, “Oh, right. We know how to do this.”

I came back to life — one rep, one muscle fiber, one breath at a time.

We’re going to keep at it, my trainer and I.

Not for vanity.

Not for punishment.

But for reverence.

Because I know now how sacred this body is —

how it has carried me through every loss, every pregnancy, every climb, every rebirth.

And I intend to strengthen and protect the woman who has carried me through it all.

Because she is worth it.